I had read two Poppy Z. Brite books before starting Drawing Blood. While I enjoyed both Lost Souls and Swamp Foetus, I also felt that I would have enjoyed them even more if I had encountered them when I was younger. I felt the same way about Drawing Blood for the first few chapters. I kept telling my wife how much I was enjoying it. The story set up was weird, but it had a queer computer hacker, a haunted house, and a stripper in a Ministry t-shirt. Things were off to a very good start.
When Trevor was just a little kid, his dad went nuts and killed his whole family in a house in the small town of Missing Mile. As an adult, Trevor goes back to this house to confront his past. When he’s there, he meets Zach, a hacker who is on the run from the government. They fall madly in love with each other, but before they run away together, they try to come to terms with Trevor’s past.
Unfortunately, I found the second half of the book almost unbearable. The following paragraphs contain spoilers, so skip to the last paragraph if you’re planning to read the book.
I am a prude, and I don’t like extended descriptions of sex, straight or gay. There’s some pretty long sex scenes here. I’m sure these are really great for some readers, but I didn’t like them.
I didn’t like the fact that the climax of book occurred while the protagonists were tripping on mushrooms. I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of books about drug users and their experiences, but it felt a bit cheap for the resolution of the story to take place while the characters were high on psychedelics. They witnessed poltergeist activity in real life, and the drug trip at the end felt gratuitous and unsatisfying.
There’s a long, unnecessary scene in which Zach becomes a singer in a local rock band and plays a concert. This dude is on the run, and he agrees to perform his first concert ever. It turns out he is actually a rock god, and he gives the performance of a lifetime. This was entirely unbelievable and painfully cringey. Even as I teenager this would have made me balk. Thinking about it now is making me uncomfortable.
At the end of the book, the two protagonists escape from the United States and go and live in Jamaica. Yes, the two gay men go and live happily in Jamaica. One of them grows dreads, and they spend their days singing reggae and smoking weed with the Rastas. Makes sense, right? I mean, if Jamaica is known for anything, it’s the fact that it’s a living paradise for homosexuals.
I know some people love this book, but I found it very disappointing. I’m a straight guy in my late 30s, so I’m not the target audience for this work, but that didn’t stop me enjoying Lost Souls and Swamp Foetus. Drawing Blood was just a little too vampirefreaks.com for me. That said, I will defintely be reading Brite’s novel Exquisite Corpse in the future.,
I really got into this book when I was reading it, but the ending was a let down.
The novel starts off with a child being murdered in the woods near a place named Deacon’s Kill. This scene is deeply unpleasant, but it does a good job of engaging the reader. Soon after the kid dies, a young professional buys a house in “the Kill” and invites all her friends for a party. One of them goes out to pee in the woods and gets murdered. A young couple who had been at the party then start living in the farm house and making friends with the locals, but it’s not long before they realise something bad is in the woods near their house.
That’s a pretty solid set up. I was totally invested at this point. I read the first 200 pages of the book in one sitting. Unfortunately, the ending of the book happens too fast, and the explanation given for the kills in The Kill is bizarre and unsatisfying. I’m going to talk about it in the next paragraph, so maybe skip that until you’ve finished the book.
A prehistoric, invisible, almost invincible man was fossilized inside a stone until it rolled down a hill and cracked open. I’m not a geologist or historian or anything, but the last time that the Eastern part of the United States was under water was the Cambrian period, about 50 million years ago. This guy is pretty old. Also, if he doesn’t weigh enough to make a footprint, how does he exert enough force to kill people? There’s no explanation given to this extremely mysterious antagonist. It just doesn’t work.
Dead White
Tor – 1983
I had planned to include two of Ryan’s novels in this post, but I didn’t realise when I started Dead White that it is also set in Deacon’s Kill and features some of the same characters as The Kill. It’s not a sequel, but the town itself is as much a character here as in The Kill, and I would strongly recommend reading these books together. The text also references Charles L. Grant’s Oxrun Station and Stephen King’s Overlook Hotel as if they were real places. I thought that was pretty cool.
The events in Dead White take place only a little while after the events of The Kill. A big snow storm hits the town of Deacon’s Kill at the same time that a circus train full of diseased, bloodthirsty clowns arrives at the town’s abandoned railway station. This sounds silly (in the best possible way), but the writing is good enough to fill the book with suspense and atmosphere. The chapters are all fairly short too, and every time I would tell myself, “One more before bed.”, I’d end up reading 7 or 8.
I really enjoyed reading The Kill, but the ending fell flat. Dead White is just as enjoyable, but the ending here is more cohesive while remaining just as bizarre. It is a book about murderous clowns, but it predates both King’s It and Killer Klowns From Outer Space., so it doesn’t really feel like the cheesy clownsploitation horror that I’m sure we’re all sick of. I really enjoyed it. I’ll definitely be reading Ryan’s Cast a Cold Eye in the future.
I started Snowman because i wanted something short. After reading the first few chapters and realising this was a novel about a team of Native Americans and Vietnam veterans hunting a yeti who attacks a ski lodge, I considered giving up. Thomas Page’s The Spirit was based on an almost identical premise, and I wasn’t a huge fan of that book.
Things picked up a bit as I kept reading. The main bigfoot hunter here is called away from a weird drug cult he has started on a Native American reservation, and he’s armed with miniature nuclear weapons. The bigfoot in question is also really, really big, and he’s half-dragon. Yes. He has heat rays and sparks come out of his mouth.
Honestly, this book was entertaining enough when I got into it, but realistically, it’s drivel. There’s a whole bunch of subplots and ideas that go absolutely nowhere. There are some cool bits, but Bogner didn’t seem to understand that these ridiculously over the top elements are the only thing that make the book enjoyable. Too much of the book is filler. Why the fuck would I want a chapter on a love interest in a book in which a peyote munching wacko melts a fire-breathing yeti’s arm off with a tiny nuclear warhead shot from a crossbow at the top of a mountain? I think Bogner should have played up the trashier elements, maybe added a some wheelies, laserbeam and guitar solos.
This book was like airplane food, unappealing at first, but tolerable after the first few bites. It also gave me diarrhea.
I did a post on a few books by Tom Piccirilli earlier this year, and despite ending that post saying I would avoid his horror fiction for a while, I recently read two more of his spookier books, Pentacle and A Lower Deep.
Pentacle
1995 – Pirate Writings Pub This is a collection of 7 short stories about a wandering wizard and his familiar spirit, Self. Self is pretty much just a small, sassier version of the Necromancer that follows him around, licking him when he gets hurt and attacking the people who inflict his injuries.
The Necromancer and Self stay at an abandoned hotel, go to a blues concert, visit a mental asylum, an art gallery and a native reservation. They come across demons, ghosts and witches in all of these places, and they rarely make friends. A lot of hexes are thrown about.
Speaking of hexes, I found Piccirilli’s novel Hexes a bit challenging when I read it, but I think it might make more sense if I had read it after this one. While Pentacle is not a sequel or prequel to Hexes, it is set in the same universe. Some of it is set in the same town, and both books feature Panecraft Asylum. They’re both from relatively early in Piccirilli’s writing career, and it seems a bit like he was trying to establish his equivalent of Arkham. I haven’t read it, but another of Piccirilli’s stories is also set in Panecraft.
The writing is very dark, and it reminded me of Clive Barker with its focus of blood and pain. It’s a bit more occulty though. It references a lot of real occult texts and authorities, and a lot of these stories feature real figures from the history of witchcraft. Matthew Hopkins has somehow come back to run the insane asylum. There’s a recipe for disaster.
Overall, I enjoyed this more than the other horror stuff I’ve read by Piccirilli. The writing isn’t super clear, but the short story form makes it easier for me to get through a plot without knowing exactly what’s going on.
A Lower Deep
2001 – Leisure Books
A Lower Deep is basically a novel sized continuation of the stories in Pentacle. This time the Necromancer’s old friend tries to get him to resurrect Christ so they can bring about Armageddon and storm into heaven. (Yes. The protagonist remains unnamed here. Oooooooh, so edgy!) I hated this book so much that I find it hard to believe that I wrote the above paragraphs. I’ve wanted to write positively about Piccirilli’s books for years, but in truth, his horror novels are crap. This book is boring, contrived shite. If you don’t have an interest in the Bible, this will be very confusing. There’s lots of references to the Book of Revelation, the prophet Elijah and the nephilim. Yuck.
This is really a work of fantasy rather than horror. There’s lots of blood and occultism, but nothing scary happens, and I hated every page. Self, the protagonist’s familiar is supposed to add comic relief, but I found him horribly disruptive to the novel’s tone. A one point during the beginning of the apocalypse, he starts speaking with a Jamaican accent. Sigh…
The brevity of the stories in Pentacle is what made them bearable. A Lower Deep is a short novel, but it’s still far, far too long. Honestly, it’s terrible. Avoid it.
I am probably done with Piccirilli. I gave him more than a fair chance, but his horror novels just didn’t do it for me.
Hell! Said the Duchess – Michael Arlen Valancourt Books – 2013 (Originally published 1934)
Valancourt books is one of my favourite publishers. Sometimes, if I’m not sure what to read next, I’ll browse their catalogue with the near certainty that whatever I pick will be entertaining. That is how I first heard of this novel. A little research told me that in 1983 Karl Edward Wagner listed Michael Arlen’s Hell! said the Duchess as one of his favourite supernatural horror novels ever. Not only did the book come highly recommended, bit it’s also nice and short.
This is the story of Jill/jane the ripper, a female serial killer in London. The main suspect is Lady Dove, a shy noble woman.
The first thing that struck me was the jovial tone of the narration. I had just finished reading a collection of Saki’s short stories, and this felt quite similar. There’s lots of clever little jokes. The story does involve several murders, but, given the book’s reputation, I spent a large portion of the book wondering when the supernatural horror was going to kick in.
This is an enjoyable book, and while it does get a bit spooky towards the end, I wouldn’t really call it a horror novel. It had been out of print for almost 50 years when Wagner put it at the top of his list, and I reckon he was trying to be kvlt by listing this obscure forgotten novel as one of his favourites. It’s a fine, fun book, but it’s not scary.
After reading Klein’s The Ceremonies, I pledged to read every work of horror fiction referenced therein. The collection by Saki (H.H. Munro) is actually quite important to the plot, as it lets the protagonist know that somebody has been looking through his stuff, but unlike several of the authors referenced in The Ceremonies, Saki’s writing is not actually discussed. Also, the specific collection of Saki’s stories is referred to only as “the works of Saki”, and as Saki wrote an awful lot of stories I decided to go for a collection titled Humor, Horror and the Supernatural. There are complete short stories collections out there, but I knew that only a handful of Saki’s tales are horror, so I was content to go with this shorter collection.
so I reached for the Saki collection.
Now I know I shelved that damned book under H.H. Munro, where it belongs. I specifically remember doing it, & I’m equally sure it was that way last night, because it gave me A.N.L. Munby on one side with The Alabaster Hand & Oliver Onions on the other side with Widdershins, all three books in fancy old bindings & looking quite handsome together. I remember sitting here admiring them.
But the Saki wasn’t there tonight. I found it under S.
from The Ceremonies by T.E.D. Klein
I used to teach English in highschool, so I had read a couple of these stories (many times) already. I knew that Saki used a lot of irony in his stories and that he was fond of a twist ending. I had never actively sought out his stuff before, but I wasn’t upset at the idea of reading more of him.
I did not enjoy this collection. Of the 22 stories in here, there are maybe 4 that feature supernatural elements, and these elements are generally pretty silly, like when a cat learns to speak or when a girl in reincarnated as an otter. The only stories that resemble anything like horror are The Wolves of Cernogratz and Sredni Vashtar, the latter of which contains no supernatural element but is quite nasty and probably my favourite in the collection. I suppose the Open Window relies on terror for the story to work, but that terror is merely a means to an end. It is a clever story though.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of these stories are excellently written. They just aren’t really my thing. My sense of humour is more vulgar than droll, and Saki is wasted on me.
As I was reading the collection, I wrote a brief summary of each story as I read it. I am going to include these notes here for my own reference, just in case I ever want to check back. Don’t read this if you haven’t read the stories already.
Story
Summary
Gabriel-Ernest
mysterious boy turns out to be werewolf.
The Bag
shooting a fox mixup – not funny or scary
Tobermory
a cat learns to speak
Mrs. Packletide’s Tiger
a woman DOESN’T shoot a tiger
Sredni Vashtar
little boy has a nasty pet. good.
The Easter Egg
a bomb hidden in an easter egg fails to kill king
Filboid Studge
story about gross breakfast cereal with good marketing plan
Laura
silly story about a girl who is reincarnated as an otter
The Open Window
read in work
The Schartz-Metterklume Method
a rich woman is mistaken for a nanny but accepts her part
A Holiday Task
a woman forgets who she is and makes life uncomfortable for an awkward man
The Storyteller
a stranger on a train tells a gang of kids a story about a good girl who is eaten by a wolf. reminds me of another story that I can’t remember.
The Lumber Room
a kid punishes his punishing aunt.
The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh
an annoying woman goes missing. her family pay her kidnappers to keep her, but she was actually never kidnapped.
The Wolves of Cernogratz
wolves howl when an old lady dies in a castle
The Guests
a woman tells a story of an annoying bishop and a leopard getting stuck in her house due to a flood to convince her friend not to complain about being bored
The Penance
a man kills a cat and is subsequently punished by some children
The Interlopers
read in work
The Mappined Life
girl compares her life to that of an animal in the zoo
The Seven Cream Jugs
a relative visits a family who think he is a thief, but he isn’t
The Gala Programme
it’s a roman emperor’s birthday. his followers make a party for him with 2 parts, a chariot race and a fight of beasts. Suffragettes come and get in the way to ruin chariot race, so they unleash the animals.
The Only Good Indians – Stephen Graham Jones Titan Books – 2020
I went through a string of terrible books a few months ago that left me sick of reading, and I thought I should go for something that was probably going to be good to get me back on track. I’d had my eye on this book since it came out. It won a bunch of awards and generated a good bit of attention, so I thought it might do the job of getting me back into horror.
The ghost of a deer comes back to fuck up the hunters who killed it.
The premise of the book is pretty simple, but it’s very well written, and there’s plenty of suspense. The setting and characters are interesting, and there were also a few moments that really surprised me. Stephen Graham Jones is a talented writer, and I reckon this book deserved the attention it got when it came out. Although some of that attention came from outside the horror community, this is not horror-lite. It’s extremely violent and very dark. One bit in particular creeped me out quite badly.
I don’t really have a huge amount to say about this book. It’s modern and popular though, so there’s tons of other reviews online. I actually wrote most of this post months ago, and I’ve read a bunch of other horror novels since then, so I guess this did the job. It was pretty good, and I may well read more Stephen Graham Jones in he future.
I have long wanted to read Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu fiction. On April 15th, 2015, I added Nameless Cults: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard to my goodreads to-read list. I knew Howard had created Conan The Barbarian, and while I hadn’t read any of Howard’s stories, I had seen and loved the 1982 Conan movie. I assumed the rest of Howard’s fiction would be similar. Unfortunately, the Nameless Cults collection has been out of print for a long time, and copies are fairly expensive. Also, I have read a few books put out by Chaosium, and while the contents are usually pretty good, the presentation is quite bad. I didn’t want to spend lots of money on a book that would probably be crap. Fortunately, Del Ray books also published an extensive collection called The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard.
This book is 523 pages long, and it includes 40 stories and 20 poems. As far as I understand, it is not a best of collection. These are all (or at least most) of Howard’s horror stories. I haven’t read his other stuff, but I would be surprised if at least some of his other stories didn’t have elements of horror. The 40 stories in here were enough for me though. I don’t have any desire to read more Robert E. Howard. This collection does not include all of the stories in Nameless Cults, but the ones it leaves out are mostly “collaborations” that were published long after Howard’s death. The prospect of reading a story that Robert E. Howard left for somebody else to finish does not seem at all appealing to me.
Honestly, a lot of this book is absolute crap. Howard was a hack. He wrote whatever would sell, pumping out horror, fantasy, adventure, sword and sorcery and westerns. There’s some good stuff in here, but at least half of this book was a chore to read. Anyone writing as much as Howard did was bound to get lucky now and then. A 200 page Robert E. Howard’s Best Horror Fiction collection would have been far, far more enjoyable.
I read this book because it seemed to contain Howard’s Cthulhu mythos fiction. The stories in here that are considered part of the Cthulhu canon are of mixed quality. The Fire of Asshurbanipal and The Black Stone were pretty good. Howard’s main contribution to the mythos seems to have been De Junzt’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten (Unspeakable Cults), a book of heinous black magic. Howard references this book in several of his stories, and Lovecraft went on to borrow it for a few of his.
Aside from the Cthulhu stuff, I quite liked Pigeons from Hell, Casonetto’s Last Song and Old Garfield’s Heart. The Dwellers under the Tomb was probably my favourite story in the collection:
“Spawn of the black pits of madness and eternal night! Crawling obscenities seething in the slime of the earth’s unguessed deeps–the ultimate horror of retrogression–the nadir of human degeneration–good God, their ancestors were men!”
The Dwellers under the Tomb
Robert E. Howard’s writing seems fairly notorious for the unfortunate way with which it deals with race. I’ve come across similar approaches with Lovecraft, Wheatley and others, but the tale in this collection called Black Canaan may well have the highest n-word count of any story I’ve read. I don’t know if Howard was a truly hateful person, but some of these tales are very likely to offend the modern reader.
There was definitely some decent stuff in here, but a lot of it felt like uninspired, poorly written garbage that was only put on paper so the author could pay his rent. After reading 40 of his stories, I have absolutely no interest in reading anything else by Robert E. Howard. I skimmed through his poems, and I had even less interest in them. I’m not a poetry kind of guy.
As I read the stories in this collection, I kept a spreadsheet with my thoughts or a brief synopsis on each one. I am including that spreadsheet here for my own reference, but it may be of mild interest to some of my readers:
Title
Synopsis/Thoughts
In the Forest of Villefère
traveler meets werewolf in forest. cuts off head
A Song of the Werewolf Folk
poem
Wolfshead
sequel to forest of villefere, man who fought w.wolf ends up in africa at a party in a castle. Is now a werewolf.
Up, John Kane!
poem
Remembrance
poem
The Dream Snake
mad old man dreams of being trapped inside a house on a hill because there is a mean snake outside.
Sea Curse
a pair of scoundrels rape and kill a young girl. Her witch aunt curses them, and they die at sea.
The Moor Ghost
poem
Moon Mockery
poem
The Little People
an unruly sister goes walking on the moors at night to be attacked by a group of elfish fairies. She is saved by a mystery disappearing druid.
Dead Man’s Hate
poem
The Tavern
poem
Rattle of Bones
solomon kane story. Goes to an inn, but his accomplice turns on him then innkeep turns on accomplice, then magician’s skeleton turns on innkeep.
The Fear That Follows
poem
The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux
boxing story. Coach shows boxer picture of his fave boxer and helps him come back and in fight. Bad story.
Casonetto’s Last Song
a devil worshipping singer sends a cursed record to the man who gave evidence at the court case that got him executed.
The Touch of Death
man sleeps in room with corpse. When candle goes out, he touches a pair of rubber gloves hanging from shelf and dies of shock.
Out of the Deep
an evil mermaid pretends to be a sailor’s corpse and starts killing a bunch of people. Same place as in Sea Curse
A Legend of Faring Town
poem
Restless Waters
pirate sells his niece to an older gent, kills her fiancee so he can make the sale. The dead lad shows up in a window and gives him a heart attack
The Shadow of the Beast
fairly racist. A black lad shoots a white man and promises to kill his sister. He hides in an abandonded house that is haunted by a gorilla. He dies. Wtf.
The Dead Slaver’s Tale
poem
Dermod’s Bane
awful ghost story set in ireland. A bad ghost pretends to be a good ghost to kill a guy, but the good ghost saves the guy.
The Hills of the Dead
solomon kane story. Solomon goes to the jungle and kills an entire tribe of vampires with a witchdoctor. Awful.
Dig Me No Grave
Cthulhu cultist sells his soul for 250 of life. Time is up. A weirdo appears in his death parlour. Ok.
The Song of a Mad Minstrel
poem
The Children of the Night
man hanging out with mates briefly discuss horror fiction. Then one takes an axe off the wall and accidentally hits another lad in head. This causes him to go back in time to a time where the picts, small little goblin people had attacked his warrior clan. He is pure blooded, so he kills them violently. He awakes and tries to kill his mate who has slanted eyes. violent, racist and bad. Not really cthulu mythos.
Musings
poem
The Black Stone
thing in hungary. Pretty Good
The Thing on the Roof
Lad wants copy of de junzt to find about mummy’s jewel. He takes jewel so monster kills him.
The Dweller in Dark Valley
poem
The Horror from the Mound
a man digs into an indian burial ground despite his neighbours warnings. A black vampire comes out and tries to kill him.
A Dull Sound as of Knocking
poem
People of the Dark
man follows his rival into a cave to kill him but gets hit on the head and remembers a past life in which he did the same thing but he was conan. A race of goblins inherit the cave and him and his rival fight them. Then he comes back to modern day and shoots the degenerate ancestor of the goblins before they kill his rival and his girlfriend.
Delenda Est
Hannibal the historic figure, comes back in ghost form to tell a pirate of a mutinous shipmate. Shit.
The Cairn on the Headland
Awful story set in ireland. A FOOL uncovers the grave where odin was buried after fighting irish army
Worms of the Earth
bran mak morn witnesses a pict die, so he summons the worms of the earth, gross mutants, to kidnap the Roman soldier who killed him. P. good.
The Symbol
poem
The Valley of the Lost
Deadly story. Cowboy gets stuck in pet cemetary cave with enemies corpse. Finds snake peoples’ lair underneath. sees their history. Comes out and dynamites entrance, then shoots himself in head. Harsh story. Cool
The Hoofed Thing
CREEPY OLD NEIGHBOUR BREEDS WEIRD BLOOD THIRSTY LIFEFORM IN HIS BEDROOM. Eats him and then man kills it with a sword.
The Noseless Horror
two lads visit their friend who has found a mummy. He also has an indian servant with no nose. The mummy is actually a lad the master killed. It comes back to life and kills him. The indian is blamed until they figure out what happened.
The Dwellers Under the Tomb
Enjoyable story about lads who go into a tomb that leads to series of caves inhabited by degenerate murderous dog people. Last few paragraphs are delish.
An Open Window
poem
The House of Arabu
a warrior goes to land of dead to find out who cursed him. Lots of babylonian mythology – absu and tiamat. Kinda interesting.
Listened to audiobook version while going to sleep. Old man doesn’t age. Has a heart from a native american witch doctor. They cut it out of his body and it still beats. Not bad story. Weird
Kelly the Conjure-Man
really just a character sketch
Black Canaan
story about a black guy who tries to start a rebellion of blacks against whites by voodoo. Turns men into frog creatures in a swamp. Half of the text is just the n-word. No audiobook version of this one on youtube, LOL
To a Woman
poem
One Who Comes at Eventide
poem
The Haunter of the Ring
a vampire’s dodgy ring turns a wife into a murderer
Pigeons from Hell
2 wanderers go to sleep in abandon house. One dies. Second looks guilty of murder. Sheriff comes and believes him. P. good.
The Dead Remember
Cowboy murders black couple. Woman curses him. Ghost shows up and hidden gun explodes killing him.
The Fire of Asshurbanipal
Lads break into a tomb in middle east in search of a jewel. they find it but its guarded by a demon, kin of cthulhu and yog sothoth. Pretty good.
Fragment
poem
Which Will Scarcely Be Understood
poem
Golnor the Ape
incomplete fragment about an really stupid, ugly freak
Spectres in the Dark
couldn’t be bothered reading this properly. 2 crimes, ghosts?
The House
a genius poet lived in a weird house. Mystery unsolved by the end.
Untitled Fragment
very briefly mentions von junzt’s book. Not interesting. 2 explorers about to dig up egyptian site. Nothing happens.
Well, there we go. I think I have got around to all of the main members of the “Lovecraft circle” now. I have written posts on the Cthulhu mythos fiction of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Robert Bloch, Donald Wandrei, Frank Belknap Long, and Henry Kuttner. I know that Lovecraft corresponded with lots of other people (Fritz Leiber, James Blish…), but the guys listed above were the main ones, right? I was fairly thorough with most of them, but I think I may take another look at Clark Ashton Smith. I’m sure I’ll get around to the second generation of mythos writers at some stage in the future too.
I had no idea what this book was going to be about, but that cover is sick as hell.
A private detective almost dies in a mysterious car crash, and he soon finds himself investigating a bunch of people who have been hallucinating themselves to death. It turns out they did something to anger the owner of a pharmaceutical company. This wealthy chemist makes a drug that lets him control his victims’ minds telepathically.
Maybe it was all the Russ Martin novels I read last year, but I am pretty damn sick of novels about telepathic mind control. It’s lame. If I had any idea that that’s what this book was about, I wouldn’t have read it. This would have been a far better book if it had been about a bloody eyeball.
I had a few other books by Nick Sharman lined up, but I’m in no rush to get to them now. The Scourge wasn’t absolutely terrible, but if it weren’t for that cool cover, it would be absolutely forgetable. I really don’t want to waste any more of my time discussing it. Good night.
I really enjoyed Our Lady of Darkness (both times I read it), and I felt like it was time to revisit Fritz Leiber. Conjure Wife was first published in 1949. It’s the story of a college professor who discovers that his wife has been practicing witchcraft behind his back. He thinks this is a shameful load of nonsense, so he tells her to stop. Shortly after this, he realises that her magic has been protecting him from the spells of the other witches. It turns out that his wife isn’t the only witch on campus. Actually, most women are really witches.
Now, the title ‘witch’ don’t apply to all women,
but all women have a little witch in ’em
Fritz Leiber
It’s a pretty simple premise, but Leiber makes it work really well. The conflict is mainly psychological, occurring in the protagonist’s head. I read somebody comment that the novel’s description of women isn’t “generous”, but I don’t agree. The tension in the book, and there’s loads of it, is largely created by the unwillingness of the male protagonist to believe what is happening to him. He’s an idiot. The women are running the show here. This book is only demeaning to women if you think of witchcraft as a bad thing.
While some of the magic in here is rather fantastic, a lot of it is the kind of stuff that I don’t entirely disbelieve in. It seems to me that Leiber had a very clear understanding of the nature of magic.
Fritz Leiber was a cool guy. I read somebody describe him as the link between Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick, and apparently he corresponded with both. That itself is enough to impress me, but the books I’ve read by him are awesome too. I’ve heard that his short stories are some of his best work, so I’ll probably look at them next. I don’t know if there’s a specific collection that I should go for. Part of me wants to just read the horror ones, but I’m sure that’s dumb. Let me know if you have any recommendations.
Nocturnal Revelries 