Showing posts with label dark fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dark fantasy. Show all posts

Monday, October 24, 2016

Wildwood by John Farris (1986): Snakes of Christ

There is cosmic weirdness galore, fantastical creatures from mythical history traipsing through a Southern forest lost in time and space, and some fascinating characters, but very little true horror in Wildwood (Tor/August 1986), a weighty novel from genre giant John Farris. One of his many works from publisher Tor, they did a spectacular job with Farris's books, and Wildwood is no exception: dig that moody eroticism of the cover art (no artist credit given) reptilian fangs and silvery glow, so '80s! And that imagery is straight from the story; snakes and ladies, kind of a Farris thing. I've got a fair collection of Farris novels, and two of them, All Heads Turn As the Hunt Goes By (1977) and Son of the Endless Night (1986) are two of the most satisfying horror novels I've read for TMHF. I was psyched when Wildwood got off to a mysterious, intriguing start, hunters chasing strange quarry through that treacherous wood; could this be another Farris classic?

A North Carolina forest on the Tennessee border, Wildwood is deep, dark, and foreboding, traversed by only the most experienced of outdoorsmen (and, we'll see, outdoorswomen). Set in 1958, there is a backstory from half-a-century earlier; Farris moves well between eras and characters with consummate professional skill. This back-cover summation does well enough to entice the potential reader, but doesn't capture the depth and knowing subtleties that are the hallmarks of the author's style, his easy ability to get into the nitty-gritty of his characters hearts and minds. There is the father-son relationship between divorced Whit Bowers and 15-year-old Terry, who lives with his mother, a bestselling author, in Paris. Then there's the respect between Whit and Arn Rutledge, a gruff, macho sort who served under Whit but, you know, that was years ago in WWII; things have changed, perhaps. Between Arn and his Cherokee wife Faren, an uneasy marriage. The turn-of-the-century characters, pseudoscientific scholar Edgar Langford, his wife Sibby, and the architect who is designing Langford's ambitious estate, James Travers, a dark love triangle that teeters not just on the edge of morality but also on the space/time continuum itself.

An example of Farris's sensitivity to human relationships is the friendship the builds between Faren and Terry. Whit and Terry come to stay with Arn and Faren as Whit enlists Arn to show him Wildwood and what remains of Langford's estate, now a local piece of legend and spooks. Terry and Faren go off for a drive to the reservation town to sell some of Faren's art and then take a break by a stream. Of course Terry is crushing hard on this beautiful, open, smart, exotic older (well, 30s!) woman, and Faren is impressed with Terry's maturity and cultured manner (ritzy schools in France will have that effect). Lazing about in nature of an afternoon gets them feeling very comfortable with each other. Nothing untoward happens, but it is addressed:

"I know, I know," she murmured. 
"You're such a good-looking boy; and I do have a sweet tooth for you. We could get each other stirred up here and now. But Terry, what that does, believe me, just leaves good hearts full of trash. I want my heart to go on feeling kindly, with friendship for you that'll last forever. Understand?" 
He nodded. More relieved than disappointed.

Man, that's good, that's real, that's true. Other aspects, particularly the bits about Langford's penchant for ancient Babylonian mystical texts and Tesla's bizarre silver-spun perpetual-motion contraption held in a dome above the estate, were solid reading. I dug the adventures in the Wildwood forest; the descent into a subterranean lair; the space-time continuum inside-out and destroyed; the hybrid humans known as Walkouts flung from natural biology the night of Mad Edgar's Revels; the appearance of everyone's favorite cult inventor Nikolai Tesla in a small yet important role; the illicit romance between the brilliant architect of Langford estate and Langford's wife: all of this told in an adult, engaging manner. Earthy imagery predominates, with an emphasis on the human body and a nightmarish bestiary of half-man/half-beasts, the origin of which is Mad Edgar's thirst for vengeance (One character notes "his brilliant scholarship, his foolish intrusions into magick, his dark vendettas, his romance with old and dangerous gods" and I'm all like, COOL MORE PLEASE).

Also: lots of talk of genitals and bodily functions; however it's not a juvenile sort of obsession, more of an adult acceptance of such. This grounds the narrative, as does Arn's threatening masculinity, his temper flares; he's a believable character even as he chases unbelievable beings (you can see one of them on the cover of the New English Library paperback below). The trials and tribulations of the Native community are depicted with respect. Farris's writing is always strong, readable, original, so I was kept glued to the page even while the horrors I kept expecting to appear remained aloof. Ah well. Wildwood I suppose is more of a dark fantasy, the kind of book I associate with Robert Holdstock, perhaps; not a genre I read much if any in. I'm not used to my fiction being populated by pretty girls with butterfly wings who speak in an Irish brogue and flutter about the forest naked. A bit coy and corny for my tastes.

There are some powerful set-pieces, grim and grungy, and the whole scene in which Terry accompanies Faren to her church's gathering and witnesses it turn into a kind of Holy Roller orgy of snake-handling, is one of the skin-crawlingest whirlwinds of horror I've read recently. You're exhausted when it's over but the revulsion remains.

Bunches of dappled diamondback pied snakes, some nearly six feet in length and thick as a man's wrist. Some earthy, some ashen, a few with the liquid darkness of eels, all heatless as death. Writhing snakes in the hands of preachers, his stomach plunged to the level of his knees and he gasped in shock...

The problem is that, for as evocative and precise and meaty as Farris's writing is, for all the narrative and character heft that promise epic thrills and terrors, he's left out one key component of story-telling: suspense. Surprising, right? I was more than half through when I realized we weren't getting much of anywhere. Page after page of intriguing set-ups and scenarios but no tautening of the threads that bind them. My attention was drifting as the climax approached, Farris beginning to weaken to overwriting as he constructs an epic '80s conflagration: ...a moment of writhing, a silvery pop, a thousand insignificant serpents, then nothing buoyant impulses of light, all going their separate ways... pathways to blue oblivion... The wind was a lash, a beast, a wailing, a remonstrance, an outpouring from the deep-set caverns of time and space.

Wildwood has much of what I've loved about Farris's books before, but it's missing a vital component I can't quite place. Lack of suspense, lack of deep-rooted conflict, lack of a certain je ne sais quois. That said, I found the final page and-a-half an effective scene of calm and acceptance after the storm, an upbeat but hard-won bit of otherworldly knowledge for a character who maybe should have been the protagonist in the first place. But that would be a different book, and honestly: probably not one I'd read. You can see I'm unsure what to make of this novel!

So I can kinda sorta recommend Wildwood, if you appreciate dark fantasy more than I do I guess, but what I can recommend heartily is this: a one-of-a-kind TV commercial for the novel featuring Zacherle. Yes it's true. Behold:



Tuesday, June 28, 2016

The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series VII, ed. by Gerald W. Page (1979)

Don't worry, TMHF readers, that you've missed my reviews of previous entries in the long-running anthology series The Year's Best Horror Stories; this one, Series VII (DAW Books, July 1979), is the first one I've read in its entirety. I own only about half of the entire run, dipping into them here and there but never committing to a full volume. Till now, and I couldn't even tell you why this one, exactly. Sure, the cover featuring a ghoulish repast by the esteemed Michael Whelan is striking to the eye...

During this era, many paperback anthologies still included "dark fantasy" under the rubric of horror (DAW Books was a science fiction/fantasy publisher). "Dark fantasy" means to me fantasy, of course, but with major elements of the macabre and grotesque, with a fair amount of violence, usually with a medieval or mythic atmosphere and setting. The language too is often archaic, formal, stilted even. There may be sword 'n' sorcery going on as well. A few years later, Charles L. Grant used that term "dark fantasy" to describe his own stories and novels of subtle modern unease, but I prefer "quiet horror" for his brand of fiction. I say all this to simply state I'm not a fan of this kind of dark fantasy, and feel I don't quite have the critical acumen to judge dark fantasy. I tend to skim stories in that vein.

In Series VII, four stories fit this subgenre: "Amma" by Charles Saunders (above), "The Secret" by Jack Vance, "Divers Hands" by Darrell Schweitzer, and "Nemesis Place" by David Drake. I was unfamiliar with Saunders but liked well enough his West African griot's tale of a woman's unlikely secret identity; its comfortable switch-up ending evokes fables we first heard in childhood. Vance's story of Pacific islanders who know, unconsciously, that to leave their home is to encounter a strange wide world the knowledge of which may not be welcome. Again, something like a child's tale.

Schweitzer (above), long a critic and editor of genre fiction, contributes a longish work never before published. Knights, horses, swords, chainmail, maidens... no thanks. But Schweitzer writes strong prose, knows his way around violence and creeping dread, so I think "Divers Hands" will appeal greatly to those whose appreciation of such works is greater than mine. Drake's "Nemesis Place" contains the phrase "trader in spices" and that pretty much was quits for me, though I read the last paragraph and it seemed pretty bloody, so cool I guess.

Anyway, on to the real horrors.

An early work from one of the 1980s greats, Dennis Etchison, "The Pitch" is a pitch-black bit of unexpected vengeance by a kitchen cutlery salesman. Ouch. Etchison is a master of the modern convenience and its impact on our lives. "The Night of the Tiger" is a very minor work from Stephen King; it appeared in neither of his classic collections Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. King's authorial voice is strong, and the circus setting is convincing, but the final twist is rote. Now I enjoyed the relaxed charm of Manly Wade Wellman's tale of a lovely vampire lady, "Chastel." This dude hated it though. Ah well.

Autumnal sadness/grief/heartbreak/terror of Charles L. Grant's "Hear Me Now, Sweet Abbey Rose" is bittersweet. A sensitive family man protects his daughters against some drunken louts but the final horror is almost mean-spirited. One of Grant's finest. Another familiar name in any late '70s/1980s horror anthology is Ramsey Campbell, and his offering "Heading Home" may elicit a groan thanks to its pun, but it works as horror and as comedy. TMHF favorite Lisa Tuttle's "In the Arcade" has a woman lost in a lonely nightmare, looking back over a shameful racial history. It didn't appear in her amazing collection A Nest of Nightmares; not sure why, maybe it's the slight SF twist.

Ah, I forgot that the fine "Sleeping Tiger" from Tanith Lee (above) is also dark fantasy: a Brave Prince named Sky Tiger happens upon two lovelies in the forest named Orchid Moon and Lotus Moon. They bring him to a tower and perhaps promise paradise; Venerable Priest appears and puts the kibosh on that. That final twist is impolitic. "Intimately, with Rain" is Janet Fox's modern fable of ancient guilt. Love the ending for this one, even if I've read and seen it elsewhere.

The two final tales are, I feel, the best of the lot: superb in style and sensibility, "Collaborating" by Michael Bishop and "Marriage" by Robert Aickman (above) offer the very best in genre fiction. The former is a kind of Cronenbergian medical horror story written with taste and steely-eyed insight (We gave them stereophonic sweet nothings and the nightmares they couldn't have by themselves); I don't want to spoil it for first-time readers. The latter is another of Aickman's precisely-penned tales of daily English life and the traps it holds in store for those who attempt to go against it (He glared brazenly at the universe). Fantastic works, and two of the best short stories I've read this year.

Editor Gerald W. Page was involved with Year's Best Horror Stories for several years. In his intro he rightly states "You  never know where a good imaginative story will take you, whether it's science fiction, fantasy or horror..." and notes that good writing is just good writing. That's true, certainly, but good writing isn't my only criteria; I find I prefer my horror to be generally modern. But that's between me and me, and I think many other readers will find Series VII a worthwhile addition to their shelves of horror fiction...


Saturday, May 21, 2016

Manly Wade Wellman Born Today, 1903




Four preceding books: Ballantine Fantasy 1984/cover art by Carl Lundgren

Baen Books 1988/cover art by Steve Hickman

May 21, 1903 - April 5, 1986

Friday, June 26, 2015

Dark Dance by Tanith Lee (1992): Going to the Darklands

Oh my Goth is this a lovely cover! Taken right from the back of a Siouxsie Sioux record or ripped from the pages of Propaganda magazine, it's a perfect image to appeal to the reader who wants romance tinged with a hint of death and black nail polish: Let her taste the forbidden, the erotic, the evil... Yeah, potential readers of 1992's Dark Dance know who they are. The bats have left the belfry...

Tanith Lee is a writer I've been meaning to read for over 20 years. A prolific British author whose many, many paperback novels combined elements of fantasy, horror, science fiction, myth, and fairy tales, it was her recent death, alas, that made me realize I needed to do that now, and so I picked up Dark Dance, the only book of hers I own, published by Dell as a title in their ground-breaking Abyss line. Like many novels from Dell/Abyss, it isn't only/just/quite a horror novel. Nothing is scary, or even meant to scare, but there is foreboding and threat, a gloomy old house near a cliff-side overlooking the sea, a secret family made of members of indeterminable age clad in black, and the promise of illicit pleasures. We are in Gothic romance territory here, as will become clear early on.

The dance begins on a foggy London day as 29-year-old Rachaela Day arrives at her paltry job in a dingy dank bookshop (She hated computers, they frightened her. She liked old things... she was happy only with printed words). Her mother, a bitter and resentful woman, has been dead several years, and Rachaela's found herself utterly thankful for the release. She knows little about her father, who pretty much disappeared before she was born, although her mother complained about him and his ne'er-do-well family, the Scarabae (a weird name to go with a weird fly-by-night man). Into the bookshop then comes a man with a letter for Rachaela, from a law firm representing her father's family: as the back cover of Dark Dance tells us, the Scarabae beckon to Rachaela, inviting her to their family estate by the sea. And all travel expenses included!

Desiring something more in her life but unsure what, she accepts the summons to the Scarabae home after her apartment building goes up for sale, quitting her bookseller job in a fit of pique (I was a bit disappointed when this segment concluded; I do love tales set in dusty old bookstores!) and is driven up the seaside coast. In the house, faceless and black but for its one lit window (I told you we were in Gothic romance land!), she is met by Miss Anna and Mr. Stephan, very old, thin as twine, one female and oen masculine,and at that borderline of age where the sexes blend, these two had sustained their genders. At dinner she meets the  rest of the Scarabae, more than a dozen, each with their own role save the oldest, Uncle Camillo, who labors under some kind of juvenile dementia, galloping about the endless halls and rooms as if on a horse only he can see. One of them at least was insane.

Warner Books UK, Feb 1993

Removed from the world at large, the family's only contact a hired driver, with rare trips into a desultory village some miles' walk away for supplies, Rachaela spends malingering days and nights in the home. The reader feels the claustrophobia of the Scarabae estate, its bizarre stained glass windows and winding halls, locked doors and silent inhabitants. She hears snippets of the family history: superstition, outcast, pogroms, escape, told in hundreds of years. Vampires? Perhaps. She learns her father is called Adamus and he lives in the tower (of course!) but he comes and goes as he pleases, a mystery almost even to the others. He seems to spy on her in the night, accompanied by an enormous black cat. When she finally confronts Adamus, it goes about as well as expected:

"You dropped me like a lost coin. Less than that."
"I meant to make you. I tried with many women. The Scarabae seed is reluctant. It inbreeds better. But your stupid and soulless mother had, surprisingly, the correct ingredients to accommodate me..."
"All her life she hated you and what you'd done. She made me pay for you."

Rachaela resents Adamus, certainly, and comes to resent her captivity, which she's told again and again is a freedom. But just as I was beginning to feel a little worn out by the constancy of Rachaela's entrapment in the house, she makes her escape, back to the village she'd visited earlier for supplies. Rachaela misses the infrequent train to London, sits in a church to pity herself, and then turns round to see... Adamus. Who's come for her, who seduces her there in the church pew:

"Yes, I want to fuck you. Come back and be fucked by me."
"Now you're speaking the truth, you bastard."
"Now I'm speaking the truth. What's the problem? The family will be thrilled. They'll revel in it. It's happened over and over, mother with son, father with daughter. Brother and sister. Two-thirds of them are inbreedings of one kind or another, several twice over. A charming little intimate orgy has been going on for centuries. Secret pleasures of the house. And what other values hold you back? The criterion of the church, of morality and the world? It's nothing to you. Come to me and let me give you what you want."

It works. In an erotic trance, she lets Adamus sweep her back to the house Scarabae. What follows is a night of torrid sex, imagined with stylish high-minded eroticism by Lee (A harp string plucked in her loins... glissandi of fires. He kneeled in prayer between her thighs, his face cruel as an angel's... Her own tongue moved on him in sympathetic sorcery) till the next morning, when Rachaela is disgusted and angered by what's transpired. Once again she escapes, and this time, she will not return. In a way she will not need to return, for now she has brought a bit of the Scarabae with her: Rachaela learns she is pregnant with her own father's child. Like her own mother, she is merely a vessel for this immortal family, nothing more than an incubator. The plan all along. It's all too clear why Rachaela's mother was so horrible to her. Will Rachaela be like that to her own child? There's an unsettling scene when she visits a doctor to try to get an abortion but he patronizes her ("Children are wonderful things. Special... Think of all those women who long to bear a child and are unable..."). Ugh. The patriarchy!

The narrative moves up over a chapter and little Ruth is now seven, mostly cared for by motherly neighbor Emma, whose adult children are grown and gone. Rachaela regards Ruth with distaste, unsurprisingly, but Ruth is no abused or put-upon child; she's secretive, weird, self-possessed, and actually rather ugly (that strange white face of an elf). When Emma moves away, Rachaela and Ruth are wary of one another, estranged in the same flat, till a few years pass and Ruth begins to learn of the Scarabae, and a strange man is lurking about, and Ruth herself will escape to that darkened house by the sea, clad in black, searching for the man who fathered her. It is Rachaela's worst fear realized: for Ruth to be the child-bride of Adamus: Just before midnight Scarabae's betrothed came downstairs. She looked like a bride in Hell, in her dress of blood...

I found Lee to be a lovely and melodic writer, with prose that sings (to a Yank like me) in that British lilt, reminding me at times of Ramsey Campbell or Clive Barker. Language must serve the story, and so Lee can use "maenad" and "bacchanant" in the same paragraph and get away with it. More than get away with it; she escorts you through a hazily-lit twilight world of ambiguous vampirism and motherhood, her protagonist a young woman who abhors her mother and has never known her father. When this dark dance is over, she will know her father in ways which will make her abhor herself. Rather than creeping you out, Lee's approach to events seem removed from the real world, occurring in some demimonde where myth and fable entwine.

If you're in the mood for a kinda slow, moody, insular novel with sharp tinges of the Gothic but no horror to speak of, told in a style that's perceptive and sensual, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Dark Dance. Vampires? One never knows for certain. But one thing is: I will definitely be reading more Tanith Lee.


Thursday, December 4, 2014

Karl Edward Wagner's Kane: The Frank Frazetta Covers

Born on this date in 1945 in Knoxville, TN, the late great Karl Edward Wagner made his bones writing countless tales of Kane, a somber swordsman from prehistory. Warner Books published these paperbacks throughout the 1970s and '80s with cover art to catch anyone's eye, thanks to the mighty Frank Franzetta's depictions of ripped musclemen in various states of dress and battle. It was a match made for the pulp ages...

I haven't read these myself--Wagner's horror fiction is more my thing--and I don't usually see these books when I'm out book-hunting. So I leave it to you guys: how much do you like Wagner's Kane books?


Thursday, October 9, 2014

Ballantine's World of H.P. Lovecraft Boxed Set (1971): The Way Madness Lies

Another rare paperback four-volume box set of Lovecraft tales. The covers, by Spanish fantasy artist Gervasio Gallardo, are elaborate landscapes of surreal nightmare: perfect for illustrating HPL's "Dream Cycle" stories. Gallardo painted many of the covers for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line which began in the late '60s and featured the genre's giants: Lord Dunsay, James Branch Cabell, George MacDonald, Clark Ashton Smith, William Hope Hodgson, and Arthur Machen.

 
 
 
A collector could find most of the titles in this line for sale on eBay and Amazon, but I myself never see these HPL Ballantine books on used bookstore shelves. I think that an obsessive would be able to, after some hard and dedicated work, amass every Ballantine Adult Fantasy volume, perhaps even in mint condition, but that way madness lies...


Tuesday, July 29, 2014

When the Dying Calls: The Cover Art of Tom Hallman

Recently a TMHF reader hipped me to Tom Hallman, an artist I was unfamiliar with by name but several of whose books I've featured here before. Really effective artwork on a lot of these - the old lady's blank orbs and jutting cheekbones on The Dying (1987), a two-faced headphoned horror on Beyond (1980), superb serpent shock on Fangs (1980), a vintage James Herbert Shrine...

Blood Child, Judgment Day (both 1982), and Limbo (1988), not much to say about 'em except they're '80s through and through, scary baby carriage, boobs, creepy kid, and... uh, menacing music box?

A Personal Demon (1985): dark fantasy dorkery? Maybe so, but I kinda dig the flaming pentagram.

Winter Wolves (1989): Hmm... reminds of that Twilight Zone rabbit.
Paperback perennial Robert McCammon's first Pocket Books hardcover was Mine (1990); Hallman's art was used for this 1991 mass market edition as well. Hallman has been very prolific and still produces book covers today, both in and out of genre fiction.

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