Horror, Fantasy, and other non-sci-fi genres...

[D_Davis]

Why not?

I should have my review for Partridge's Dark Harvest done soon, and I guess I should move my review for I am Legend here - it felt a little strange posting it in the sci-fi thread.


So for those of you interested in horror-fiction, I cannot recommend Dark Harvest enough. It is utterly brilliant. Check it out.

[D_Davis]

I am Legend - Richard Matheson

Finally getting around to reading a beloved book can be a task filled with apprehension. After years of hype and praise, there is a good chance that the book might be a disappointment, due to no faults of its own. Often times, I avoid these books. Not because they are popular, or for any silly reasons as such, but because I figure books like these are already well-loved and respected, and I would rather spend some time discovering and praising other books. So, with a little hesitation, I finally took the plunge and read Richard Matheson's I am Legend, and I am really glad that I did.

I've had the book for a few years, but upon a careful and recent hunt I was unable to locate my copy. And so, I ended up buying it again - I felt compelled to read it. Unfortunately, my new copy has a giant-ass red star printed (not a sticker) on the cover proclaiming, “Now a major motion picture starring Will Smith!” It looks really silly on the otherwise well designed face. I have not seen the film, yet, and I really want to, so don't take this comment as disparaging towards the adaptation. I actually like Will Smith as an actor, and I think the film looks good.

Anyhow, to get back on track, I am Legend is a very solid work of fiction. Just in case there are those out there who don't know yet, here is a brief synopsis. It tells the story of Robert Neville, a man who finds himself alone in a world overrun by vampires. He is the last pure-bred human. He has become the ultimate prey. Neville lives each day for only one thing: survival. He hunts and gathers supplies by day, hides and drinks by night. It's a mentally taxing existence to be sure, and there are a handful of moments where he almost loses it completely. Through bull-headed determination, and with the blessing of long and lonely days, he begins to piece together the truth behind the vampire mythos, and discovers just what in the hell is happening to the world around him.

I like that the story is as much a study of the pursuit of knowledge as it is a tale of survival horror. What makes a legend? What are the ingredients of a long lasting mythos? Through Neville's scientific and philosophical ponderings, Matheson examines these very questions. Neville is determined to discover the root of vampirism, and he begins to question the legend that surrounds these monsters. Why do vampires shy away from garlic? What power does the cross hold over them? Why do wooden stakes kill them? Why do they shrivel up in the sun's light? Neville examines each of these questions and actually discovers the truth behind the myth.

In doing so, Matheson creates a new myth, a new legend. I love these kinds of meta-textual stories, stories that examine the very fabric of fiction in the process. What is most remarkable is that Matheson does all of this in a very short amount of time. This is a short book, thankfully; it is written with brevity, and does not spend a great deal of time on world-building or “fleshing things out.” I hate this term, “fleshing things out.” To me, it means, “add padding to make a short book longer for no reason.” I am Legend does everything it sets out to do in a timely manner, and does not waste the reader's time on any amount of nonsense.

I am not prepared to declare this the greatest vampire book of all time. I know some that do. I won't even say it is a timeless genre classic. But what I will say should carry more weight, because it is without an ounce of hyperbole: I am Legend is a well-written, solid tale. It's a good book. I don't need a lot of adverbs to say this. It is a book with a one-track mind, and delivers a focused story of one man's quest for survival and knowledge. At the end of the day, I am happy I read it, and even with the amount of hype surrounding it, coupled with my heightened anticipation, I finished it with satisfaction. It's just a good book.

[lovejuice]

ok, so about this new poirot's that i just read...:P:)

[D_Davis]

ok, so about this new poirot's that i just read...:P:)


What about it.

:P

[megladon8]

I suppose it's a good place to post this review...

"Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire"

by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden


Gothic horror is a genre which lately seems to be dominated by Tim Burton movies. His quirky, twisted dark-fantasy fairy tales have become the tape by which everything else in this style is measured - plus, there’s the fact that no one seems to be making these movies anymore, aside from Burton. But to experience true gothic horror, one has to turn to literature. And with “Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire” - the latest work from “Hellboy” creator Mike Mignola and established novelist Christopher Golden - it’s nice to see that good gothic horror can still be found in the “New Releases” section of your local bookstore.

Told episodically, “Baltimore” chronicles events which affect Henry Baltimore, a young soldier whose life is exposed to unspeakable darkness on the battlefield. After being shot in the leg and left for dead, Baltimore sees strange creature flying in the sky, who then descend and begin to devour the remains of his fallen comrades. When one approaches him, he slashes its face with his combat knife, and this event ends up changing the world forever, as it becomes the reason for the great plague of Europe, and the catalyst event for the meeting of a few men in a small pub whose lives have also been touched by darkness.

Each man in the pub brings their own story of death and decay which helps to illuminate this world which Golden and Mignola have created. Similar to the overall concept which H. P. Lovecraft pushed in nearly all of his works, one of the main ideas in “Baltimore” is that of a world beyond our world, which exists simultaneously and symbiotically alongside our own. This is the world where vampires, werewolves, demons and ghouls reside, and occasionally our paths cross, resulting in folklore and old wives tales. Granted, it’s a very different approach to the topic from that of Lovecraft, but the general idea is the same. And it’s not all that unexpected, really, since Lovecraft has obviously been a huge influence on both Mignola’s artwork and storytelling as evidenced in his “Hellboy” comics (and even the movie).

The stories told by the men in the pub are all quite chilling, and effectively creepy. It would be very wrong to spoil any of the surprises in store within the book by going into great detail about each of the tales, but suffice to say they involve some frightening creatures and situations. Demonic marionettes and giant lake monsters are among some of the horrors to be found within the pages of “Baltimore”.

But while the monsters are great, it’s the overall atmosphere of the story which is so captivating. Anyone who has seen the gothic horror films of Italian director Mario Bava will find something instantly recognizable. Descriptions of locales and characters are reminiscent of the striking imagery of such Bava classics as Black Sunday, while also having their own atmospheric qualities more suiting Mignola’s style. And while Mignola’s drawings are small and often quite simple - perhaps showing the shingles of a house, or a stylized crucifix - they really add to the feeling one gets from the book. I know that one complaint people often have with books with illustrations is that they take away the reader’s ability to imagine characters and objects the way they want to imagine them - but this is not the case here. The drawings are not greatly detailed, and even the drawings of monsters are done by showing the monster deep in shadows, so that not much of it is revealed. It’s simply enough to tease your imagination, and make the images seem even more grotesque in your mind.

One of the most impressive things (for me at least) is that Mignola and Golden managed to take the concept of vampires and make it fresh, original, and most importantly frightening again. It’s been too long since vampires scared me last - the romanticizing of these creatures never really made sense to me. It was interesting the first couple of times I read or saw vampires portrayed as sexual beings with incredible powers of seduction, but that that image became their billboard puzzled me. They’ve always been monsters to me, and with “Baltimore”, we have a return to the monstrous interpretation of the undead.

While there are startling moments and it contains an atmosphere of the macabre which could be cut with a knife, it wouldn’t be right to say that the book is all-out “terrifying”. It’s a tale of the supernatural with a definite, steady build in suspense, and a certain dramatic tragedy which makes it feel a lot more potent than it would have as a simple monster story. It really is a success on all fronts and I hope more readers decide to pick this one up.

[D_Davis]

Dark Harvest - Norman Partridge

Every year, on Halloween night, a pumpkin growing in an evil plot of soil comes to eerie life. Each year, a man is chosen to carve a face and make a body for the pumpkin. After stuffing the hellish Frankenstein-creation with gobs of candy, it is unleashed as a participant in a game called the Run. It's goal: to reach the church in the center of town by midnight. Standing in its way: an army of teenage boys, each one determined to take Sawtooth Jack, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, the October Boy, down with whatever weapon he can. To the victor is promised a year of easy living, all the family's bills get paid, and the guarantee of a bumper crop. But if the October Boy wins, well, the town will have more than hell to contend with.

The above premise sounds absurd, and could easily be the makings for a yuk-a-minute horror spoof, but Norman Partridge takes it and delivers a no-nonsense, punch-to-the-gut. Dark Harvest is chilling, surely one of the most effective books I've read in the genre. I had been meaning to buy and read this for a year or so. I saw it on the shelf at multiple book stores, picked it up a few times, but always put it down. It has a great cover, it is short, and more than a few times the blurbs on the inside mention the name of Joe R. Lansdale in comparison. Come to find, Partridge and Lansdale are buddies, and so, without any further hesitation, I bought it and read it in a matter of hours.

The story practically unfolds in real time. It takes place from the hours of around 7 p.m. until midnight, and it only takes about that long to read. Partridge's terse, concise narrative creates a kind of immediacy I seldom encounter in a book. It actually reads like a well made horror film, and frankly, it's better than almost every horror flick I've seen. The horror genre is one that relies upon the immediacy of the moment. You want that tension, that suspense that quickly builds and is released with gusto. This is a book of literary jump-scares that is truly terrifying and tense.

Partridge employs a second-person, present tense point of view, a POV I don't often come across, and it does wonders for the story. The reader is put right smack-dab in the middle of the action. And what action! What gobsmacking action! The plot is unrelenting, it grabbed me by the throat and pulled me through a series of events and situations of the likes I rarely find in the genre. Through his unique style, Partridge controls the narrative like a film director. He positions the camera and tells you what you are seeing and how it should make you feel. Yes it is a tad manipulative, but it is also effective. He invokes a commonality found in horror fans, and plays upon the knowledge of c genre onventions and familiar settings. I felt more like a participant of the story rather than a passive reader.

Partridge also utilizes fluid transitions between the different characters and scenes. When Peter McCormick, the main character, is let lose for the Run, we slowly pull away from him while he is running down the street, and turn to focus on a car blazing a trail towards the city's outskirts. We then follow the car and transition to a new set of characters and the harrowing situation they soon find themselves in. After this, we follow the car, now being driven by a new driver, back into town and back to Peter. These kinds of transitions are littered throughout the novel, and I've never read anything like them. Pure literary brilliance if you ask me.

By the end of the short novel, I could barely believe the experience. Partridge just does so much right its damn near unbelievable. Some conventions - the good ones - are followed, while others get squashed and kicked to the curb. I found myself utterly despising certain characters, rooting for Peter, and, well, that's all I am going to say because I really don't want to give anything else away. Needless to say, I was rightfully shocked and surprised at a few twists and turns and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute I spent with this book. The finale is one of the freaking coolest things I've ever read; it's bursting with vivid imagery, gritty violence, and a climax to die for. It's simply a damn good book.

[megladon8]

I can't freaking wait to read that book.

[D_Davis]

I can't freaking wait to read that book.

From one fan of good horror to another, I think you're going to dig it. I can't wait to talk with someone about some of the cooler scenes.

[D_Davis]

It's a more visceral horror than most horror fiction I've read. It's more like a really good slasher film than a slowly building spook story.

You're familiar at all with Lansdale, you know what I mean.

It's got a grit, and a bite to it. I can picture a young John Carpenter or Wes Craven totally digging this.

[megladon8]

I don't think enough people appreciate the craft that goes into creating a truly effective horror novel.

Again, one of the "downers" about it being in the genre ditches.

[megladon8]

Have begun reading "Dark Harvest".

Read the first 20 pages, then needed to take a nap - it was an incredibly long, busy day for me and I was nodding off.

It seems fantastic so far. Very evocative prose. The description of the carving and filling of the October Boy was fantastic.

"The man points toward the town.
The Boy with the knife starts toward it."

[D_Davis]

It seems fantastic so far. Very evocative prose. The description of the carving and filling of the October Boy was fantastic.


Yeah, the 'birth' of the October Boy is awesome.

[megladon8]

Yeh, "Dark Harvest" was pretty freaking awesome.

I really like that there's never a clear explanation given as to why this whole thing has to take place every year. There's no history - we're right there with Pete, experiencing things for the first time and slowly piecing it all together.

The October Boy is one of the most sympathetic "villains" I have read in a long time, and every one of his few instances of dialogue is incredibly powerful and memorable.

A wonderful piece of pulp fiction, which is actually much more - a story of having to grow up and leave home, and a story about the nature of stories.

[D_Davis]

Isn't it awesome how the October Boy is developed? I've never felt more empathy for a monster. The passage where it goes back to the old house is extremely well written and developed.

And that ending! Man, does it ever rock. Once all the main players finally meet at the church, it just gets awesome.

[Saya]

I finished the second book, A Clash of Kings, from the A Song of Ice and Fire series a couple days ago. It pretty much continued the same constant quality of the first book. There are two new POV characters and without spoiling who, I thought one worked and one was not very interesting. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot. It's very action packed and there are a couple of awesome twists at the end.

I'll start book 3 soon, but I just have to finish 1984 first.

[D_Davis]

This is pretty cool.

I just got an email from Norman Partridge about my review of Dark Harvest:


Every once in awhile, a writer's lucky enough to read a review that makes him think: yep, that guy really got it! That's what I thought when I read your review of DARK HARVEST. It's a pleasure to hear that the book worked for you (as a reader) exactly the way I intended it to (as a writer).

I'd actually seen your comments over at goodreads.com, too. Thanks for posting there... and elsewhere. With DARK HARVEST, I've learned that online reviews really can help drive sales of a book, so keep on drivin'. I appreciate it!

All the best
(and watch out for Jerry Ricks in your rearview),
Norm

[Saya]

That's awesome!

I'll definitely will check out Dark harvest sometime.

[Kurosawa Fan]

That's pretty incredible D. Makes me want to grab the book, just to support someone like that.

[lovejuice]

This is pretty cool.

I just got an email from Norman Partridge about my review of Dark Harvest:

are you on goodreads? is that place good? i have an account there, but never care to update since it seems like people are into posting their own review rather than discussing stuffs.

[D_Davis]

are you on goodreads? is that place good? i have an account there, but never care to update since it seems like people are into posting their own review rather than discussing stuffs.

I like it, but it's not really a place for discussion.

I like to see what my friends are reading, and it often leads to some good recs.

I've never really participated in any discussions there. It's like Myspace for readers.

It's also a good place to keep a novel journal, as it keeps track of when you have read a book, and what you thought of it.

My name is D_Davis on goodreads.

[D_Davis]

Next up for me is Noctuary, by Thomas Ligotti.

[D_Davis]

The Medusa - Thomas Ligotti

As a bookworm, I love books; I love everything about them.

The physical: their smell, their feel, the sound of a new spine being opened for the first time.

The metaphysical: the power they have over the imagination, the way they stir the heart and soul, the ability they possess to draw me to them.

Stories about books are something I cherish. I have often dreamed about discovering a secret book store. One that exists under or behind the facade of another. One that is greater than the one presented to the common man.

The Medusa, the first story in Thomas Ligotti's Noctuary, is such a story, and it is a good one. It is about a professor and philosopher named Lucian Dregler and his quest for the mythical Medusa. His quest leads him to a dungeon of books buried deep within the bowels of the earth. Here he meets a stranger, a silent women who gives him a key granting him passage to yet another hovel of tomes, one which possesses something even more cryptic.

Within the pages of this short story, Ligotti creates a world thick with texture conjuring the likes of Poe and Lovecraft and yet he demonstrates his own unique voice. In Dregler, Ligotti fashions a classic hero, one who is driven by obsession, consequences be damned. And, in typical weird fashion, we all know what happens to the hero wrought with obsession: they find what they are looking for.

[D_Davis]

Conversations in a Dead Language - Thomas Ligotti

This story, in a word, is sinister.

Halloween, trick or treat, murder, and revenge from beyond the grave.

Ligotti sets the stage effortlessly, and in only a few paragraphs he drew me into the world of a twisted man. It's hard to tell if its Ligotti's prose, or my own imagination, drawing upon the subconscious fears of a man preying on children, creating the atmosphere of dread and tension; it's most likely a combination of the two.

Skillful horror writers should know how to tap into the common fears of certain things we all possess. Through a careful selection of words, the able-minded horror author should unlock bits and pieces of terror trapped in our own imaginations. Ligotti takes these fragments and mixes them with his own ability to create and conjure, and thus he enraptures the reader in a world that is familiar and frightening, one made even more frightening because it is familiar.

Here, Ligotti reintroduces us to the boogie man we knew, the one we have forgotten about through the passage of time. He tells us again the tales of ghostly revenge, the ones we used to share around the campfire. He brings us back to a time when it was fun to be scared.

[megladon8]

These sound awesome, D.

I love you're mini-reviews for each story.

I'm really looking forward to digging in to "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World".

[D_Davis]

The Prodigy of Dreams - Thomas Ligotti

Things are changing around Arthur Emerson's estate; a strange force is gathering, bringing with it a bizarre evolution. The swans that float upon his pond no longer face each other, and in unison they raise their beaks to the heavens and cry out in an agonizing scream. Arthur's gardener is changed as well; he's more aloof, preoccupied with something. And Arthur's cat! The damned little beast! It attacked its master, and it has been using a subterranean room as a crypt for the dead and mutilated carcasses of its prey.

But what do these changes mean? What dark, shapeless force is congregating in the sky above Arthur's home?

Once again, Ligotti presents to us a character obsessed with books and esoteric knowledge. What is it about bookworms? What is in our blood that makes these characters so sympathetic, their drama so romantic? Arthur Emerson is a writer who has chronicled many of his strange adventures. Arthur possesses the power to go into other worlds, strange worlds that exist in, perhaps, a dreamcountry. But these worlds are more than phantom, more than dream, more than mere shadow.

In this story, Ligotti creates an atmosphere thick with impending doom. Perhaps this is what is like to know that death is on the driveway, making its way to your door, mere minutes away from a knock, coming to collect what all men must give.

[D_Davis]

Noctuary actually gave me bad dreams last night.

Awesome.

I can't remember the last something I read or saw gave me nightmares.

[lovejuice]

just finished home to roost, a mystery by a relatively unknown author, andrew garve. quite terrific. every time i read stuffs like this i feel d_davis's pain of how unfairly biased people are toward the genre.

[D_Davis]

just finished home to roost, a mystery by a relatively unknown author, andrew garve. quite terrific. every time i read stuffs like this i feel d_davis's pain of how unfairly biased people are toward the genre.

I've not heard of this.

I will check it out.

What style would you say it is? Strange and weird, or gross and scary, or what?

I recently got a collection of 4 novellas by T.E.D. Klein called, Dark Gods. It is supposed to be quite good.

Even though I don't read a lot of horror, I could see myself making an argument that the best horror could be the most "literary" of all the genres.

Agree?

[lovejuice]

What style would you say it is? Strange and weird, or gross and scary, or what?

umm...suddenly i feel like a visitor to a halloween town. :) no, when i say "mystery," i mean whodunit/detective/crime fiction, my pet genre. :lol:

[D_Davis]

umm...suddenly i feel like a visitor to a halloween town. :) no, when i say "mystery," i mean whodunit/detective/crime fiction, my pet genre. :lol:

d'oh!

I totally misread your post.

Just ignore me...

:|

[megladon8]

Thomas Ligotti's story "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech" blew me away.

I think my interpretation is totally off, but whatever, right? I took from it what I did, and I thought it was brilliant.

Some incredibly strong, gothic horror imagery.

[D_Davis]

Thomas Ligotti's story "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech" blew me away.

I think my interpretation is totally off, but whatever, right? I took from it what I did, and I thought it was brilliant.

Some incredibly strong, gothic horror imagery.

Awesome. I haven't read this one yet.


Good stuff, eh?

[megladon8]

Awesome. I haven't read this one yet.


Good stuff, eh?


Yes, very.

I wanted to ask you, D, have you ever read any Jack Ketchum?

I read "Off Season", which wasn't particularly frightening - it seemed like it was just a venue for Ketchum to show off how brutally he can torture a character.

Maybe this is frightening to some readers, but I need something more than "wow, that's brutal" to really resonate with me.

[D_Davis]

I read "Off Season", which wasn't particularly frightening - it seemed like it was just a venue for Ketchum to show off how brutally he can torture a character.

Maybe this is frightening to some readers, but I need something more than "wow, that's brutal" to really resonate with me.

I have very little desire to read Ketchum - just sounds kind of gross to me.

D.S. read Off Season and reviewed it.

[lovejuice]

just finished a dickson carr's. like christie he's among golden age detective novelists. reading "lesser author" make me appreciate how good the dame is. carr might be cleverer as a trickster, but his prose and narrative is insufferable.

[megladon8]

The whole time reading Ligotti's "The Last Feast of the Harlequin", I kept thinking "gee, this guy writes just like a modern Lovecraft".

Then when I got to the end of the story there was a line that says "Dedicated to the memory of H. P. Lovecraft"

Huzzah!

[D_Davis]

The whole time reading Ligotti's "The Last Feast of the Harlequin", I kept thinking "gee, this guy writes just like a modern Lovecraft".

Then when I got to the end of the story there was a line that says "Dedicated to the memory of H. P. Lovecraft"

Huzzah!

Many Horror-lit critics consider Ligotti to be one of the three pillars of the genre, the other two being Poe and Lovecraft.

[megladon8]

Many Horror-lit critics consider Ligotti to be one of the three pillars of the genre, the other two being Poe and Lovecraft.


Yes, it mentions this on the back cover and (I believe) in the intro.

I'm enjoying the collection greatly. I'm looking forward to my bus ride home so I can read the next story!

[D_Davis]

I just got:

Mad Dog Summer - Joe R. Lansdale, a newer collection including a story about some guys that drive a Chevy into Hell to rescue Satan (1st edition, signed)

Grimscribe - Thomas Ligotti (for under $50!)

Legion - William Peter Blatty

[megladon8]

I just got:

Mad Dog Summer - Joe R. Lansdale, a newer collection including a story about some guys that drive a Chevy into Hell to rescue Satan (1st edition, signed)

Grimscribe - Thomas Ligotti (for under $50!)

Legion - William Peter Blatty



Sweet!

I'm having trouble finding stuff by Thomas Ligotti - which is a damn, dirty shame.

And I realize it's off topic, but I was really happy to see your very positive review of Exorcist III. I love it, and I think when it comes down to comparing it to the original film, the only reason I give the original my top spot is due to purely sentimental reasons.

Exorcist II is one of the few films which I have seen many times and still manages to frighten me.

[megladon8]

Still really enjoying Ligotti's collection.

Even the works that I don't find particularly frightening are very, shall I say, mind-expanding.

The last one I read is probably my favorite so far, called "The Spectacles in the Drawer".

[D_Davis]

I read about 1/2 of The Exorcist yesterday, and I really like it.

It's definitely creeping me the heck out.

[megladon8]

The story "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" was fantastic.

Such a totally weird concept, which Ligotti communicates with great precision.

[D_Davis]

The story "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" was fantastic.

Such a totally weird concept, which Ligotti communicates with great precision.

Did you read The Tsalal yet? I didn't care for this one.

[megladon8]

Did you read The Tsalal yet? I didn't care for this one.


No, I think I'm like one or two stories away from it.

They haven't all been mind-blowingly amazing, but what author can you possibly name whose every single work is a masterpiece? Especially with someone like Ligotti who's written so much.

I really like the way this collection is arranged. Stories with very superficial similarities are put next to one another, seemingly in an effort to get the reader to look deeper into the stories than "here are two stories about mannequins and dummies", or "here are two stories about folklore".

[D_Davis]

Just finished The Exorcist.

Good book.

I love how subtly it deals with Father Karras's crisis of faith. It really is an extraordinary study of this character's problem.

I also appreciate how Blatty doesn't give any easy answers. It's a mystery without a real solution, much like real world questions of faith, theism, and atheism.

There are some wonderful exchanges of dialog in the book, and Blatty totally captures each of the characters and gives them all a unique voice. Really well done.

Also, some of the situations and lines of dialog in this book were eventually used in the filmed versions of The Ninth Configuration and Exorcist III.

Good stuff, and now I'm on to Legion.

[D_Davis]

Legion starts off great.

There is a marked improvement in Blatty's prose and thematic direction here.

[D_Davis]

Q: It's always seemed to me that The Exorcist, The Ninth Configuration, and Legion formed a sort of "unofficial" trilogy -- with The Ninth Configuration serving as a thematic bridge between the more overt horrors in The Exorcist and the intensely introverted struggles of Kinderman in Legion. Do you view the three novels as a trilogy? If so, why? And if not, why?

WPB: Yes, they form -- at least in my mind -- a trilogy. Taken together, they are all about the eternal questions that nag at Woody Allen

:lol:

http://darkplanet.basespace.net/nonfict/Blatty.html

[D_Davis]

Legion is really, really good so far (1/2 through).

Blatty totally nails the personality of Kinderman, the policeman, here. He was already an awesome and memorable character in the Exorcist, but in Legion he is even more so. Blatty really captures a certain amount of maturity in the character - Kinderman has grown and changed in between the time of the two novels. He is wiser, more inquisitive, more curious, and a bit more sarcastic. He is also more thoughtful. I can tell that the events in the Exorcist had a profound impact on him, but because of his skeptical nature he is not easily swayed to any one answer.

This is a really well written mystery, teeming with nuanced character interactions and a very interesting plot.

[D_Davis]

So, Legion is dang good.

A little anti-climatic in terms of plot, but still...it is a very interesting and well written novel.

The final reveal of Kinderman's theory of evil and the universe is fascinating, and one that I've never heard of.

Highly recommended.

[lovejuice]

:sigh: i know there are many supporters, but seem like i can't make myself a fan of fleming's james bond -- unless goldfinger is a really poor representation. bond in a book is, imo, not any more interesting than what he has been in hollywood during these five decades. the book is dated in many other ways than just the cold war ended.

[Philosophe_rouge]

I read about 1/2 of The Exorcist yesterday, and I really like it.

It's definitely creeping me the heck out.
I read this a few years ago, and halfway through I had to put it down for a month because I couldn't sleep at night :( It's probably the most unnerving novel I've ever read, but I rarely read horror fiction.

[D_Davis]

I read this a few years ago, and halfway through I had to put it down for a month because I couldn't sleep at night :( It's probably the most unnerving novel I've ever read, but I rarely read horror fiction.

I am glad I waited until I was older to read Blatty's trilogy. There is no way I would have picked up the deeper themes had I read these books any younger. They are a pretty good examination of the problems of evil and pain in light of a benevolent God.

I think Ninth Configuration is the best, with Legion second, and Exorcist third.

[megladon8]

Ligotti's short story "The Cocoons" is freaking fantastic.

It just gets more and more freaky as it goes along, then the last line of the story is a hilarious kicker.

I loved it.

I'm about halfway through "The Tsalal" now.

[megladon8]

"The Tsalal" was pretty good.

Certainly not my favorite of the collection (so far), as it doesn't really offer up a whole lot to ponder like the other stories do. It's also arranged in a jumbled manner, whereas the rest of the works are very organic in their structure and flow.

But still, it was good. Parts of it reminded me a bit of In the Mouth of Madness.

[D_Davis]

I didn't care The Tsalal at all. It did nothing for me.

[megladon8]

I didn't care The Tsalal at all. It did nothing for me.


What about it did you dislike so much?

[D_Davis]

What about it did you dislike so much?

It felt very empty and dull to me.

I didn't really feel as if there was a story. It felt like a really long introduction to something not so interesting.

[D_Davis]

The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty

By now I feel as though I must be one of the last admirers of the horror genre to have read William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. I've had friends and known of many who've read this book when they were kids or young adults. It wasn't until after my recent read of The Ninth Configuration, and a subsequent examination of Blatty's career and intentions, that I even felt compelled to read it at all.

I am thankful for this late-blooming desire to dive into Blatty's tale of a demonic possession, because if I had read this when I was younger I would not have appreciated it nearly as much. Sure, it would have scared the hell out of me. Really. I probably would have thought the gross stuff was really cool, and really gross. Yes, I probably would have thought it was one kick ass horror novel, and I probably would've talked in secret about the masturbation scene or the foul language; I could have been a part of the Exorcist cabal, with a secret to share amongst those “in the know.”

I think that reading this book at a young age is problematic, but not because of the obvious reasons. It's not that I think it is too gross or disturbing for a young readers, thinking it will scar their precious little snowflake minds. No, I think it is problematic because of the way a young mind might read the book. It is easy to read The Exorcist as nothing more than a well written and scary horror story, and I feel as though this does a disservice to the author and to the deeper themes of the novel - it disrespects the artist and his work.

Blatty's book is much more than a simple horror novel. At its core it is really a theological mystery; it is a book that deals directly with questions of faith and the problem of evil. Blatty does a pretty good job at conveying his themes through slow building tension and intense investigation. It is not until over half way through that his real intentions become clear, and by this point I was so enthralled by the plot that the introduction of a deeper more personal narrative caught me off guard - even though I new to expect it.

Blatty considers The Exorcist, The Ninth Configuration, and Legion to be his “trilogy of faith,” or as he comically puts it, “Taken together, they are all about the eternal questions that nag at Woody Allen.” You see, Blatty is a great humorist; one of the best I've ever read. The horror in The Exorcist is very real, tangible, and very horrific, but the humanity and sincerity of the theological mystery is even more immediate. The narrative rings with truth because of the breadth of emotion Blatty conveys through his characters; he captures the entire spectrum of human emotion in great detail.

There are two main narrative threads running through the book. One deals with Father Karras's examination and investigation of the supposed demonic possession of a young girl, Regan MacNeil. The other deals with Kindermann, a detective, and his investigation of a strange, seemingly accidental death that occurs outside of the MacNeil's townhouse. Each of these men is lead down a road fraught with penetrating questions dealing with morality, evil, faith, reason, logic, and the supernatural.

Blatty leads his the readers straight into the heart of one of the most puzzling theological questions, a question that has confounded theologians for years, and a question that is often raised by those who do not believe: how can there be evil and suffering in a world governed by a benevolent God? What is the purpose of pain? Why do the innocent suffer? What did little Regan MacNeil do to deserve the absolute hell she is put through?

While I don't think that Blatty is entirely successful at conveying or investigating his themes, I do give him the benefit of the doubt. This is, after all, a theological quandary that has plagued religious minds for centuries. I actually think it would be beneficial to read C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain in tandem with Blatty's books - it would strengthen the totality of theme greatly. I do appreciate that Blatty makes no attempt at giving an easy answer, or any answer really, because any answer available would, most likely, be silly and too pat.

However, Blatty excels masterfully at creating a compelling, engaging, and frightening tale. His prose is ripe with solid characterizations and nuanced, natural sounding dialog. Dialog seems to be Blatty's trump card, and throughout the course of this trilogy it only gets better - much better. And seeing as how strongly he starts out, this is really saying something. I was very impressed with The Exorcist, and I have become increasingly enamored with its author. The book touches upon topics that are important to me while it also offers up a thoughtful and entertaining story. It is a well written, engrossing, and interesting journey into the mind of an author with something to say.

[megladon8]

Great review as always, D.

I actually have a funny story about this book.

Whenever I would go over to my uncle's house as a kid, I used to love looking at his book shelf. He was like you and I are now - totally into horror, sci-fi, fantasy, all the genre stuff, and he had a great selection.

Once I asked him to lend me a "scary" book, and he leant me "The Exorcist". A beat up copy he had bought when he was about 12. It had a pink/purple cover, and was tattered and worn in just about every way you can imagine.

When I got home and cracked the book open, I was stunned to find that my hilariously pervy pre-pubescent uncle had underlined every instance of the word "fuck" or of any sexual language, and made notes in the margins about it like "gross!" and "awesome!".

That's my story.

[D_Davis]

When I got home and cracked the book open, I was stunned to find that my hilariously pervy pre-pubescent uncle had underlined every instance of the word "fuck" or of any sexual language, and made notes in the margins about it like "gross!" and "awesome!".

That's my story.

That's funny.

Blatty uses the word "cunting" a lot, as in "Turn down that cunting noise!"

[megladon8]

That's funny.

Blatty uses the word "cunting" a lot, as in "Turn down that cunting noise!"


I love unorthodox uses of cursing.

Like "what the shit?"

[megladon8]

"The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" was a great short story collection.

A few duds, but even those had something to offer in the writing style and quasi-philosophical concepts.

Ligotti's work is very sophisticated, and very, very rarely delves into "gross out" material. The story "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" is perhaps my favorite of the collection, and is the most disturbing. It's a very Lovecraft-ish story in both its execution and its themes, and I could see Lovecraft junkies really loving Ligotti's work.

Some of his stories - like "The Bungalow House" - almost edge on a David Lynch level of dream-like absurdism, and are more disturbing in their complete disregard for reality and overall ominous tone than in their actual content.

[Winston*]

This Moorcock Elric saga is unbelievably confusing. I just bought "Elric" assuming this was the first title to read in the series. Turns out maybe it is, maybe it isn't, maybe I'm supposed to read 18 novels in between. Screw this, I'm taking it back and getting something else. You've lost me Moorcock.

[D_Davis]

This Moorcock Elric saga is unbelievably confusing. I just bought "Elric" assuming this was the first title to read in the series. Turns out maybe it is, maybe it isn't, maybe I'm supposed to read 18 novels in between. Screw this, I'm taking it back and getting something else. You've lost me Moorcock.


There is a numbered order. The saga was written and published (serialized) out of chronological narrative order, but they've gone back and put everything into two volumes in the proper order. The "novels" are mostly just collections of the serialized adventures put in chron order:

Elric of Melniboné ISBN 042508843X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/042508843X)
The Sailor on the Seas of Fate ISBN 0441748635 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0441748635)
The Weird of the White Wolf ISBN 0441888054 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0441888054)
The Sleeping Sorceress ISBN 0441860397 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0441860397)
The Bane of the Black Sword ISBN 0441048854 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0441048854)
Stormbringer ISBN 0425065596 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0425065596)These are the core books.

I totally wouldn't give up on Moorcock. He is one of the most inventive, consistent, and original voices in the SF&F genres. He was instrumental in the new wave, and is also a major voice in genre-lit criticism.

The Elric Saga is my favorite fantasy series. There is nothing else like it.

[Winston*]

I would like to give the series a go but the book I bought is like 400 pages long and goes like this:

The Dreaming City
While the Gods Laugh
The Stealer of Souls
Kings in Darkness
The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams
Stormbringer

Would you recommend just taking it back? Any different Moorcock you'd recommend for me to start with?

[megladon8]

I would like to give the series a go but the book I bought is like 400 pages long and goes like this:

The Dreaming City
While the Gods Laugh
The Stealer of Souls
Kings in Darkness
The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams
Stormbringer

Would you recommend just taking it back? Any different Moorcock you'd recommend for me to start with?



I'm a member of the Science Fiction Book Club, and their volumes are put in chronological order, if I'm not mistaken.

And a lot of libraries carry SFBC editions.

Any chance you can get the SFBC Volume 1 of the series?

[Winston*]

I'm a member of the Science Fiction Book Club, and their volumes are put in chronological order, if I'm not mistaken.

And a lot of libraries carry SFBC editions.

Any chance you can get the SFBC Volume 1 of the series?

The way I understand it, I think what I have is actually chronologically the first stuff released in the series but not exactly chronologically the first stuff in the Elric narrative, since Moorcock kept adding bits and pieces to the series over the years in some crazy haphazard manner.

[D_Davis]

I'm a member of the Science Fiction Book Club, and their volumes are put in chronological order, if I'm not mistaken.

And a lot of libraries carry SFBC editions.

Any chance you can get the SFBC Volume 1 of the series?

These are the volumes I have, and I also have the single volume novels.

So, Winston, it looks like the volume you got is putting them in the order they were originally written and serialized.

The Dreaming City was the first thing Moorcock wrote in the Elric saga.

Truth be told, they are not really required to be read in any certain order. Like Conan, each story can be read as a stand alone tale, and as each is read connections can be made. While they can be read in chron order, it isn't required, that is until you get to the later trilogy written in 2001-2003. I have not read these.

It's not that he wrote these in some haphazard manner. Like Howard, he just wasn't thinking in terms of one large epic. This is the way these kinds of stories were largely written at this time. Because they were mostly published as short, serialized stories in magazines, the tales were more episodic in nature, and thus they could be collected in various ways.

As far as other Moorcock goes, there is so much out there it is almost impossible to recommend anything in particular. My personal favorite is the Elric sage, but there is also the other Eternal Champion books. Elric is just one incarnation of the Eternal Champion.

The Life and Times of Jerry Cornelius is supposed to be good - it collects the entire Cornelius saga, of which I've read one.

Behold the Man is a very interesting little SF book about a time traveler who basically becomes Jesus Christ.

Gloriana is a good romantic/alternate history fantasy.

The Dancers at the End of Time trilogy is good. The first is An Alien Heat, followed by The Hollow Lands and The End of All Songs, and these are also accompanied by a series of short stories. I have only read An Alien Heat and it is good - I recently purchased the others.

Incidentally, I recently purchased New Worlds, a collection of short SF stories edited by Moorcock when he was EIC at New Worlds SF mag. Moorcock's time at the mag is widely considered one of the most interesting times in SF publishing - he strove to deliver stories that pushed the boundaries of SF.

[D_Davis]

Anyone read Michael Cisco?

Small press horror author - has written Cthulhu stories. I just got his book, "Secret Hours" published by Mythos Books.

On the back is a quote by Ligotti:

"MC's works are indispensable to contemporary fantastic literature. They not only elevate this genre, the hover over it."

[megladon8]

Anyone read Michael Cisco?

Small press horror author - has written Cthulhu stories. I just got his book, "Secret Hours" published by Mythos Books.

On the back is a quote by Ligotti:

"MC's works are indispensable to contemporary fantastic literature. They not only elevate this genre, the hover over it."


Never heard of him, but this certainly sounds promising.

[D_Davis]

Never heard of him, but this certainly sounds promising.

Yeah - I'm looking forward to checking his stuff out. After a bit of research I found that he is often lumped in with Ligotti.

[megladon8]

Yeah - I'm looking forward to checking his stuff out. After a bit of research I found that he is often lumped in with Ligotti.


I find that the Lovecraftian themes just really work for me in horror and weird fiction.

Rarely do I ever find just a ghost story, or serial killer story, or anything else to be frightening. But Lovecraft's work really creeps me out, and some of the stories in Ligotti's "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" frightened me as well.

I think it's the expansiveness of the themes, and the idea that we are really not in control of our own destinies, when something like Cthulhu is capable of controlling and/or destroying us with the slightest thought.

[D_Davis]

I think it is because this literary style truly taps into our fear of the unknown, and our fear that once we do know, we'd wish we didn't.

[bac0n]

Has anybody here read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks? It plays out like some sorta Ken Burns documentary of some global Zombie holocaust that happened sometime in the early 21st century. So far, it's an enjoyable enough read to keep my brand new xbox from getting hooked up.

[D_Davis]

I have not, but I've heard good things.

[megladon8]

I wasn't sure where to put this - in the sci-fi thread, or here - but I opted for here, since it seems to be a little more horror-centric.

I've begun reading a collection of short stories called "Angel Dust Apocalypse" by Jeremy Robert Johnson.

It is one of the most widely acclaimed books to come from the Eraserhead Press label, and one of the best known collections to come about in the recent (past 10 years or so) uprising of "bizarro fiction".

I've read the first 3 stories and, well, it's certainly bizarre, and very disturbing.

The first story, "The League of Zeroes", is about body modification, and Johnson seems to say here that people who are into this sort of things (piercings, tattoos, or more extreme stuff) simply do it for attention.

A young man who has recently had his tongue split into three has decided to do one of the most extreme body modifications ever - to have his brain removed from his skull, and kept in a glass case which he can carry around and show off.

He does all of this because, it is revealed, his mother always told him he would be "special", and she told him that "special" means people watching you, looking at you, and paying attention to you without even knowing you. So, he decides to havethese procedures done so people will look at him.

I thought this was kind of an offensive generalization on the part of Johnson, especially since I, myself, have tattoos and piercings, and I do them for my own reasons.


The second story, "Disassociative Skills", involves a boy gutting himself in his bedroom. As the story progresses, we find that he often does strange things like this whenever he finds himself embarassed in public places. For example, sneezing in class (resulting in snot all over his hands) led him to eat an entire pound of Crisco. And getting an erection in gym class made him give himself a colonoscopy with his toothbrush.

These "experiments in control" are interesting in concept, but nothing particularly new is said about this (a phenomenon I have read about many times before), and the writing is pretty amateur.


The third story, "Amniotic Shock in the Last Sacred Place" is about a grown man who is kidnapped from a hospital by a woman who wants to have the "perfect baby".

Her breasts secrete a liquid which causes him to shrink to the size of a baby, and she then places him inside a machine over and over, which constantly re-births him with different series' of deformations.

It takes nearly 150 re-births before he is born in her view of perfection.


On the whole, all the writing is pretty amateurish, really. The attempts to shock greatly outweigh the attempts to make the reader think, and when these times do happen, it feels more like a high school philosophy paper than anything of real value or intellectual merit.

On a side note, Chuck Palahniuk absolutely loves this book.

[D_Davis]

Cool - sounds like the short-lived splatterpunk stuff. I'll have to look into this.

There's a collection called Splatterpunk that you may dig. I think John Shirley was the editor. It has some pretty twisted stories.

[megladon8]

Cool - sounds like the short-lived splatterpunk stuff. I'll have to look into this.

There's a collection called Splatterpunk that you may dig. I think John Shirley was the editor. It has some pretty twisted stories.


Yes, it seems this "splatterpunk"/"bizarro fiction" has become quite the cult sensation.

There are some very popular authors out there.

I've read some here and there, but I generally find that most of the authors are more interested in writing about the weirdest, most grotesque images possible, rather than making the reader think.

Which is a shame, because some of these stories have incredible themes that could be explored in great ways, but aren't.

[D_Davis]

So, Michael Cisco...

This guy is awesome.

Fans of Lovecraft and Ligotti, start grabbing these books.

The first proper story in this small collection is a short Herbert West tale.

The first long story (I think the longest in the book), The Depredations of Mur, is quite good. It's full of deliciously detailed passages such as:

"...in a circle they had with carving knives loosed the 'bubbling hippocrene' from their breasts and in their final ecstasies babbled and murmured through mouths clogged with their own gore the secrets that appeared in their minds as they died..."

This story is about some ancient monastery for occult mathematicians or something.

Good stuff.

[D_Davis]

I am finding that my praises and complaints for Mr. Cisco perfectly mirror those that I register for/against Lovecraft, Ligotti et al. While I really like about 1/2 of the stories in Secret Hours, the others I find too bloated and verbose for their own good. That is, the prose actually gets in the way of the story, and more than a few times during a story I have to go back and reread something just so I can remember what is actually happening. That's not say they are poorly written, or bad stories. They are full of atmosphere, and definitely haunting. It's just that I find these authors frequently trade prose for plot - and that's cool, that's their thing.

[D_Davis]

Cisco's story, He Will Be There, a part of the King in Yellow mythos, has a particularly haunting ending. In it, two men kidnap a boy. They bring the boy to a field, in which stands an old barn and a slab of concrete. One of the men sits on the concrete and sets himself on fire while the other man forces the boy to watch him die. The man-left-alive then brings the boy back into town and lets him go, telling him to remember what he has seen.

That's awesome.

[D_Davis]

Last Dragon - J.M. McDermott

Have you ever watched a movie late at night while dosing off? As you alternate between falling asleep and waking up, the film begins to seep into your shallow dreams, and you struggle to make sense of what you've seen. Some of the pieces fall neatly together, while others seem out of place. It's hard to tell the differences between your waking reality and your dreams, as each become more twisted by the film's imagery. Things become fragmented, kind of confusing, but somewhat alluring, and while this situation may not make for the most sound viewing, in some ways it creates a memorable experience that haunts you for days.

Reading J.M. McDermott's first novel, Last Dragon, is like this.

And it is a fantastic experience.

Last Dragon is about a warrior woman named Zhan. The story is told through her fractured memories while she is laying on her death bed. Some things she remembers clearly, while other memories are mere shadows of the actual events. Her memories are all jumbled up, rarely in chronological order, and her mind bounces from one moment to the next, sometimes with clear transitions, and other times with jarring juxtapositions.

My fingers are like spiders drifting over memories in my webbed brain. The husks of the dead gaze up at me, and my teeth sink in and I speak their ghosts. But it's all mixed up in my head. I can't separate lines from lines, or people from people. Everything is in this web, Esumi. Even you. Even me.

And so begins Zhan's tale, a quest to kill her family's murderer that morphs into a journey in which the well-being of an entire nation hangs in the balance. Joining Zhan are her brother Seth, a shaman; Adel, a paladin of the Last Dragon; Korinyes, a Gypsy woman, Seth's love; Fest, a black-skinned mercenary with sharpened teeth; Prince Tsui, a politician in hiding; and a hideous creature, a golum created from a strange magical ritual.

McDermott presents to us a puzzle, one that is not clearly defined, one with odd pieces that don't always fit. And while reading this may sound like more effort than you are willing to devote to a work of genre fiction, I assure you that it is worth the effort. For this is not a typical fantasy (you'll hardly find an ounce of cliche here), and for all of its experimental nature it is surprisingly captivating and easy to follow.

Last Dragon does so much right that it is nearly impossible for me to describe its accomplishments with any amount of brevity. And because I am now striving to keep my reviews short, I will do my best to convey the nature of this tale in as few words as possible. It is easier, perhaps, to list some things this book is not:

1. It is not the first book in an epic, seemingly-never-ending fantasy series.

2. It is not a typical quest narrative, even though there is a quest at the core of story.

3. The characters are not part of a typical party. Yes there is a party of characters, but McDermott does not follow the tried-and-true archetypes all too often detailed in the genre.

4. There are no elves, fairies, dwarves, or dragons - even though the book is called Last Dragon.

5. While it does deal with the politics of a make-believe world, it is neither a king-and-court novel, nor is it a book infatuated with its own world-building.

These five items are all things that I've encountered far too many times when dealing with fantasy. I used to be a big fan of the genre, but it seems as though I have outgrown it; I have moved on while the majority of these stories have remained the same.

However, I didn't just love Last Dragon for the things it is not - on the contrary, I never even thought of these things while reading it. McDermott does such an amazing job at creating his world and telling his tale that it felt like I was reading a fantasy for the first time. It was like being reintroduced to a long lost friend, one who I had been secretly longing to meet again. I read Last Dragon with a perpetual smile on my face, constantly amazed at McDermott's ability to eschew convention and tell a powerful story full of action, adventure, and emotion.

In a word, Last Dragon is haunting. I wish I had read it in the dead of winter, perhaps in a single sitting or two during a bitter-cold and rainy weekend. Not that it needs perfect reading conditions, but I can imagine how much more atmospheric such conditions would be. McDermott's book consumed me - I couldn't read it fast enough, and yet I didn't want it to end. Zhan's tale is tragic, and her voice rings true with emotion. I truly felt as though I were experiencing the memories of a woman on her deathbed, a woman who had lived an extraordinary and challenging life - a life worth reading about.

I cannot recommend this book enough, but I do so with some trepidation. It is always a little scary to like a book so much and to recommend it so enthusiastically. I consider this the new bellwether of fantasy fiction, and I would hope that everyone who reads it feels the same. I would hate for someone to read this and not love it - it is just too good, and I like it far too much.

From what I gather, it has not sold very well, and this is a tad bit upsetting. As I look across the shelves of the fantasy sections at the local bookstores, I can't help but notice the plethora of me-too-looking fantasy fiction, often parts of never-ending series - why do fantasy book covers still look Tolkienesque, have we not moved away from Dungeons & Dragons yet? People are buying this stuff in droves. If you've read a fantasy book in the last year, or if you've outgrown the genre as I have, or even if you've never read a fantasy in your life, do yourself a favor and buy this book. Do the author a favor and buy this book. Do the publisher a favor and buy this book - send them a message. Do me a favor and buy this book. It is damn good and worth your time.

[megladon8]

Do me a favor and buy this book. It is damn good and worth your time.


Sold.:)

[D_Davis]

Sold.:)


Good man.

I am starting William Peter Blatty's novella, Elsewhere, in the short story collection 999. I've heard it is a pretty killer little haunted-house story.

[D_Davis]

Damn it's good to be reading Blatty again. Why hasn't this guy written more? I've come to the conclusion that he is my favorite writer of dialog. The dialog he writes is massively entertaining, and it has a wonderful rhythm. It is not "realistic," but it always feels natural for the characters, the situations, and the story being told. It's like old fashion movie dialog, written in a way that makes it clear the writer and the actors enjoy delivering the lines. It is easy to imagine Blatty's characters as actors and actresses in a movie, verbally sparring with one another.

He is simply a superb writer. I hope he gets a chance to make Elsewhere into a film. I know he expressed interest in it, but seeing as how The Ninth Configuration and Legion (Exorcists III) were treated, I can't imagine he is in any hurry to go back to Hollywood.

[D_Davis]

Book of Skulls - Robert Silverberg

Is there anything more smug, pretentious, and self-absorbed than a young, twenty-something, know-it-all college student? I think not. Arm a developing and impressionable mind with a little bit of esoteric knowledge, coupled with a new found sense of freedom and self-discovery, and watch out! Timothy, Ned, Oliver, and Eli are four such college students, and Robert Silverberg expertly paints these insufferable douche bags with strokes revealing deep rooted insecurities hidden behind masks of debauchery and selfishness. With the promise that two of these jerks would die I read with glee; that two of them would live forever filled me with despair.

You see, Eli has discovered an old, archaic manuscript called The Book of Skulls, that promises eternal life for those willing to make the journey to a hidden monastery in Arizona and partake in a ritual. The ritual demands for four participants, but only two will live: one must sacrifice himself, and another must be murdered in order for the two remaining to be granted immortality. Eli convinces his three roommates to make the journey, and so the four young men embark on a road trip filled with sex, drinking, food, posturing, and pontificating on the greater things in life (and the afterlife). It's a supernatural On the Road mixed with some Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Robert Anton Wilson.

The book's execution is both a boon and a curse. It is told from the first-person perspective, and each chapter is told from a different character's POV. The chapters are titled with the specific character's name, but Silverberg does such a great job at defining their voices that by mid-book it becomes clear to tell who is speaking without being overtly told. More than anything, this book is a detailed character study, and in this regard it is quite good.

While I do like first-person narratives, there are some problems with them if the author is not careful, and here Silverberg commits one of my biggest pet peeves. We know from the beginning that two of the characters must die, and two of them do die. So how are we reading their tales? We are never told that the characters are writing in diaries, or keeping a journal of their adventures. We read their thoughts told in the past tense, but two of the characters are dead, so then we must be hearing the tale told by ghosts. This is a minor quibble, but it is something that bothers me.

Beyond this slightly flawed execution lays a mysterious narrative wrapped around a nuanced character study. Towards the end of this unfortunate adventure I felt as though I really knew Timothy, Ned, Oliver, and Eli, and I hated them. I wanted to reach into the pages of the book and strangle them, or at least knock some sense into them. I wanted to let them know that they are not great, they are not special, and the world really does exist past the distance of their limited view. And just when I thought their characters couldn't get any more despicable, along comes the confession, a moment in the ritual in which they must each purge themselves of a great and terrible secret.

The road trip to the desert monastery is relatively uneventful. It is not a haunting trip fraught with danger or despair. Truth be told, The Book of Skulls is a surprisingly mellow affair. This was my first experience with Silverberg, and for some reason I was expecting something more fantastic, or something with more horror, and more elements of the supernatural. You could remove the idea of the quest for immortality and still have a decent narrative detailing these four young mens' lives. But by adding the promise of impending doom, this proverbial road has a literal dead end, Silverberg sets a literary timer thus increasing the suspense in a meaningful and immediate manner. We do not need any artificial action, scares, or fantastic situations because everything is working up to a single, great, climatic moment: the ritual itself, one dealing with the ultimate mystery.

The most impressive thing about this short novel is Silverberg's prose. He really is a fantastic writer, much better than I had imagined. I don't know why, but for some reason I had always imagined his prose being only serviceable. However, with Book of Skulls he totally impressed me. Meaningful and well-written passages were jumping at me from every page, and I read each passing chapter with glee and astonishment. This is saying a lot considering how despicable I found the main characters, and, what's more, I can tell this will be a book I will return to for greater understanding.

A book that makes me want to read more from its author is a good book, and I will definitely be reading more from Robert Silverberg in the near future. He seems like an author with something to say, and does so by using genre conventions and solid prose. I am grateful for the time I spent with The Book of Skulls and I look forward to my future adventures in Silverberg's worlds.

[D_Davis]

Awesome.

I looks like Blatty's Elsewhere will be released as a stand alone novella in December.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Py1pz-EzL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

I highly recommend it. I am almost done with it, and it is freaking awesome.

[D_Davis]

Finished up Elsewhere. It is great. Not particularly original, it is a pretty standard haunted house story, one that echoes a number of others, but it is written very well, and the entire thing is executed with great skill. It's short, sweet, and scary - it actually creeped me out a bit towards the end. It also has a subtle and sinister ending.

[megladon8]

I love Charlie Huston's vampire-noir series.

The first three were all great, and the fourth looks to be just as good.

[megladon8]

I've decided to re-read George R. R. Martin's "A Game of Thrones", because I never read the three other books and they're on my shelf.

I really wish I could figure out why my reading retension is so bad. I already don't remember stuff like character names, major plot points, etc. from books I read just a month or two ago.

Anyways, when I'm done with the Martin books, if I am still in a fantasy mood I'll move on to Erikson's "Malazan Book of the Fallen" series, which I also have most of the books from.

[D_Davis]

I have heard, mostly, great things about both of those series. Looking forward to hearing what you think.

[megladon8]

I have heard, mostly, great things about both of those series. Looking forward to hearing what you think.


I read "A Game of Thrones" last year, and absolutely loved it. One of the best (if not THE best) high fantasy I've ever read.

It's actually strikingly similar to Shakespeare, in that it's more about the politics and intimate goings-on of the families, rather than big battles or dragons and elves.

[Saya]

Meg, it's definitely worth reading the other books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I finished the four books earlier this year and it gets better and better. I you loved the first one, then I'm pretty sure you will like book two and three as well. The fourth book, A Feast For Crows, is a bit weird because it seems that a lot of characters were missing. It's still pretty good though. But the author decided to split the book in two, with one book focusing on the events in King's Landing and the second book focusing on the events in the North and the situation with Daenerys. The second book isn't out yet and there is still no release date.

I'm currently reading the first book of the Malazan series. I had a hard time getting through it at first. The book was a bit disorientating in the beginning but after a while I got a better grip on the world and I'm enjoying it more now.

[megladon8]

I was actually recommended the "Malazan" series by my boss, Oleh.

He also said he has enjoyed a lot of the "Wheel of Time" series, but says that even he - a huge fantasy nerd - feels Robert Jordan should just wrap it up already.

[D_Davis]

Last night I started and finished T.E.D. Klein's Children of the Kingdom - amazing. All the atmosphere, horror, and mystery of Lovecraft, but with a far more straightforward and less flowery prose. Even though I love Lovecraft, I often find that I have to be in a very particular mood to read him, I often find that his prose gets in the way of his stories. Klein blew my mind. I expected something like a Lovecraft pastiche, something closer to Michael Cisco, but what I got was something that was similar, and yet all together different in its execution.

I cannot wait to read more of Dark Gods; I hope the other 3 novellas are this good.

[megladon8]

That sounds awesome, D.

*bookmarked*

[D_Davis]

That sounds awesome, D.

*bookmarked*

You should definitely check out Dark Gods, I think you'll love it.

[megladon8]

You should definitely check out Dark Gods, I think you'll love it.


Yep, it sounds like something I'll like.

I'm checking out copies on the Amazon marketplace.

[D_Davis]

Petey, the second novella in Klein's Dark Gods, is not as good as the first, but it is good none-the-less. It is quite interesting in its execution - the horror elements are barely there, but there is something sinister bubbling away just below the surface. I like how the the unsettling atmosphere of the horror is juxtaposed with the celebration of a party. It ends abruptly, but in all honesty I don't think a more prolonged conclusion would have been any better.

[D_Davis]

Black Man With a Horn, the third novella in Dark Gods, is great. It tells the story of an author who has lived his life under the constant shadow of HP Lovecraft. Haunted by a misprint on the cover to one of his novels, reading "The Author of Beyond the Garve..." and never able to break free of the "Lovecraftian" pastiche, the author has become bitter, jealous, and somewhat resentful towards his literary hero. Soon the author finds himself in the midst of a real Lovecraftian mystery, one that involves a Malayan fish-god known as the Shogoran: a black humanoid fish-like demon with something like a horn (looking like a gas mask, or scuba gear) attached to its face. This novella is very well written, and Klein conveys the ramblings of the bitter old author with great skill. At first I didn't like the author at all, he is a bit racist, but over time Klein reveals his idiosyncrasies and personality and he becomes sympathetic despite his jealousness and bitterness.

[megladon8]

This book sounds amazing, D...

[D_Davis]

Klein's Dark Gods ends with a fantastic tale called Nadelman's God, my favorite novella in the book. It touches on the mythologies of religion and the presumptuousness of man, and does so in a haunting and frightening way. A half-forgotten, blasphemous poem, later becoming the basis for the lyrics in a "satanic" heavy metal song, detailing the rituals behind the creation of a dark, vengeful, and evil god, the god of chaos and cancer, leads Nadelman into his past to discover a life-shattering secret of a divine entity. Who created whom? What happens when the lie becomes the truth? Just who is the joke on? The Hungerer waits...it waits to be woken...it waits to once again be among the living.

[Grouchy]

he is a bit racist
Like Lovecraft. Heh.

[D_Davis]

Like Lovecraft. Heh.

Yeah - all that "evil" coming from those "savages" found in Asia and Africa. Most of the authors of the early weird were a bit ethnocentric to say the least. Just a sign of the times, commenting on the fear of the "other."

[D_Davis]

So I've "discovered" another small-press horror author whose books are almost impossible to find: Kealan Patrick Burke. I ordered his short story collection, The Number 121 to Pennsylvania, and it arrived today. It is a gorgeous book, published by Cemetery Dance, signed and numbered. I got number 792 our of 1000. This dude is supposed to be awesome, and I am hoping he is at least as good as Cisco and Klein - I've had good luck with horror authors lately. Unfortunately, if I do end up liking Burke, I am going to have a hard time getting any of his books. Some of them sell for $100+ on Amazon.

[D_Davis]

Orcs - Stan Nichols

I picked this up last night after throwing down M. John Harrison's Light in frustration. Orcs is exactly what I need now. While Light felt like a pretentious art-house film, one whose lack of plot and character is poorly hidden behind ambiguity and false portentousness, Orcs is like a B-grade schlock film designed with one thing in mind: to entertain.

And entertain it does.

It's brash, gross, violent, and over the top.

Light is to Lost in Translation, or Stealing Beauty, where as Orcs is to Toxic Avenger IV: Citizen Toxie and The Road Warrior. I know what I'd rather spend my time with.

[Malickfan]

Daniel, have you by chance read Demon Theory by Stephen Graham Jones?

[D_Davis]

Daniel, have you by chance read Demon Theory by Stephen Graham Jones?

No, I have not. Good?

[Malickfan]

No, I have not. Good?

It is. Different from all his books. This was written in a literary film treatment style with tons of footnotes...or endnotes in the trade paperback. It's a film trilogy in one book. Highly entertaining with a beautiful ending.

[D_Davis]

It is. Different from all his books. This was written in a literary film treatment style with tons of footnotes...or endnotes in the trade paperback. It's a film trilogy in one book. Highly entertaining with a beautiful ending.

I'll check it out. I am always open to buying and reading new books. My "to read" stack(s) are huge, but I like having choices and being introduced to new things.

Thanks.

I am planning on reading a ton of horror next month, so I might get to this then.

I'll be reading: Klein, Ligotti, Cisco, Burke, Ramsey Campbell, and Clark Ashton Smith next month.

[Malickfan]

I'll be reading: Klein, Ligotti, Cisco, Burke, Ramsey Campbell, and Clark Ashton Smith next month.

That's a big list. Demon Theory was the first horror book I'd read since John Saul's Creature back in junior high. But since then, I read I Am Legend, The Girl Next Door and I have waiting for me, World War Z and House of Leaves.

[D_Davis]

That's a big list. Demon Theory was the first horror book I'd read since John Saul's Creature back in junior high. But since then, I read I Am Legend, The Girl Next Door and I have waiting for me, World War Z and House of Leaves.

Do you like Lovecraft and weird fiction?

If so, I highly recommend Thomas Ligotti. He's pretty much considered the direct descendant of Poe and Lovecraft. He is a national treasure, a modern master of the macabre. Most of his books are close to impossible to find, at least in affordable editions, but his newest one was just released as a trade paperback.

Get it while you still can:
http://www.amazon.com/Teatro-Grottesco-Thomas-Ligotti/dp/0753513749/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221763331&sr=1-1

Decades from now, after his death, Ligotti's name will be mentioned with the same amount of reverence and respect as Poe and Lovecraft, and he will probably be considered one of the all time great American authors. He is just that good.

[Malickfan]

Haven't read Lovecraft. Would weird fiction be the same as bizarro fiction?

My to-read list is huge as well. I just keep buying more and more. I hope to get to them all before I die.

[D_Davis]

Haven't read Lovecraft. Would weird fiction be the same as bizarro fiction?


Don't know - I don't think so.

"Weird fiction" began as a sub-genre during the 1920s and 1930s with publications such as Weird Tales, and written, originally, by authors such as Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Ambrose Bierce, Shirley Jackson, Clarke Ashton Smith, and others.

[Malickfan]

Ah, then that's not bizarro which started or was influenced by Lynch's fims and one of the main authors is Carlton Mellick III.

[D_Davis]

I've decided to get a few day's jump on my October reading, and so I started Ligotti's newest collection of short stories last night: Teatro Grottesco.

The book is divided into three parts; the first is titled, Derangement.

The first story, Purity, is totally bizarre, and incredibly unsettling. I read it twice in a row, and I am still unsure of its overall meaning, if it truly means anything at all beyond the haunting atmosphere it conjures.

It's told from the POV of a young boy. The boy's family lives what his father calls a "rented lifestyle," their lives in a state of constant flux, ebb and flow, as they move from one hovel to another. His father is obsessed by a series of experiments through which he hopes to purify the world around him; he desires to end the impurities of Citizenship, Faith, and Family: in his eyes, three vapid principles.

Just as the father is about to conduct one of his experiments on a hapless victim, the son leaves the house and the story shifts gears slightly. This is somewhat odd, but very brave. Ligotti sets up something that sounds like its going to be the driving force behind the narrative, and then he steers the plot in a different direction, only to leave the reader's mind craving to know what is going on back with the father.

So the son leaves and goes to a friend's house. This friend is an older women who lives in the ghetto, a women involved in some unknown but seemingly illicit business. Soon, the boy finds himself being attacked by a policeman with a strange secret. He returns home to find that his sister and mother have returned from one of their secretive excursions, and that his father has finished his mysterious experiment in the basement.

What in the hell is going on?

But do we really want to know? Haven't we learned the dangers of gnosis from Lovecraft? Aren't some things better left unknown?

I'm pretty sure all the clues to unraveling this mystery are presented by Ligotti, and part of me wants to parse through them to figure this thing out. However, part of me also hopes that there really isn't a solution. Part of this story's appeal is that it remains unknown.

[D_Davis]

I finished the first part of the Ligotti book, and damn does it contain some awesome stories. Two in particular stand out:

The Clown Puppet and The Red Tower

These are probably the two best Ligotti stories I've read. Pure genius, really, and totally haunting.

Like Lovecraft, Ligotti is not so concerned with plot. In many instances, it is quite hard to really explain what his stories are about beyond just describing the strange situations and terrifying occurrences. What's more, it is almost impossible to describe his stories to someone who hasn't read them in any meaningful or symbolic way.

It's not what his stories are about that makes them so unsettling - it is the way in which he tells them.

For instance:

The Clown Puppet is about a man who works in a small medicine shop. Every so often, late at night, he is visited by a clown puppet, a marionette being controlled by an unseen puppeteer. That's what the story is about - really - that's it. That's the "plot" as it were. However, the descriptive detail with which Ligotti conveys this story is rock solid, and he deftly creates a bizarre and terrifying atmosphere with his prose. Ligotti has an eye for detail, and always describes the most important parts, while picking the correct stuff to leave vague and ambiguous.

He is a master of showing what needs to be shown, while also keeping in shadows that which needs to be hidden.

The Red Tower is about a red tower - a factory that shifts in and out of existence in the midst of a gray and desolate wasteland. The tower and its environment seem to be in a state of total conflict. The Red Tower's purpose is one shadowed in mystery. At one time in its storied past it was a factory where otherworldly novelties were made, and at yet another time it produced things known only as hyper-beings.

Through strong, concrete, and tangible language, Ligotti creates a setting in The Red Tower that feels real - it's like he is describing a place that he has actually seen and been to many times. A place that, if you are unlucky, you could very well find yourself trapped in, unable to escape to the comforts of your once normal existence.

[D_Davis]

Corporate Horror

Thomas Ligotti has a fascination with corporate horror, and he is a master of painting the working-world with brush strokes rendering it macabre, dark, depressing and sinister. He has taken a theme popular with Kafka and elevated it to a new level of literary genius.

The second part of Teatro Grottesco focuses on corporate horror, with two of the three stories being absolutely incredible. The first, My Case For Retributive Action, tells the story of a man recently hired by the Quine Organization (a fictional corporation residing on the border of madness, insanity, and mundane normality). The new-hire finds himself surrounded by never-ending piles of forms to process. When the fate of the man he was hired to replace is discovered, the new-hire realizes just what kind of mess he's gotten himself into; indefinite hours, endless piles of forms, paranoid co-workers, and a knobby-monster thing that lives in his attic are all part of this recipe for terror.

The second story, Our Temporary Supervisor, is pure literary genius. I hope to one day discover that this story is taught in college classrooms around the world as a premier example of macabre fiction. right along side Kafka's The Metamorphoses. This short tale is haunting, and endlessly depressing. It is filled to the rim with despair, melancholy, and dread. The language Ligotti uses to describe this corporate horror is brimming with symbolism and concrete descriptions, and the situations he creates are terrifying in their plausibility while remaining fantastic and imaginative.

The narrator finds himself at the total mercy of his job - in every way possible. He can't quit because the Q. Org. is not excepting resignations at this time. His supervisor has been replaced by something not quite human. The work day is constantly being extended, breaks shortened, and increased productivity is required. What's worse is that the man doesn't even know what it is he is working on. All he does is assemble together small pieces of metal, for what purpose he has no idea.

In order to work these grueling hours, the employees are given drugs, prescribed to them by doctors who work for the corporation. The man soon finds out that when he stops taking the drugs he is plagued by terrifying nightmares. This story is an example of pure oppression - it is suffocating, frustrating, totally defeating, and completely mesmerizing. It weighs a ton, and I could feel the nastiness oozing from the pages of the book - the prose had a tangible effect on my very being.

It's been said before, but it is worth repeating: there is no other author alive like Ligotti. He is working on a level far above most other authors. That he is so seldom read is tragic. If you like quality fiction, of any genre, pick this volume up now.

You deserve to read something this outstanding. An author this talented only comes along once in a great while. We should consider ourselves lucky to have Ligotti living and working in our time.

[D_Davis]

It's the weirdest thing, I know, but while reading Ligotti it's as if I can actually feel a sinister presence enter the room. It's as if he has tapped into some kind of terrible and frightening force, and is able to channel this energy through the pages of his books into the very lives of those who read them.

[D_Davis]

Looks like Ligotti's book of corporate horror is getting a wide release soon.

Awesome. Now more people can read this master's stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/My-Work-Not-Yet-Done/dp/0753516888/ref=sr_1_38?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219329453&sr=1-38

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41fz-rGHF2L._SS500_.jpg

Pre-order it now...

And while you're at it, make sure to pick up Teatro Grottesco before it's too late.

[D_Davis]

The title story of Ligotti's Teatro Grottesco is great, and it displays the author's rarest trait: a wicked, and cutting sense of humor. Wait, perhaps I should rephrase that: I don't mean to say that Ligotti lacks a sense of humor, it's just that his idea of "funny," or "comical," is so dark and twisted, subtle and nuanced, that it can easily be missed amidst the dread, doom, and unsettling nature of his prose.

Sometimes I'm just not sure if I am supposed to laugh or not; I am afraid that laughing might destroy the mood. But what if a small chuckle at the absurdity of the situation is exactly the response Ligotti is fishing for? It is hard to tell sometimes, and so, respectful reader that I am, I choose to error on the side of caution.

Not so here. With this story, it seems as if Ligotti might actually be making fun of himself and others like him. He takes a jab at the artistic underground and their self-righteous, overly serious, and pretentious ways. Perhaps Ligotti is poking fun at people who revere artists with such high esteem. Or, perhaps he is simply poking holes in and blowing down the facade of the artistic world and revealing it for the sham that it is.

Again, with Ligotti, like Lovecraft, Clarke Ashton Smith, and other authors of the weird, we are faced with the idea that knowledge of certain things will lead to certain doom; he demonstrates that gnosis gives way to a soul and body destroying evil. The narrator here remarks on his own artistic demise, of which the catalyst being his own presumptuousness and arrogance.

The human notion that we can stand up to anything, and that nothing lies beyond our ability of total understanding and domination, that everything "out there" exists only for our own use, to be manipulated, that we are meant to understand everything about the universe right here, right now, has lead us into moments of greatness, and moments of disaster.

This idea of ultimate knowledge leading to downfall is one that has plagued humanity for all of eternity. It is written about in the Bible with the story of Adam and Eve, they who ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That tree was their Necronomicon; it was their Teatro Grottesco.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Just finished The Ruins, and I am now thoroughly depressed. The story takes a while to rev up, but that mystery is probably the best aspect of the story. The threat, when it arrives, gets a little ridiculous, but, by then, I spent enough time with the characters that it really worked.

[D_Davis]

The Ruins is one of the worst books I've ever finished (I still don't know why I kept with it). 200 pages could be ripped out without any impact what so ever; it is an extremely padded short story, at best.

Today I picked up The King in Yellow, the short story collection published in the 1850s that served as a launching pad for much of the Lovecraftian mythos, and Adrift on the Haunted Seas, the Best Short Stories of William Hope Hodgeson, another early author of the weird.

I am going to try to work the King in Yellow book into my month of horror, which is getting off to an early and fantastic start with Ligotti.

[Kurosawa Fan]

The Ruins is one of the worst books I've ever finished (I still don't know why I kept with it). 200 pages could be ripped out without any impact what so ever; it is an extremely padded short story, at best.

This. Only I didn't finish it. Couldn't finish it.

[Dead & Messed Up]

The Ruins is one of the worst books I've ever finished (I still don't know why I kept with it). 200 pages could be ripped out without any impact what so ever; it is an extremely padded short story, at best.

The stuff at the beginning could've gone faster, for sure, but I thought the last two hundred pages were compelling in a dreadful, inexorable way. It reminded me of some of Clive Barker's stuff, in how the narrative barely outraces the deepening pit in my stomach.


Today I picked up The King in Yellow, the short story collection published in the 1850s that served as a launching pad for much of the Lovecraftian mythos, and Adrift on the Haunted Seas, the Best Short Stories of William Hope Hodgeson, another early author of the weird.

Cool. I've read a lot of Lovecraft, a fair amount of Howard and M. R. James, and a bit of Dunsany and Machen. You'll have to post your thoughts.

My horror streak continues now with cinema and The Spiral Staircase.

[chrisnu]

I just purchased Stephen King's It. I haven't read any of King's work before, and thought this might be a good place to start. I'm familiar with the TV movie, but doubt that will influence my reading that much.

Other than picturing Pennywise as Tim Curry. :) The book should be here in a few days, and I'll be sure to report on my progress.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I just purchased Stephen King's It. I haven't read any of King's work before, and thought this might be a good place to start. I'm familiar with the TV movie, but doubt that will influence my reading that much.

Other than picturing Pennywise as Tim Curry. :) The book should be here in a few days, and I'll be sure to report on my progress.

Hope you enjoy it. I found it interminable and full of King's worst excesses, but I'm in the minority.

[D_Davis]

Cool. I've read a lot of Lovecraft, a fair amount of Howard and M. R. James, and a bit of Dunsany and Machen. You'll have to post your thoughts.

My horror streak continues now with cinema and The Spiral Staircase.

Sounds good. Never read MR James - suggestions?

You should definitely check out Ligotti if you get a chance. I bet you dig his stuff.

[D_Davis]

My horror line up has changed a bit, for two reasons:

1. to focus only on short stories and novellas
2. to expand the number of authors being read

My new list consists of:

The Number 121 to Pennsylvania, by Kaelan Patrick Burke
The San Veneficio Canon (containing The Divinity Student), by Michael Cisco
Reassuring Tales, by T.E.D. Klein
Alone With the Horrors, by Ramsey Campbell
The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers
Adrift on the Haunted Seas, by William Hope Hodgeson
Teatro Grottesco, by Thomas Ligotti

[Dead & Messed Up]

Sounds good. Never read MR James - suggestions?

His short story "Casting the Runes" was the story that inspired Tourneur's Night of the Demon. Out of the stories I've read, which number around four, I'd recommend "The Ash Tree." Considering that Lovecraft considered him one of the defining authors of his time, I bet you'd dig him.


You should definitely check out Ligotti if you get a chance. I bet you dig his stuff.

I'll see if the libraries have anything. Thanks, man!

[D_Davis]

His short story "Casting the Runes" was the story that inspired Tourneur's Night of the Demon. Out of the stories I've read, which number around four, I'd recommend "The Ash Tree." Considering that Lovecraft considered him one of the defining authors of his time, I bet you'd dig him.


Great, thanks. Have you read Cisco, Burke, or Klein?

[D_Davis]

The Damaged and the Diseased is the name for the final part of Ligotti's Teatro Grottesco, and it begins with the previously mentioned title story. This section is all about artists who go mad when faced or separated with their true identities.

Like I said earlier, it is hard to gain the tone of these pieces, but this is not a negative criticism. On the contrary, I believe it to be praise. Ligotti is not simply knocking down the pretentious artis, nor is he praising the eccentric ways of the artist. He is, rather, putting on display a number of scenarios illustrating the fragile psyches of certain kinds of artists, a kind of artist that I imagine Ligotti identifies with intensely.

The best of these stories is The Bungalow House; a gem of a story detailing the deranged antics of an artist and his performance art. The artist plays games with a museum curator, and in the process he discovers just how mad he truly is. The descriptions found on the tapes detailing the "dream monologues" is incredibly effective, and I would love to actually produce such a thing.

Gas Station Carnivals is also quite good, and contains a sinister character that will haunt my imagination for some time. This story contains a number of twists and turns, the reality of the situation is constantly shifting and folding in upon itself, thus mirroring the feelings of confusion and terror felt by the characters. And, if you ever find yourself staring at the back of the man with red hair, a cape, and a top hat, pray that he doesn't turn around.

[D_Davis]

The stuff at the beginning could've gone faster, for sure, but I thought the last two hundred pages were compelling in a dreadful, inexorable way. It reminded me of some of Clive Barker's stuff, in how the narrative barely outraces the deepening pit in my stomach.


I didn't feel a Clive Barker vibe at all. Barker usually deals with very human horror. He deals with body horror, a horror that stems from the very things that make us human, our dreams, desires, sexuality, artistic passions, and the fragile state of our mental and physical beings.

The Ruins felt like a novelization of a cheap, straight to video horror film cashing in on cheap Saw and Hostel imitations. It felt like a knock off of a knock off, of a knock off. So far as I can tell, it's only point was gore and misanthropy, and while the gore was gooey and pretty dang disgusting, it never really amounted to anything because the characters inflicted with the violence were despicable losers.

I thought it was poorly plotted, with a ton of missed opportunities to make it interesting. I don't mind that the mystery was never solved, but the real problem is that it is barely even presented. While some may find its single location brave, I found it dull, repetitive, and unappealing.

[D_Davis]

The Modern Weird Tale - S.T. Joshi

Wow, this Joshi dude really, really dislikes King's fiction, and stops just short of labeling him a total hack.

He asserts that King is popular for only these three reasons:

1. The Popularity of his film adaptations
2. His relentless output
3. Agressive marketing; King has become a brand and is less of an author

So far, with these first two essays I've read, Joshi comes across as a somewhat bitter, pompous ass. While he is definitely far more well read than I am, and he is a good writer, he seems to have a problem with pop-fiction.

He never once suggests that King might actually be a decent (to great) writer (which he is), and on the contrary he spends a great deal of time disparaging just about everything about King (except for the Bachman books).

I find it odd that be belittles King's use of the supernatural, and yet in a later essay he praises T.E.D. Klein saying that Klein's work is "among the most distinguished in the field of the weird." I find this odd because I see little, if any, difference between King's and Klein's use of the supernatural. I've read a great deal of King, and a great deal of Klein now (he has only written a few things: 1 novel (haven't read), 4 novellas (read), and a handful of short stories (read about 1/2 as of now), and I've actually discovered these two authors to be similar in many ways. Joshi rails agains the early King short stories claiming them to be poor Lovecraft pastiche, and yet Klein's collection of novellas, Dark Gods, is one giant homage to Lovecraft, conjuring his name more than a dozen times. Why disparage one and praise the other, when the quality of the two is similar on so many levels?

Why can't we like both? Why must one dismiss King in order to embrace Klein, Ligotti, and other lesser known authors? Sure, there are some hack authors in the field, but King is not one of them. While Joshi dismissed Blatty because of a difference in world views, it appears that he has dismissed King because of his popularity, as if he is not worthy of it.

Yes, I, too, am guilty of sometimes over praising the lesser known authors of genre fiction. However, I try not to do so at the expense of the popular ones. After all, Lovecraft is extremely popular, and deserves to be. And so does King. Philip K. Dick is now very popular, and he, too, has enjoyed popularity because of his film adaptations, but I will not turn my back on him simply so I can praise Sturgeon or Bester.

Mr. Joshi, I believe you need an attitude adjustment.

I have a couple more sections left in his King critique, so I'll chime in later with additional thoughts.

[D_Davis]

Reassuring Tales - T.E.D. Klein


So far, Reassuring Tales is kind of a disappointment.

Let me qualify this assessment with two items:

1. Anything would be disappointing after having just read Ligotti's Teatro Grottesco. I do not envy any book coming after that one. Ligotti is, after all, working on level far above most of his contemporaries.

2. I have also recently finished Klein's collection of novellas, Dark Gods, and it is fantastic; it is one of the finest collections I've read. To think that everything from this author would be that good may have been a mistake.

It's not that this collection is bad, it's just that there isn't enough that is remarkable. This problem may stem from the simple fact that Klein just didn't write much, and so there isn't a lot to choose from. So, what may have been a series of throwaway stories for a more prolific author wind up being this author's one and only short story collection. With so little to rely upon, each story needs to be as good as can be, and unfortunately most of these stories are rather weak - at least most of the ones I've read are thus far.

The first story, Camera Shy, is a totally forgettable vampire tale. I've never been fond of the vampire mythos, and Klein fails to present anything here to change my opinion.

Growing Things, the second tale (these stories are what I like to call "zingers"), is better than the first, but that's not saying much. It's clever in how it reveals the weird, but it doesn't amount to much of anything.

The same can also be said for the third story, Curtains for Nat Crumley. While this tale has more memorable moments and a more interesting protagonist than the previous stories, it is still limp and flaccid, barely containing any atmosphere.

The next two stories, Magic Carpet and One Size Eats All, are clever little zingers that would be great to read to a group of children while sitting around a campfire. But again, they are forgettable.

Ladder, the sixth story, finally something worth while. This is the Klein of Dark Gods. This story is clever in its plotting and its execution. Klein uses a creative literary puzzle/game to shape this tale, and it works out masterfully. This story brought a huge smile to my face, and it was a great relief to finally get to something this good (over 1/2 through the book).

Unfortunately, things fall off slightly with the seventh story, Well-Connected. Again it is merely okay, and contains a couple of memorable moments, but it is nothing worth spending any time with.

And that's where I left off. After seven stories, there isn't much to say. Unfortunately, I only have two more to read. There are actually three stories left unread in the collection, but I am not reading the final tale, The Events at Poroth Farm, because it is the basis for Klein's novel, The Ceremonies, which I am going to read in the very near future. Since that book is about 500 pages long, I want to go into it as fresh as possible.

So over all this collection is a major let down.

Where is the brilliance of Dark Gods? That book blew me away, it was partially responsible for this new found intense interest in weird fiction. Let's just say that I am glad I read that first rather than this collection.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Great, thanks. Have you read Cisco, Burke, or Klein?

No, no, and . . . no. I can't say I've heard of them. In my defense, I'm getting back into reading lately - I've been reading very little in the past, say, decade.

:)


I didn't feel a Clive Barker vibe at all...

A fair point. My comment was specifically in regard to the growing sense of inevitable dread, the truly oppressive gloom of knowing that these characters are doomed to fail because of who they are. That may come from the fact that he's the closest analogue I could think of.


The Ruins felt like a novelization of a cheap, straight to video horror film cashing in on cheap Saw and Hostel imitations. It felt like a knock off of a knock off, of a knock off. So far as I can tell, it's only point was gore and misanthropy, and while the gore was gooey and pretty dang disgusting, it never really amounted to anything because the characters inflicted with the violence were despicable losers.

That may be the real difference then, because I felt a lot of empathy for these kids. They made a few dumb decisions at the beginning, but he spent so much time with them that I really came to feel for their plight as it progressed. A couple of them were "losers," I guess, but I certainly never thought they were despicable.


I thought it was poorly plotted, with a ton of missed opportunities to make it interesting. I don't mind that the mystery was never solved, but the real problem is that it is barely even presented. While some may find its single location brave, I found it dull, repetitive, and unappealing.

I didn't find the story perfect. I thought it could've been trimmed down at the beginning, and I think Smith went too far in all the abilities he granted the antagonist. I disliked the ending, which seemed too nihilistic, and I really disliked the epilogue, which is the one time I'd agree that it felt like a cheap movie-based ploy. "The End . . . ?"


I find it odd that be belittles King's use of the supernatural, and yet in a later essay he praises T.E.D. Klein saying that Klein's work is "among the most distinguished in the field of the weird." I find this odd because I see little, if any, difference between King's and Klein's use of the supernatural. I've read a great deal of King, and a great deal of Klein now (he has only written a few things: 1 novel (haven't read), 4 novellas (read), and a handful of short stories (read about 1/2 as of now), and I've actually discovered these two authors to be similar in many ways. Joshi rails agains the early King short stories claiming them to be poor Lovecraft pastiche, and yet Klein's collection of novellas, Dark Gods, is one giant homage to Lovecraft, conjuring his name more than a dozen times. Why disparage one and praise the other, when the quality of the two is similar on so many levels?


I haven't read Klein, so I can't attest to the comparison, but Joshi's annotations in the Penguin releases of Lovecraft's works are invaluable.

As for King, yes, much of his early short stories do play like obvious homage, but I can't imagine a critic disparaging "The Mist" or "The Jaunt" as drivel. The former, in fact, plays like superior Lovecraft to me. Lovecraft plus compelling interpersonal drama.

[Saya]

Finished the first book, Gardens of the Moon, in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series earlier this week. I thought the first 400/500 pages were kinda hard to get through because the world is so overwhelming and disorienting. It's like the author just throws you into the deep end of a pool. There is so much stuff going on that it's really hard to keep track of everything. But after a while it all settles down a bit and the book just 'clicked' for me and I really enjoyed the last couple hundred pages.

I just began reading, Deadhouse Gates, the second volume in the series.

[D_Davis]

I haven't read Klein, so I can't attest to the comparison, but Joshi's annotations in the Penguin releases of Lovecraft's works are invaluable.

As for King, yes, much of his early short stories do play like obvious homage, but I can't imagine a critic disparaging "The Mist" or "The Jaunt" as drivel. The former, in fact, plays like superior Lovecraft to me. Lovecraft plus compelling interpersonal drama.

I agree on both accounts.


By the way, you should definitely check out Klein's Dark Gods (my thoughts are in this thread somewhere). It is an amazing collection of 4 novellas. 3 of the 4 are absolutely stunning.

[D_Davis]

Finished the first book, Gardens of the Moon, in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series earlier this week. I thought the first 400/500 pages were kinda hard to get through because the world is so overwhelming and disorienting. It's like the author just throws you into the deep end of a pool. There is so much stuff going on that it's really hard to keep track of everything. But after a while it all settles down a bit and the book just 'clicked' for me and I really enjoyed the last couple hundred pages.

I just began reading, Deadhouse Gates, the second volume in the series.

This is one fantasy series I am interested in, although your post reminds me of why I don't read fantasy series. If 4/5 of the book is hard to get into, then what's the rest of the MASSIVE series like?

[D_Davis]

I finished the last two stories in Reassuring Tales, and they weren't very good.

S.F. has an interesting premise, but the execution is all but unreadable. As the title suggests, it is a science fiction story, and the S.F. also stands for Selective Forgetfulness, a device that allows people in the future to forget certain things. In this future, people watch their favorite movie and read their favorite book over and over again, for the "first" time each time. The story deals with other implications of such a device. However, it is written in the form of a letter to a small boy from his grandma, and it is full of embarrassing terms of endearment and little-baby talk. Most of the phrasing is trite and dreadful.

The final story isn't really a story; it is a short treatment for a television show. It's called, They Don't Write 'Em Like This Anymore, and it would have made an interesting episode of Amazing Stories, or perhaps the Twilight Zone.

As a matter of fact, most of these stories, except for Ladder and Well-Connected would make good anthology television, and it makes sense: Klein was EIC of Twilight Zone magazine for over a decade, and has had a very successful career as an editor.

His career as writer of prose is more hit and miss. I've read that, while he would like to write more fiction, he struggles with each and every word. He finds the process extremely hard, and not worth the effort he has to put in. This is a shame, because when he is on - as in Dark Gods - the man stands shoulder to shoulder with the best of them.


Oh well....


On then on to The King in Yellow. While the version I got contains other horror stories, I am only going to read the five which appeared in the original 1895 version.

The Yellow Sign
The Repairer of Reputations
The Mask
The Court of the Dragon
The Demoiselle d'Ys

[Saya]

This is one fantasy series I am interested in, although your post reminds me of why I don't read fantasy series. If 4/5 of the book is hard to get into, then what's the rest of the MASSIVE series like?

Yep, that's what I'm afraid of as well. The thing with this series is that Erikson's writing style is extremely fast paced. This was the main reason that I had a hard time getting into the story and book, because I'm not really used to this kind of writing. But then again people tell me the first book is the hardest to get through and it will get a better in the next few books. I hope they are right. I'll see how far I'll get.

I really do like the epic scope of the story and setting, but a little more characterization wouldn't hurt either.

I keep seeing this series being compared to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series on a lot of sites. It's not so surprising because they are both epic fantasy series ofcourse. Despite that there are loads of differences between the series, I'd have to say that Martin's A Game of Thrones > Gardens of the Moon.

I'm also looking for some good standalone fantasy novels. You guys have any recommendations?

[D_Davis]

I'm also looking for some good standalone fantasy novels. You guys have any recommendations?

Hell yeah.

J.M McDermott's Last Dragon.

Best book I've read all year, and I've read a lot of books this year. Absolutely stunning, a new bellwether for the genre IMO. Sets a new bar very, very high.

Here is my review from this thread:

http://match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=84510&postcount=83

[D_Davis]

I finished The Yellow Sign this morning, first story in The King in Yellow, and it is fantastic. I love how he portrays the relationship between the artist and his model; it feels natural, and playful, almost Hitchcockian in its repressed sexuality - the lighting of both cigarettes with a single match, my God! (of course this was before Hitchcock, but I could totally imagine the scenarios Chambers presents in a Hitchcock film). You don't see this kind of romantic relationship in the stories of Lovecraft, Ligotti et al. It makes the horror all the more unsettling. I am looking forward to reading more.

[Saya]

Hell yeah.

J.M McDermott's Last Dragon.

Best book I've read all year, and I've read a lot of books this year. Absolutely stunning, a new bellwether for the genre IMO. Sets a new bar very, very high.

Here is my review from this thread:

http://match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=84510&postcount=83

Thanks. That sounds good. I'm gonna order some new books in a couple days so I'll include this one too. :)

[D_Davis]

The Repairer of Reputations, the second story in The King in Yellow, ends in a fury of insanity I've never before experienced. The mental deterioration of Hildred-Rex is deliciously maddening, absurd, and frightening.

The setting of this tale is a strange one. It takes place in the future of America - in the 1920s. We can look back on this now as an alternate history. America seems to be under some kind of martial law, or at least in a state of unrest and extreme military action. Other things have changed as well, such as the erecting of the Lethal Chambers - public suicide booths where people can freely go to escape their dreary lives.

At the center of the story are two fascinating characters, the aforementioned Hildred, and his accomplice in madness, Mr. Wilde. Mr. Wilde I will never forget. His deformed, earless head, his stumpy hand, and his short, squat illy-formed body will haunt my mind for some time. Not to mention his demonic cat hell bent and ripping his face to shreds.

Together, Mr. Wilde and Hildred possess the key to a trove of secret knowledge. A secret that, once revealed, will change the course of human history. There are hints of the Illuminati in this story, and yes, propping every thing up is the titular tome, The King in Yellow. The King in Yellow is a cursed play, one that calls readers to its pages, and then, once read, the knowledge of the book drives men insane.

Once again we are dealing with the idea that gnosis, and a deep understanding of things better left unlearned, can destroy humanity. I love these stories, stories dealing with secret books, shadow societies, and arcane knowledge lurking just below the surface of our mundane existence.

So far, The King in Yellow has surprised the hell out of me. It is absolutely fantastic, and even beyond its historic importance it is well-written, endlessly entertaining, and quite haunting.

[D_Davis]

I am not too familiar with this sub-genre of the weird, the romantic, or Victorian Ghost story. As a matter of fact, these two stories from The King in Yellow, The Demoisells d'Ys and The Mask may be my first introduction into this world.

I am having trouble connecting the first of these to the myth of the Yellow King - it seems the only connection is in the mentioning of Hastur, a figure who would eventually play a part in the mythos stories. However, here Hastur is falconiere, and is not mentioned enough to determine his dark abilities (perhaps I will understand more as I read more of mythos surrounding this character - I recently ordered The Hastur Cycle, a collection of mythos tales). This story tells the tale of a man who gets lost in an otherworldly moor, and discovers a small hunting village. Here he falls in love with the woman d'Ys, and discovers a disturbing truth. This particular tale is more romantic than haunting, and it is my least favorite of the collection.

The Mask is fantastic, and it combines the romantic longing and melancholy of the aforementioned story with the haunting atmosphere of the previous stories. Again Chambers illustrates his ability to deal with romantic relationships. This story is effective in that it expertly conveys the feelings of lost love while it also remains fantastic and weird.

While I don't think The Mask is as good as the first two stories in this collection, it is, none the less, a great read.

[D_Davis]

I finished the five tales I chose from The King in Yellow, and I am now moving on to some British horror with Ramsey Cambell's collection, Alone With the Horrors.

[D_Davis]

I really don't like these Ramsey Campbell stories.

While I've only read about a 1/4 of of stories in this book, I haven't truly enjoyed any of them. I've mildly liked a couple, but the rest are various shades of blah.

For the life of me, I just can't grasp any of his action description, and I find myself having to reread things over and over again to gain even a small understanding of what is happening to whom. I also find his grasp on character to be lacking. One story, The Interloper, takes place at a school. By the way the students talk and act, I kept imagining the school being a high school or a college, and yet Campbell mentions recess and the playground. And then the teacher is only called Scott - is this his first name, or his last name? Mr. Scott, or just Scott?

I also don't like it when authors switch between calling a character by his last name and his first name. I understand the longing for variety, but it simply causes confusion in my mind, especially in short stories where the narrative is short and we don't really have much time to get to know the characters.

So, unless someone can point out some exceptional stories in this anthology, I am giving up on it. It's totally ruined the mood and momentum built up by Ligotti and Chambers.

[D_Davis]

You know what I hate?

I'll tell you.

I hate discovering a new author, reading a couple of stories, falling in love with the dude's work, and then further discovering that most of the author's stuff is OOP or released in super expensive limited editions.

Why?

In this day and age, with PDFs and print on demand, an OOP, limited edition book should be a thing of the past. I understand wanting to make available a nice edition for collectors, but what about readers? What about people like me who don't care about the condition of the book? I just want to read the stories. I also want to support the authors I love, and so when I see that certain books by certain authors sell on the secondary markets for hundreds of dollars more than their original cover price, it just doesn't make any sense to me. The author isn't getting a cut of this, the publisher isn't getting a cut of this, it's not even registered as a "sell" to anyone who monitors such things. However, small press, and limited run collectors editions seem to be the only place where quality horror is alive and well.

This is really just a round about way of saying that, so far, I've enjoyed the hell out of Kealan Patrick Burke's recently released anthology, The Number 121 to Pennsylvania. I purchased this book on a whim (and yes, I had to buy an expensive collectors edition, signed and numbered) and I was secretly hoping it would suck so that I wouldn't want to buy and read any more from this author - his other books are even more expensive.

I can't afford another Lansdale or Ligotti.

The first two stories in this collection are fantastic. In many ways, and I mean this with the best possible intentions, even though some lit-snobs may scoff at the comparison, Burke reminds me of Stephen King. His prose is simple and straightforward, and he seems more concerned with telling a good story with memorable characters than he does with impressing his readers with his vocabulary and sentence structure. Not that there is anything wrong with dense and flowery prose, especially in the realms of the weird (I wouldn't want Lovecraft, Ligotti, Chambers, and C.A. Smith any other way), but sometimes I just want a good story, and just as T.E.D. Klein delivered with Dark Gods, so to does Burke.

Now I may be jumping the gun. After all, I've only read two out of the dozen or so stories, but I have a really good feeling.

The first story, The Grief Frequency, is a somber little ghost story that packs a hard emotional punch. Burke drew a big emotional response from me with this one. Some might argue that its subject matter is manipulative, but then I might argue that part of an author's job is to manipulate. It's all in the sincerity of the execution, and I feel as though Burke is sincere in his intentions.

The titular story is also a ghost story, one that conjures the romantic notions of the old railways, but one that is twisted with a sense of the macabre. Like the first story, this one is haunted with an atmosphere of loss and yearning. The story is wistful, and it makes me want to sit in front of a large window on a cold rainy day just watching the rain fall.

I am greatly anticipating what else Burke has in store for me. I must also plead with him and his publishers (I am going to post this at goodreads, where he is also a member) to make available more stuff in more affordable editions. I don't feel right recommending an author when his stuff is a) super hard to find (something I do far too often) and b) very expensive.

[D_Davis]

So the first two stories in Burke's collection are great, but they aren't really scary. They are more somber, I might even say they're romantic in their examination of the supernatural, even if they are kind of sad. They are more melancholy than terrifying, and I thought this was going to be an ongoing motif throughout the collection.

WRONG.

The next story, Mr. Goodnight, is a straight up monster story. It totally reminded me of Norman Partridge's Dark Harvest, and this is a very good thing. It tells a familiar story of two boys, in the middle of nowhere, digging a large hole in a field and unearthing a demonic force. In a horror story, you just know that digging can never lead to any good. Leave the earth alone dammit! Anyhow, the two boys first find a strange black goo, and this goo soon becomes some kind of terrible creature called Mr. Goodnight. And while the beginnings of this tale are familiar, some might argue cliche, I would argue conventional but well executed, the ending packs a punch of gruesome terror.

I read this story while in bed, something I do on a nightly basis. But I needed something more comforting to fall asleep to, and I thought that maybe the next story would be more like the first two.

WRONG. DOUBLE WRONG.

The next story, Empathy, is disgusting, and terrifying, and disturbing. The horror here is birthed from something ubiquitous, a thing that you are using right now: the internet; the catalyst: curiosity. I'm sure many of us have one of those friends who sends around links with remarks like, "Hey, watch this, it's disgusting!" Or perhaps this friend pulls a surprise Goatse on you, or tricks you into watching 2girls1cup (something I've never seen - thank God!).

What has been seen cannot be unseen.

But what if the thing that has been seen causes you to loose your freaking mind? And, what's worse, what if this newly discovered insanity physically manifests itself and causes irreversible, violent harm?

Be careful what you click on. You just never know what's out there.

This morning I read the subsequent story, Peekers, and it, too, is fantastic. I may never think of hide and go seek the same again. Burke has an ability to describe in a few words memorable and frightening situations and scenarios. I think he really understands the things that scare people, and because his prose is so effortless to read, the scares hit you with real force. While these stories are quickly devoured, they are not easily forgotten.

This is a great collection.

[Saya]

Just ordered the Last Dragon today along with a couple other books. :)

[D_Davis]

Just ordered the Last Dragon today along with a couple other books. :)

Nice. Hope you like it.

[megladon8]

I purchased this recently, and am really excited to read it.

It's in the subgenre of "weird fiction" (like Lovecraft, Ligotti, etc.), and is supposed to be pretty fantastic.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41HAcmp1A9L._SS500_.jpg

[chrisnu]

The book arrived today. Naturally, I've had to stop myself from reading more, in order to get some sleep. Seeing the movie before reading the book hasn't really tarnished my imagination while reading. What I've appreciated most thus far (and I'm not through the first two chapters, no spoilers!) is the idea of evil being a disease of complacency and apathy. The evil is allowed to persist because it is willfully ignored. It's easier to live in a fantasy world where bad things can't happen than to confront the darkness in front of our faces, in our own hearts. I like that.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Which book are you talking about chrisnu?

[chrisnu]

Which book are you talking about chrisnu?
Stephen King's It. I bought it online a couple weeks ago, and it just arrived.

[chrisnu]

I now think that the miniseries' primary failure was portraying It only in the form of Pennywise. The movie talked about It being everything you ever were afraid of, but did not do a good job of visualizing that. The book does. It captures the choking, hopeless free-fall of realizing that not only the monsters you've dreamed of are real, but they're far worse than you could have imagined. And yet you're drawn to the darkness. I'm half-way through June 1958, and this stuff plagues your mind for some time after you've put the book down. Anxieties.

[D_Davis]

Glad you're enjoying it!

Some stuff I read recently...

Adrift on the Haunted Seas - The Best Short Stories of William Hope Hodgeson

Some of the stories in this collection are, without a doubt, 5 star stories. However, as a whole I found Hodgeson's singular theme, voice, and setting - the sea - to be tiresome. He is definitely an author I love in small doses, as some of his tales are fantastic, haunting, and exciting, but I just can't read more than a couple consecutively.

He definitely knows naval horror, watery ghost stories, and oceanic monster tales, and his prose is dense, flowery, and quite readable. Many of these stories filled me with despair, and the often times utter loneliness of his heroes captured extreme feelings of isolation.

Great stuff.

I especially like the one Carnacki story in the collection and I look forward to reading more tales featuring this character.

I can see why Lovecraft adored this author so much.


The Divinity Student - Michael Cisco

Just about the damned finest, most brilliant, exciting, haunting, and inventive thing I've ever read.

A total masterpiece.

127 pages of sheer literary perfection.

[megladon8]

Glad to see you back, D - I hope your trip went really well.

I looked up "The Divinty Student" and it sounds really neat, I think I may try to get a copy.

[D_Davis]

Glad to see you back, D - I hope your trip went really well.

I looked up "The Divinty Student" and it sounds really neat, I think I may try to get a copy.

My trip was fantastic.

The Divinity Student has overshadowed everything I've read this month, even Lovecraft, Hodgeson, Bierce, and Ligotti. It's elevated the bar for what I expect out of fantastic fiction. It's a bizarre, twisting journey into a landscape marked with absurd situations, gruesome imagery, haunting locales, outrageous action, and stylish prose all wrapped around a narrative that perfectly straddles the line between fantasy, horror, the weird and bizarro.

It begins with a guy getting struck by lightning. He dies, and is resurrected when he is cut open having his guts removed and replaced by pages of random books. He is, the Divinity Student. He is then sent on a journey to become a wordfinder, a sort of linguistic bounty hunter hunting down lost words and filling them in a ledger-like dictionary.

It is captivating. I read it one sitting because I simply couldn't put it down.

It's a story about words, and it is written in such a way that you can't help but fall in love with the prose and the way the words sit on the page. Cisco weaves a sort of meta-narrative in this short tale, just as he plays with words, describing in dream-like terms the world of San Veneficio, the Divinity Student is searching for a set of words that contain the ultimate power. These words may, in fact, hold the very secrets of the divine, of God's own language.

It is remarkable in every sense.

Get the version called The San Veneficio Canon. It contains The Divinity Student its sequel, The Golem.



How's the Barren book coming along?

[megladon8]

I actually haven't begun the Barron book, but I was thinking of cracking it open either tonight or tomorrow.

I've been reading a lot of comics lately, including one I am almost finished right now called "Batman: City of Crime".

If you didn't like Batman Begins for its self-seriousness, well, "City of Crime" makes it look like the '60s TV show.

[megladon8]

Yikes..."The Divinity Student" on Amazon.ca, 2 used copies, STARTING at $66.14.

[D_Davis]

Yikes..."The Divinity Student" on Amazon.ca, 2 used copies, STARTING at $66.14.

Yeah, get this version:

The San Veneficio Canon, it's a reissue.

[D_Davis]

I read 2 more stories from Ramsey Campbell's Alone With the Horrors, and I didn't like either of them. I just don't like Campbell's prose. I cannot make sense of the action. It's like a poorly edited film with missing transitions and improperly framed action rendering the movement and sense of space totally broken. I can never tell where characters are in the scene or in relation to each other, and I constantly have to reread things over and over just to get a clear picture of what is happening.

And it's not as if he is utilizing some kind of phantasmal dream logic or otherworldly settings, ala Ligotti, Cisco, Lovecraft et al. I enjoy these kinds of strange settings and dense atmospheric locales. With Campbell, I just can't grasp anything that he is trying to convey. It's all a wash of words and phrases, an empty wash that leaves me feeling completely unsatisfied.

[D_Davis]

My library had a copy of Ligotti's My Work is Not Yet Done, and I checked it out. Awesome. I cannot WAIT to read this.

[megladon8]

Picked this one up on the Amazon Marketplace, it looks pretty good...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419aHLkQj9L._SS500_.jpg

[D_Davis]

Never heard of that - I like the stark cover.

[megladon8]

"A house is haunted by something more mysterious, and far more terrible than ghosts in this southern gothic take on the cosmic."


So yeah, sounds pretty cool.

Heard about it on a list of the "best cosmic horror post-Lovecraft".

[D_Davis]

"A house is haunted by something more mysterious, and far more terrible than ghosts in this southern gothic take on the cosmic."


So yeah, sounds pretty cool.

Heard about it on a list of the "best cosmic horror post-Lovecraft".

Sweet! Another horror story about the complete and total insignificance of mankind as we drift through the vast expanses of a universe that could swallow up our dust-like planet without even thinking twice about it, if we are lucky enough to survive a cosmic pelting from a never ending series of elder entities just looking for an excuse to swat at our fly-like presence, that is.

Added to wish list.

[megladon8]

:lol:

You're awesome.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I went to Dark Delicacies and picked up Teatro Grottesco, so it'd better be good.

I also talked a bit with the owner of the store, Del Howison. Cool cat. Apparently a prolific author and editor all his own. He gave me some advice on places where I could submit my short stories.

He also said he talked with Ligotti recently - apparently Ligotti chain-smokes when he writes, and he's convinced that Teatro gave him emphysema.

[D_Davis]

I went to Dark Delicacies and picked up Teatro Grottesco, so it'd better be good.


It's better than good. Be prepared to be floored.

[D_Davis]

That Dark Delicacies shop looks cool - wish I had something like that here in Seattle. It's crazy, we have so many awesome book stores here, but only 1 store dedicated to a particular genre, and that's mystery.

[megladon8]

The original image my avatar is from, as a few people have asked me about it...

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/8281/cthulhuolk3.jpg

[D_Davis]

Awesome.

Have you seen the new $500 book of art by artists inspired by Lovecraft?

http://www.millipedepress.com/centipede-press/artists-inspired-by-h-p-lovecraft

Intro by Harlen Ellison, afterward by Thomas Ligotti...

/drools....

[megladon8]

Yeah, Millipede Press has some pretty amazing titles. It's one of those things I'd treat myself to if I won the lottery :)

There is some incredible Lovecraft-inspired artwork out there. I know it'd scare a lot of people away from visiting my home, but some of this stuff (like the image above) I would frame and put in my living room.

[D_Davis]

I just ordered this hoodie:

http://images.cafepress.com/product/150820602v9_350x350_Front_Colo r-AshGrey.jpg

[megladon8]

I can't quite make out what it says, but that's awesome :lol:

[D_Davis]

"Cthulhu 2008; Why Vote For the Lesser Evil?"

[D_Davis]

I finished My Work is Not Yet Done.

My God that thing is bleak and disturbing. A full review is in the works.

Next up...

Deathworld 2 - Harry Harrison

After spending a month with Ligotti, Lovecraft, Cisco, Burke, Klein, Chambers, Hodgson and Campbell, neck deep in horror, misanthropy, terror, isolation, and anguish, I need to return to something more adventurous and light hearted - for my own sanity.

Last night, I dreamed of Cthulhu - seriously. That's just not cool.

And no, the irony of this book's title is not lost on me. Yes it is called Deathworld, but it's more like Fun-filled Adventure-World!

It's pure Harrison pulp, and it's just what I need right now.

[megladon8]

Okay, I finally started Laird Barron's "The Imago Sequence", by reading the first story contained in the book - "Old Virginia".

I was surprised how creepy this story was. Really. While fairly simple, Barron's prose were effective in evoking that feeling of impending dread that Lovecraft and other writers of so-called "weird fiction" are commended for.

The story itself is quite simple, too. In the mid 1950s, a group of soldiers are stationed in the middle of nowhere to protect some scientists working on a secret project. When the tires on their vehicles are methodically slashed one night, a period of paranoia begins, and secrets are unveiled. Is it the evil "Reds" stalking and playing with them, or is something terrible about to be uncovered?

It's a very quick story. 19 pages, and it flies by. But it really did creep me out, and I'm looking forward to reading more.

[D_Davis]

Looking forward to hearing more about that Meg.

From what I've seen, it looks pretty good.

[megladon8]

Read the second story by Barron, titled "Shiva, Open Your Eyes". It's more of a theme piece than a narrative, and it is like a loving tribute to the ideas presented by Lovecraft throughout his Cthulhu mythos and, well, most of his work. The idea that there are truths regarding our existence and "place" in the universe which are so horrible that, if one were to discover them, it would surely drive them mad.

I'm now about halfway through the third story, "Procession of the Black Sloth".

[D_Davis]

That sounds cool, meg.


I started Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen this morning. It's a post-modern fantasy (meaning what I have no idea). The amount of praise thrust upon this is ridiculous, and I hope this doesn't turn into another experience like M. John Harrison's Light (Everyone from Michael Moorcock to China Mievelle claim that this is a total reinvention of fantasy literature, and that VanderMeer has elevated the genre to a new height of literary excellence, blah, blah, blah, more akin (and often compared to) Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, and Gene Wolfe than Tolkien, blah, blah, blah. I've heard all that before, lets hope he delivers).

The book is quite strange. It consists of two novellas, a fake history book of the world, and a 300 page appendix consisting of articles, found writings, and assorted curiosities detailing the work VanderMeer created.

So far the prose is quite good. It reminds me a bit of Cisco's The Divinity Student in the way it conveys its dream-like atmosphere. I hope it approaches its narrative with a darker, sharper edge similar to, or at least as interesting as Cisco's novella.

My only fear is that it is going to get all story-book or fairytale-like in its execution. I hope VanderMeer steers clear of that kind of Gaiman territory. I don't imagine he will tread that water, but it seems like the kind of thing that could happen given the nature of the world he is working in.

It feels like a very dense read, one that a large amount of time could be needed to digest it all.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I bought four back issues of Weird Tales, so I'd know whether to submit my stuff to them or not. I've actually been enjoying the stuff quite a bit. A ton of different approaches to the overall concept of the "weird," which is good news for me (being inclusive is good).

Anyway:

"The Heart of Ice" (Tanith Lee, March/April 2008)
Reads like a Grimm's Fairy Tale, only without the moralizing. Lee's adept at describing the snowy landscape, where an outcast meets the Snow Queen, the woman of winter. As time passes, he becomes more attuned to her level of reality, but is he forsaking his own? There's little to the story past its evocation of mood, but I dug the attention to detail. Many images leap past the printed word, especially Lee's descriptions of the ethereal animals that inhabit the Snow Queen's world. Lovely, if slight.

"Creature" (Ramsey Shehadeh, March/April 2008)
Fantastic, silly, and sad. "Creature" follows an enormous, amorphous beast that enters a town and gains an unexpected friend: an adorable little girl named Ugly. The titular creature is a lot of fun, but what caught me off guard was the sincere relationship that developed between the two. But whenever things threaten to get too serious, the Creature transforms into something strange. Could be retitled "Little Lucy and the Sympathetic Shoggoth."

[D_Davis]

I bought four back issues of Weird Tales, so I'd know whether to submit my stuff to them or not. I've actually been enjoying the stuff quite a bit. A ton of different approaches to the overall concept of the "weird," which is good news for me (being inclusive is good).


Sounds good. I think Weird Tales was recently relaunched. I haven't heard a lot of good things about this new reincarnation, but I'm sure it will take a while to pick up steam, and the "new weird" is a budding sub-genre right now. There seems to be many authors attempting to define and add to the voice of the new weird.

VanderMeer, Mievelle, Bishop, Cisco, Ligotti, - it's a cool time to be into this kind fiction.

Have you checked this out:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1892391554.01.L

[Dead & Messed Up]

Sounds good. I think Weird Tales was recently relaunched. I haven't heard a lot of good things about this new reincarnation, but I'm sure it will take a while to pick up steam, and the "new weird" is a budding sub-genre right now. There seems to be many authors attempting to define and add to the voice of the new weird.

VanderMeer, Mievelle, Bishop, Cisco, Ligotti, - it's a cool time to be into this kind fiction.

Have you checked this out:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1892391554.01.L

No, but Ann VanderMeer is the current editor of "Weird Tales," so I should give it a go. Thanks for the heads-up.

[D_Davis]

Jeff VanderMeer is also an anthologist of Clark Ashton Smith.

Small world!

[megladon8]

I'm submitting a story to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Pays 6-9 cents per word.

Wish me luck!

[Dead & Messed Up]

I'm submitting a story to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Pays 6-9 cents per word.

Wish me luck!

Luck has been wished.

[D_Davis]

Good luck meg!

[D_Davis]

I finished the first novella in VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen, and it was fantastic. What starts as a touching, but strange, little love story quickly turns into an exercise in the grotesque and bizarre, but the shift in tone does not feel jarring. VanderMeer weaves a tapestry rich with nuance and subtle inflections of emotion and develops a believable, and yet still phantasmal, decent into madness. The novella leaves a number of questions unanswered, and can be analyzed in a number of different ways. I am sure I will return to this one again, as there is a lot here to digest.

[chrisnu]

I finished It a few days ago, and have still been thinking about it. I really need to stop trying to compare the novel and the movie. The movie's almost nothing like the novel, and I consider it pretty much a complete failure at conveying the characters and themes in the book.

In the chapter "Under the City", where we actually hear It's thoughts, this struck my mind immediately:

It had made a great self-discovery: It did not want change or surprise. It did not want new things, ever. It wanted only to eat and sleep and dream and eat again.

That's really what kept It alive: a mix of denial, complacency, and ignorance. Bill and the others' willingness to fight, to not acquiesce and let things go, was a significant part of the battle. I like that idea a lot.

However, the "Love and Desire" section was creepy as hell (in a bad way), and underdeveloped as well. In a book that's nearly 1100 pages long, if you have a major theme that's underdeveloped, I think there's a problem.

Now that I tackled that behemoth of a book, I think I'll be willing to take on some more. Any recommendations, particularly from King's works?

[D_Davis]

Now that I tackled that behemoth of a book, I think I'll be willing to take on some more. Any recommendations, particularly from King's works?

Try his short fiction:

Cycle of the Werewolf is an awesome novella - tons of fun in an old pulp way.
The Bachman Books - four awesome novellas
Everything's Eventual - short story collection

My favorite non-Dark Tower book is The Talisman

I also really like The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

***


I've started reading part two of the San Veneficion Canon - The Golem. It is a direct sequel to The Divinity Student.

So far it totally kicks ass.

I cannot believe how absolutely amazing these tales are.

As if the Divinity Student couldn't get any more effed up - remember the first book begins with him dying and being stuffed with the pages torn from random books before being brought back to life - in this tale he is even more undead, as if that is even possible.

He's been brought back to life, again, but now his stuffing is coming out, he only has one working leg held together by a brace that has been surgically attached, he's almost completely blind, and his skin is sloughing off revealing his old and tired bones. He's so messed up that at the end of the first chapter he tries to hang himself, but fails when Teo (The Butcher's back!) stumbles upon his hanging body and cuts him down.

Oh yeah - the cars are back to, still thirsty for the Divinity Student's blood, very thirsty.

It's so comically grotesque!

I just can't believe the way Cisco brings this all together.

The dude is some kind of total mad genius.

Read this, read this, read this. It will blow your mind.

THIS IS FANTASTIC FICTION!

[megladon8]

D, have you read anything by Joe Hill?

Any good?

[D_Davis]

D, have you read anything by Joe Hill?

Any good?

I have not. I have his newest collection of short stories though.

[megladon8]

I have not. I have his newest collection of short stories though.


I'm just trying to find some new horror authors to check out.

Hadn't read anything of his, but he has some good reviews.

Is it "20th Century Ghost Stories" that you have?

[D_Davis]

Is it "20th Century Ghost Stories" that you have?

That's the one.


Maybe you should try some anthologies? That's what I'm going to do now. My horror project last month has gotten me into short stories, a form that, historically, I had not been too keen on.

From what I gather, these are some good ones, and I got them all for really cheap:

Prime Evil - ed. Douglas Winter (reading this now)
http://www.amazon.com/Prime-Evil-Douglas-editor-Winter/dp/B000OPBIVG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226679954&sr=1-1

Nightmare: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream...
http://www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Sleep-Perchance-Dream/dp/1566199263/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226679978&sr=1-2

The Dark Descent (this one is huge, and covers everyone from Dickens to Lovecraft, and from King to Ligotti)
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=dark+descent+horror+a nthology&x=0&y=0

[D_Davis]

Prime Evil ed. Douglas E. Winter

This is a pretty good little anthology.

First of all, the introduction is fantastic. It's a well written attempt to answer the question, 'what makes great horror fiction?' I love a good introduction to an anthology, as it is here that we can learn about the anthologist's thinking.

The stories in this volume range from merely OK to absolutely fantastic.

Although I did skip three entries, one written by M. John Harrison, one by Ramsey Campbell, and the other by Peter Straub. Just not a fan of these dudes. And I have one story left to read, the final short novel titled By Reason of Darkness, by Jack Cady.

First in line is Stephen King's The Night Flier. I could have sword I had read this before, but I guess I hadn't. It is really good. Many people argue that although King is primarily known as a novelist, it is in the short story that his talent truly lies; I will need to investigate this further. This one, however, is a winner. It's about a sensationalist journalist tracking down a killer who might be a vampire - all for a cover story. It is superbly structured and has the coolest vampire-reveal I've ever come across.

The next few stories are among the merely OK. Paul Hazel's Having a Woman for Lunch is a little zinger, ala Tales From the Darkside; The Blood Kiss, by Dennis Etchison, is my least favorite of those read thus far; and Clive Barker's story, Coming to Grief, is also mediocre.

I should mention my biggest disappointment before I get to the gems: Thomas Ligotti's Alice's Last Adventure. By no means is this a bad story, and in terms of prose-style it's probable the best in the collection, but it simply wasn't great. And I was expecting greatness: expectations set too high.

The true stunners here are Thomas Tessier's Food and David Morrell's Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity.

Food almost made me gag a couple of times. It's about a woman who has an obscene habit of over eating, and the transformation that takes place because of it. It's not all gross though. Nestled withing the rolls of fat and crumbs is a sweet little love story that is genuinely touching.

David Morell's story is my favorite entry. Morrell, by the way, is the author of First Blood - yes, it is he to blame, or praise, for unleashing John Rambo on the world. Personally, I love the hell out of First Blood, and I really want to read the book now. This novelette reminded me a lot of T.E.D. Klein's work in Dark Gods. It's mired in Lovecraftian atmosphere, but doesn't try to emulate the purple prose style. If not for the too-pat ending, I would say this is one of the better Lovecraftian style stories. It's all about a series of artists who go insane after discovering a dark, ancient truth. I adore stories like this; narratives dealing with secret arcane knowledge are totally my bad.

I highly recommend this anthology. Even if you only enjoy a few of the stories, it is cheap enough to warrant an impulse purchase. I got my copy at a used book store for like two bucks, and I see them for less than a dollar on the Amazon Marketplace.

[Saya]

I've given up on the Malazan book series for now. I read the first two books and was about 200 pages into the third one and I still have no idea what the hell is going on in the story. I will give it another try someday.

[D_Davis]

That's too bad Saya.

I am about to dive into a fantasy trilogy - something I rarely do anymore.

It's the Finnbranch Trilogy by Paul Hazel.

It sounds fascinating, and is more informed by celtic mythology than it is by Tolkenesque conventions.

[Spun Lepton]

I'm currently in the middle of Niel Gaiman's American Gods, and it's taking me forever. NOT because I dislike the book or anything (quite the contrary, actually, I really enjoy it), but because I'm also trying to write my own stuff right now ...

My Writing Mode and Reading Mode tend to conflict with each other, it seems.

[D_Davis]

Hey Spun,

You're a big horror fan, ever read Thomas Ligotti?

If not, you should check him out. Sometimes referred to as the third pillar of American horror (the other two being Poe and Lovecraft), he is a living master of the weird. His newest collection, Teatro Grottesco, was recently released as a trade paperback.

[D_Davis]

As quickly as it began, so it ended. My foray into the realms of a fantasy trilogy has ended in tragedy.

I am giving up on Yearwood - book one of the Finnbranch saga.

I had heard of greatness, and its uniqueness.

I was lied to.

The tale Hazel weaves is no different than a thousand others: a boy is born of less than ethical circumstances. He is a bastard, raised only by women. He does not know who his father is. It is a deep secret among the women folk! He doesn't even know his true name! But then, one day, he starts to discover the truth. He finds his real name, is given a sword, and is told that he is some kind of chosen one who will reunite kingdoms. And I gather he will also find and kill his real father in the process.

Bleh.

Not for me - moving on to something else.

[D_Davis]

I'm returning to the Cthulhu mythos with, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. It contains the original Lovecraft story and a bunch of others by Smith, King, Lumley, Derleth, and others.

[Sven]

I'm returning to the Cthulhu mythos with, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. It contains the original Lovecraft story and a bunch of others by Smith, King, Lumley, Derleth, and others.

There's a really great one written by Gaiman called A Study in Emeralds in his collection Fragile Things. It's a half-Lovecraft-Old-Ones/half-Sherlock-Holmes story. Very entertaining.

[D_Davis]

There's a really great one written by Gaiman called A Study in Emeralds in his collection Fragile Things. It's a half-Lovecraft-Old-Ones/half-Sherlock-Holmes story. Very entertaining.

I've not read Fragile Things. I really don't like Gaiman's prose fiction at all, but I'll see if I can get this from the library to read that story at some point.

Right now I've still got a ton of Mythos and weird fiction to crawl through.

Thanks for the rec.

[megladon8]

I never knew Stephen King did Cthulhu stuff.

This I must read.

[D_Davis]

I never knew Stephen King did Cthulhu stuff.

This I must read.

I'm not sure how much his story relates to Cthulhu. I think it is just inspired by Lovecraft in a way. I bet it would be hard to find a modern horror author who hasn't been inspired by Lovecraft.

After finishing, again, The Call of Cthulhu, I am once again amazed by how amazing it is. Lovecraft really nailed it on this one. And by just briefly mentioning Clark Ashton Smith and Arthur Machen, he adds layers to the meta-narrative surrounding the Cthulhu mythos. The first time I read this story, many years ago, I had no idea that Smith and Machen were real people!

The story's pacing is utterly brilliant, and I love how the mystery unfolds. Even though we are only reading a third, or more, hand account of the actual events, HPL's prose and style do wonders to draw the reader into the macabre world of the Cthulhu Cult.



Clark Ashton Smith's first story in this collection, The Return of the Sorcerer, is awesome. Using the Necronomicon as a basis for the myth, Smith crafts a tale that is unsettling, gross, and quite cinematic. I can easily imagine this story being a film.

[megladon8]

Clark Ashton Smith is an author I've been meaning to check out for a long time.

[D_Davis]

Clark Ashton Smith is an author I've been meaning to check out for a long time.

You totally should - he's pretty awesome.

How is that Laird Barron book coming along?

[megladon8]

You totally should - he's pretty awesome.

How is that Laird Barron book coming along?


I really haven't done much reading lately. I've still only read the first three stories.

One of them qas quite long - "The Procession of the Black Sloth". It was odd, and sort of anticlimactic.

The first story in the book is still my favorite.

[D_Davis]

Frank Belknap Long's The Hounds of Tindalos is one of my favorite Mythos stories. I remember reading this back in high school, but I could not remember the name of it. I only remembered how awesome the story was. It was such a pleasant surprise to discover it in this Mythos collection I am reading now.

Long's prose borders on Lovecraft pastiche, but he adds his own unique voice to the narrative. His stuff is more humorous in tone, or at least not as dire and hopeless. That is not to say that he doesn't put his characters through hopeless and dire situations, because he does, but his tone is more comically absurd.

The image in this story of the two men frantically plastering all of the edges and corners of a room in order to make them round and smooth is one that I've never forgotten. You see, one of the men has discovered that the evil cosmic forces invade our world using angles as a kind of multidimensional super-highway. The dark forces cannot penetrate rounded corners.

But what to do when an earthquake crumbles away the plaster, thus revealing the dreaded angles?

[megladon8]

That sounds cool, D, and reminds me of our Museum of Civilization here in Ottawa.

It was designed by a Native Canadian artist (Iroquois, I believe), and they have that exact belief - that evil spirits lurk in corners, and in order to keep them away everything has to be rounded.

So the entire building is designed without corners.

It's pretty cool.

[megladon8]

Each progressive story in Laird Barron's book is more and more disappointing. It's just so obvious that this is his first book of stories, and not in a refreshing, up-and-coming writer kind of way.

His writing is really amateur, with similes and metaphors that feel like they're taken from a high school paper.

He has some interesting ideas for sure, but nothing has even come close to the eeriness of the first story.

Characters are not very clearly drawn, and he has very inconsistent style. Sometimes it's like he's trying to channel Raymond Chandler, other times he's trying to be Thomas Ligotti II, but none of it feels authentic or like it's his own voice.

[D_Davis]

That's too bad, meg. I guess I won't rush out and get it.

Nice dust jacket though!

:)

So in my continuing quest to find a traditional fantasy to read, one that doesn't bore me, and one that is well written, I have turned to one of the three pillars of modern fantasy: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Earthsea Trilogy.

And surprise, surprise, it is really, really good. I read through about 50 pages last night, and I totally fell in love with the book.

Yes, it is a bit simple. However, Lu Guin writes with a real sense of urgency here. Because the books in this trilogy are short, totaling just over 600 pages combined, she gets to the pointy in a snappy, and yet unhurried, manner. As they should, each chapter sets up a scenario, delivers a punchline, and developers the characters and plot. It's simply a solid book.

It's also entertaining, and the world is interesting. I actually found myself checking the little map of the area because I wanted to know where the Ged, the main character, was at during his journey.

I am loving the heck out of it - perfect December reading.

[D_Davis]

I am LOVING the heck out of A Wizard of Earthsea.

Absolutely fantastic.

Can't believe I've waited this long to read this.

Actually, I'm glad I waited, because now I get to read it for the first time.

[D_Davis]

For the first time since reading the Elric Saga in high school, I am not only enjoying a traditional fantasy, but I am wishing that it were longer and more slowly paced.

Don't get me wrong, I love how Le Guin sets the pace of A Wizard of Earthsea at a breakneck speed, but there are many things that she brushes over that I wish more time was spent on.

For instance, I would love to know more about the time Ged spent on Low Torning.

I guess this is a good thing. Le Guin is leaving me wanting more, and I am not yelling, "get on with it!"

also find myself surprised at some of Ged's learning and training. Sometimes his masters say wonderful little things. Sure, they are closer to platitudes than any real wisdom, but they are still great. It reminds me of the Tao in this regard, and I've read that some consider the Earthsea books to be a Taoist parable. I am looking forward to exploring this aspect more.

Is Earthsea to Taoism what Narnia is to Christianity? Probably not entirely, but I think the similarities are there. Sure C.S. Lewis was probably more concerned with Christian allegory, his intentions were not at all transparent, nor did they need to be, but Le Guin has also been known to preach at times.

But there was also the moment with the Master Doorkeeper. The way Ged faces this challenge, and the Doorkeeper's response, is, in many ways, similar to how Jesus says all we need to do is knock and enter. All we need to do is ask and we will be set free - this is a very imoprtant aspect in Christianity, and Le Guin uses this at a key point in her story. I believe this is also something similar to what the wise sage would say in the Tao, and only stengthens my belief that the world's righteous religions and spiritual paths really aren't all that different.

Be it a Taoist or Christian parable, the road probably leads in the same general direction, and the lessons are too similar to dismiss for quarrels regarding dogma.

[megladon8]

Sounds great, D.

I've had that one on my shelf for a while. (I sure say that a lot, don't I?)

[monolith94]

Just finished The Neverending Story, which to my surprise was as much of a Christian parable as Narnia was. Still a great book, though. Anyone else into it? I particularly loved the scene where Bastian first met Xayide — very atmospheric.

[D_Davis]

Just finished The Neverending Story, which to my surprise was as much of a Christian parable as Narnia was. Still a great book, though. Anyone else into it? I particularly loved the scene where Bastian first met Xayide — very atmospheric.


I read this when I was in high school, and was thinking of reading it again. I remember loving it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

The Neverending Story and The Princess Bride are two books I'm very interested to read, having grown up loving both films.

[D_Davis]

Just finished The Neverending Story, which to my surprise was as much of a Christian parable as Narnia was. Still a great book, though. Anyone else into it? I particularly loved the scene where Bastian first met Xayide — very atmospheric.

I can't remember the details, but how do you see this as a Christian parable?

[D_Davis]

After finishing A Wizard of Earthsea this morning, it dawned on me just how much this book inspired Miyazaki and the Zelda games. Wind Waker could almost be based on this book, and so many of Miyazaki's themes and archetypes are borrowed from Le Guin.

[monolith94]

I can't remember the details, but how do you see this as a Christian parable?
*spoilers!*

Xayide convinces Bastian that he needs to take over Fantasia (Fantastica in the translation I read) and in the name of doing good he does much bad — very reminiscent of an anti-christ figure. The second arc follows a clear sin-redemption Christian path. "The manipulators" have diabolical overtones, and the childlike empress clearly identifies herself as not fantastican, nor human. The implication that I got was that she is some angel-like being. In my Bastian as antichrist formula, the tower at the center of fantasia would be like Jerusalem. Juraselem, too, was thought to be the literal center of the world.

[D_Davis]

I rarely read books in a series back-to-back, and to continue this trend I am not turning to the second Eathsea book, but am instead turning to David "First Blood and Rambo" Morrell's The Totem. Often mentioned on 'best of horror lists,' I am looking forward to checking this out.

[D_Davis]

So far, about 100 paged in, The Totem is excellent. Morrell is a great writer, and I can't wait to read more from him. I am especially looking forward to the Rambo books.

His prose is clean and detailed, and he offers up the perfect amounts of plot and description.

His small town American setting of Potter's Field feels real, and he has a great ear for rural dialog.

So far, it is reminding me of Lansdale minus the mean-spirited misanthropic streak and the really powerful, signature style.

[D_Davis]

I got an e-mail from Kealan Patrick Burke this morning. He thanked me again for my review of his short story collection The Number 121 to Pennsylvania, and he also commented on my thoughts about expensive small-press horror.

And best of all, he did something about it! He's made his first three novellas available as free downloads.

http://www.kealanpatrickburke.com/Free_Fiction.htm

This is way awesome.

Check them out. You've got no excuse now.

[Dead & Messed Up]

So I finally started getting into Teatro Grottesco, and, surprise surprise, I'm really digging on it.

I've gotten through the first three shorts:

"Purity" was fascinating in how it jumped between the supernatural side of things and the mundanity of slum life. I didn't feel like there was a significant build; the story instead was a collection of striking images and concepts. The most memorable moment was, oddly enough, a scene where a fat woman sticks a hot dog into a jar of mayonnaise. Odd...

"The Town Manager" was very cool. The sense of deterioration and pessimism was palpable, and the mixture - again - of grounded human goals and an essential weirdness was assured and well-drawn.

"Sideshow and Other Stories" was just plain fun - a small collection of mini-stories in another short story. Little vignettes that suggests an overall personality and worldview. I really started getting the Lovecraft comparisons with this one, since they both seem to share an eternally bleak view of the world.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I'm also listening to Something Wicked This Way Comes, and it sometimes seems like Bradbury's language borders on self-parody, with the constant repetitions of phrases or words and the endless sense of nostalgia - it feels like he applies that with a sledgehammer at times.

But Cooger and Dark are truly eerie, and I'm feeling some real affection for Jim and Will. I'm up through when the police are duped by Dark into thinking that Cooger's rapid aging was just a stunt. It wasn't, of course - the carousel shot him way past the age of a hundred.

[D_Davis]

Glad you're digging the Ligotti, I don't know what I'd do if you weren't.

;)

The dude is a masterclass author, on par with any I have read, and probably on par with any writing now.

Just wait until the final story in the first section, The Red Tower, and then the second section - amazing, absolutely amazing.

While he often draws comparisons to HPL, it's not because of his prose style. Ligotti does not write HPL pastiche, he doesn't try to emulate. Instead he often gets compared to HPL, and Poe, simply because he is just that good.

I imagine that, like HPL, in 30 years or so the more literary minded crowd will stumble upon this long-dead author and declare him some lost, unknown national treasure and begin to embrace his work.

We're just at the vangaurd of the the inevitable Ligotti movement.

:)

[Dead & Messed Up]

Glad you're digging the Ligotti, I don't know what I'd do if you weren't.

;)

The dude is a masterclass author, on par with any I have read, and probably on par with any writing now.

Just wait until the final story in the first section, The Red Tower, and then the second section - amazing, absolutely amazing.

While he often draws comparisons to HPL, it's not because of his prose style. Ligotti does not write HPL pastiche, he doesn't try to emulate. Instead he often gets compared to HPL, and Poe, simply because he is just that good.

I imagine that, like HPL, in 30 years or so the more literary minded crowd will stumble upon this long-dead author and declare him some lost, unknown national treasure and begin to embrace his work.

We're just at the vangaurd of the the inevitable Ligotti movement.

:)

I did read one comment - a review of some kind - that did say Ligotti shares one very interesting similarity with Poe and Lovecraft. His stories begin at weird and develop further. His characters are already off the beaten path, in these bizarre environs. Contemporary authors like King and Matheson usually feature a journey into the weird, after time has been spent developing relatively normal characters in a somewhat familiar location.

"The Town Manager"'s town, for example, begins in this twisted, Dionysian netherworld.

But yeah, his prose style is its own thing, for sure.

[D_Davis]

Right - I would say this is mostly a trait shared by authors of weird fiction, as opposed to authors of more general horror. In weird fiction, there is rarely a sense of normality - there is not a normal milieu with which to compare the world of the other. With horror fiction, it's usually something force from the other world breaking into ours that causes the strife, but with weird fiction it is different. Usually the characters find themselves already within the weird. This is one reason why weird fiction is often more associate with fantasy, or why authors of the two genres can so easily blur the lines between the two.

[monolith94]

My review of Gene Wolfe's new book "An Evil Guest" which I posted on Amazon:

It was hardly twenty pages into "An Evil Guest" that I realized: "my god, this is the very first Gene Wolfe novel I've read that's proven to be a chore!" (In the interest of full disclosure, I'd only read the Book of the New Sun, The Urth of the New Sun, and the Wizard Knight duo previously) It was a chore, and seemed to be, well, boring. How could such a thing be?

I believe it is because he has tried to strike out on a new stylistic path, trying some new authorial clothes: clothes that fit him not well at all. There are distinct differences between An Evil Guest (from hereon in described as AEG) and his previous works. For one thing, he follows a female protagonist. For another, the narrative descriptions and tone seem to be entirely cut-out. Finally, there just seems to be an overall lack of dread: he's taken Cthulhu and turned him into a Kraken, taken werewolves and turned them into pets. Perhaps the most sinister of the characters, a private investigator/wizard character is turned into a generic love interest, although to be fair to the old author by the end of the book his presence takes on a new light.

I think that most of the problems stem from the fact that Wolfe has tried to explore a female main-character based story. The great element from many of Wolfe's books has been transformation: the transformation of Severian, the metamorphosis of Able from a boy into a man. Cassie also undergoes a transformation--she is turned into a theater star. But while the transformations of Able and Severian were well-handled, and gave rise to wish-fulfillment tinged tinged with depth and drama, the female wish-fulfillment he seeks to illustrate stikes me as more cheesy than weighty. Her "star presence" as it is depicted is often so over the top to strain credulity. Perhaps a woman would be better suited to let me know if Wolfe has adroitly plumbed the motivations, desires, and dreams of femininity.

You know, while I could remember Able and Severian off the top of my head, a mere day after reading AEG I had to flip through the book to remind myself of Cassie's name. Again, a lack of dread and real, potent danger permeates much the book, the last fifty pages perhaps aside. Wolfe clearly draws on 1930s and 1940s era culture, but did he have to bring the lack of scares from these times with him? Perhaps his affection has blinded him to the relative toothlessness of many (though not all) plots from his childhood. Even when dread and danger does seem to come, he resurrects along with it islander caricatures which are painful to a young, modern reader: I grimaced. Actually, this element is present even earlier; AEG features a computer with a Japanese accent just as ham-fisted as Mickey Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi in "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Sigh.

Just as AEG takes on a female protagonist, so does it take on a different style than earlier Wolfe works. Gone are lengthy blocks of rich, detail-filled narration. In its place are endless reams of dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. You could argue that this is appropriate, as the book is about stagecraft, but however appropriate this style may be to the theme of the novel, it doesn't change the fact that it is a style which is tremendously easy to put down and set aside. I turned the pages of this novel begrudgingly, on the basis of the earned reputation of the author.

There are moments of great imagination. There are times when the vivid imagery which Wolfe is so expertly capable of come through, and there are certainly mysteries piled on top of mysteries to be explored in the text. But when the flavor of the work itself comes off as so relatively bland. After I finished reading the book, I slept and had a very interesting dream, so I suppose the text is worthwhile in some regard.

[monolith94]

Pirate Freedom, on the other hand, was very good. Any other Gene Wolfe fans here?

[MadMan]

Today I finally reached page 107 of Pet Sementary, and I'm pretty much hooked. It is my first non-Dark Tower Stephen King book, and I really dig the whole thing so far. A lot of atmosphere to start things out, and the characters are pretty likable. King's prose may be simple, but I like how he describes things and paints a very realistic, easily imaginable environment. I was hoping to get my hands on The Shining, but this is a very suitable replacement.

[megladon8]

Glad you're enjoying some King, MadMan, though I have to admit "Pet Semetary" isn't one of my favorites by him.

You should definitely check out "Salem's Lot". One of the best pieces of horror fiction ever written.

[MadMan]

Glad you're enjoying some King, MadMan, though I have to admit "Pet Semetary" isn't one of my favorites by him.

You should definitely check out "Salem's Lot". One of the best pieces of horror fiction ever written.If I can get my hands on it, I will. I want to read the book before I see the two movie adaptations of it.

[D_Davis]

I started William Hope Hodgson's House on the Borderlands this morning - and it is really good so far.

It seems to be far more accessible than Hodgson's nautical-themed weird fiction, and I am totally digging the set up.

The first two chapters are overflowing with dense atmosphere.

[D_Davis]

House on the Borderland is tremendous, and I cannot recommend it enough. For fans of Lovecraft, Blackwood, Smith, et al., this book will be welcomed with open arms. It was one of Lovecraft's favorite books, and his praise for it is not unwarranted.

It creates a very real, tangible, and immediate sense of terror, a terror that is also unrelenting.

It reminds me, a lot, of the Evil Dead films, only without the humor. I would be shocked if this book was not a part of Raimi's inspiration.

The typical purple prose style is sometimes awkward, and the over use of the word 'presently,' along with too many other adverbs, can be problematic at times, but for the most part it is a very good read.

I'm about 1/2 through it now, and I wish I could just stay at home this morning to finish it. It's a cold, rainy day here in Seattle, and the natural atmosphere could only help to make this narrative all the more unsettling.

[megladon8]

That sounds great, D.

*looking up*

[MadMan]

I guess I'll have to head to my local library (which was finally re-established in town after the floods wiped it out last summer) and hope they have a copy of Salem's Lot.

And now I wonder if the film adapation even managed to capture the true creepiness and freaky moments of Pet Sementary. That ending is just flat out perfect. The book just keeps getting horrible and worse until the last act, where the main character loses his best friend and his wife. Plus he has to kill his re-animated, murderous psychopathic son. And oh yeah, on top of that the dude ends up taking his wife up there, thus continuing on the never ending nightmare. Its just beyond messed up.

I'd say that the swamp journey scene in that book is so eerie and frightening, that its easily the best part of the book.

[D_Davis]

I'm sure any library will have Salem's Lot, and if not, any thrift store with books should have it.

That's a great think about liking King - you can find his books almost anywhere for next to nothing.

[Mara]

Onion article that made me think of you guys. (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/lovecraftian_school_board_memb er?utm_source=a-section)

[D_Davis]

Onion article that made me think of you guys. (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/lovecraftian_school_board_memb er?utm_source=a-section)

Ha!

Oh man, that's great!

[D_Davis]

This is by far my favorite part of that Onion article:

"Our schools are orderly, sanitary places where students dwell in blissful ignorance of the chaos that awaits," West said. "Should our facilities be repaired? No, they must be razed to the ground and rebuilt in the image of the Cyclopean dwellings of the Elder Gods, the very geometry of which will drive them to be possessed by visions of the realms beyond."

[Dead & Messed Up]

Onion article that made me think of you guys. (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/lovecraftian_school_board_memb er?utm_source=a-section)

As soon as I saw this, I figured someone already posted it.

:lol:

My favorite: "West's previous failed proposals include requiring the high school band to perform the tuneless flute songs of the blind idiot god Azathoth..."

Although they lost a point by misspelling "Nyarlathotep."

[MadMan]

I've never read a single Lovecraft tale. But that article had me laughing my ass off. One of my favorite parts:


Charles sure likes to bang on that madness drum," fellow school board member Danielle Kolker said. "I'm not totally sold on his plan to let gibbering, half-formed creatures dripping with ichor feed off the flesh and fear of our students. But he is always on time to help set up for our spaghetti suppers, and his bake sale goods are among the most popular."

[Mara]

I've never read a single Lovecraft tale. But that article had me laughing my ass off. One of my favorite parts:

His style is great, but the qualities of his stories can be hit-or-miss. When he's on, though, he's great. I'd recommend "The Rats in the Walls." I'm sure you can find it online.