Stange Eons is a total riot, a hoot you might say. Bloch is having a ton of fun with the material. Just finished the first part, of three, and it's simply good old fashioned pulpy fun. Highly recommend to fans of the HPL circle, but if you aren't familiar with the stories and authors, you'll get nothing out of it.
Strange Eons, Robert Bloch's cheesy love letter to the Lovecraftian mythos, is barely a step or two above fan fiction, but I'd be lying to say that I didn't love it. It's fast moving and entertaining, and as one of the last surviving members of the original Lovecraft circle, Bloch frequently name drops other authors and mythos lore like Skrillex drops wobble bass. It reads more like a book that should be included with Fantasy Flight's Arkham Horror board game than it does anything else, and if you already love the Cthulhu gang, I'm sure you'll love this. If you don't love those ancient elder ones, or none of this short review makes a lick of sense to you, stay away...stay far away...because you won't get a single thing out of it.
Have begun reading "The San Veneficio Canon".
Just read the first chapter of "The Divinity Student" (titled "The Cloud") and, well, already I'm kind of "wow'd".
Cisco's prose are some of the most incredible I've read since Thomas Ligotti, but perhaps even more transcendent. It's like every single word is deliberated over, chosen to perfectly evoke mood, time, place and character.
A lot of weird fiction is, quite often, very poorly or blandly written. Particularly this new generation of "bizarro fiction" with writers like Carlton Mellick III and Bradley Sands, the writing is just god-awful, with this self-published "DIY weird fiction" attitude being more important than the actual quality of the writing.
I'm glad to see that Cisco is the exact opposite.
I'm hoping the books continues to be as exciting and stunningly written.
Yep. And just think - The Divinity Student was his first novel. He hit the lit game with the skill of a seasoned master. As many of his contemporaries say, there just isn't even a way anyone else can compare. He started at a level where many authors end - where he ends, he will (and I think he already has with Celebrant and The Great Lover) take literature into a whole new realm.Quoting megladon8 (view post)
Did you feel that "The Great Lover" and "Celebrant" were better than his previous works?
I thought I remembered you being a bit indecisive with "Celebrant" - thinking it was almost too experimental and impenetrable.
What would you say was your favorite of his work?
I re-read Celebrant and loved it. I still don't understand what it all means, but it is amazing. It is definitely on an entirely different level.
The Great Lover is my favorite of his, with The Divinity Student being next. But it's best to read The Divinity Student, The Narrator, and The Tyrant before The Great Lover.
1. The Great Lover
2. The Divinity Student
3. Celebrant (although this could be number 1)
4. The Tyrant
5. The Narrator
6. The Traitor
7. The Golem
Still adoring "The Divinity Student".
A couple favorite moments so far:
The Divinity Student receiving the clue to the word whose definition can only be described with a story.
The Divinity Student learning how to play the Oro in the tavern, and the description of the inside of the tavern as being "like an aquarium in an unlit room".
What's so remarkable is how Cisco describes the otherworldly, weird, and surreal setting and characters using such concrete language, without the things loosing their sense of mystery and wonder; with words, he causes the reader's imagination to conjure images that are simultaneously real and un-real, almost as if he is putting the reader in a hypnotic state, which is exactly how I felt while reading it. I don't really feel like I read Cisco - I experience his work with my entire body. No other author I've ever read makes me feel this way. It really is a testament to his mastery of language. It's just too bad that he's so unread. But hey, welcome to the club! We don't have many members.
D have you read Ligotti's "non fiction" work "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race"?
Sounds fascinating.
Some of it. A little too bleak for me. I don't get on with Ligotti's world view at all. He's a hopeless nihilist who believes that absolutely nothing matters. To read a whole manifesto of that sort is tiresome. To him, the universe is a complete joke, and humanity is the punchline.
Eh...I can appreciate something even if I don't agree with it.
Thought I honestly can't say I disagree with him (in your summary, at least).
Totally agree! If it's not enjoyable, just let it go.
Just made an order for some weird fiction:
"The Great Lover" and "Celebrant" by Michael Cisco
"The Croning" and "The Light is the Darkness" by Laird Barron
"The Orphan Palace" by Sr. Joseph S. Pulver
At a loss for words after finishing "The Divinity Student". An incredible work about the power of words and language, told in an intense, surreal setting where nightmares and dreams live together, indistinguishable.
One of the most affecting things I've read in some, time, if not ever.
Your first experience with Cisco mirrors my own.
Welcome to the club!
Perdido Street Station is insane and quite brilliant, frustrating only slightly in the last 200 pages. The way it weaves themes of liminality and crisis throughout is inspired. The climax is weak (though the conclusion left me reeling in a good way), and for all the love he clearly has for urban environment as its own character, Mieville's ability to demarcate and differentiate geographies, even with the city map at the beginning, is surprisingly limp. Still, any book this unpredictable and inventive gets high marks in my book. I'm already well on my way into The Scar.
Woo-hoo! I love Mieville.
Read "Kraken" ASAP. "The City and the City" was also brilliant stuff.
D - have you read any of Lansdale's "Drive-In" books?
Yes. They are dark, gross, and mean-spirited, but also strangely enjoyable in their complete disgust of humanity and depravity. Also, some of Lansdale's best writing. The opening page of the second part contains some of the best writing I've ever read; it's mean, spiteful, full of anger and energy, and could only come from Lansdale.
Neat. I'll pick them up in my next Amazon binge (all three are collected in one volume for $15).
I've picked up some really neat horrors lately. I may read this one, "Come Closer" by Sara Gran, next.
I decided to check out this book "Penpal" by Dathan Auerbach for my next read.
I read the prologue and chapter 1 and it's already quite eerie.
The synopsis:
In Penpal, a man investigates the seemingly unrelated bizarre, tragic, and horrific occurrences of his childhood in an attempt to finally understand them. Beginning with only fragments of his earliest years, you'll follow the narrator as he discovers that these strange and horrible events are actually part of a single terrifying story that has shaped the entirety of his life and the lives of those around him. If you've ever stayed in the woods just a little too long after dark, if you've ever had the feeling that someone or something was trying to hurt you, if you remember the first friend you ever made and how strong that bond was, then Penpal is a story that you won't soon forget, despite how you might try.
The writing is totally vanilla, but Jesus this book is unnerving.
I read "Penpal" from cover to cover in one day.
Wow. Devastating. Haunting, and frightening.
The images it leaves you with are just...stuff of nightmares.
Highly recommended if you're looking for a frightening read. I can't think of a better word to describe it than "haunting".
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