dark culture. movies, books, toys, papercraft.
Don't, Pelican.
Ha Ha! I love this picture. Found on somebody’s tumbler with no info on source.
Fantastic handmade corpse dolls can be found at Kamila’s Dolls – blog here: Kamila’s Dolls. Sadly she currently has nothing for sale at her Etsy site. Her mom has asked her to tell everyone that she had a very happy childhood.
Check out this cool page of Japanese monster anatomy illustrations by manga artist Shigeru Mizuki.
If you’re a regular reader here, you probably know that I’m something of a Tim Powers fan. See reviews here, here, and here. I’m getting near to having read his entire output. Imagine my delight when some members of my rat army showed up with a mint first edition copy of Powers’ 1979 The Drawing of the Dark. What I do when I get a collectible book is I make a paper book cover out of a paper bag and do my best to gentle on the spine. My goal is to leave the book looking like I never read it. Making brown paper bag covers for books always makes me think that anyone seeing me read the book might suspect that I was reading pornography or a romance novel. Luckily I’m a proud book geek and I have to assure you that I’ve read plenty from both those genres and probably will again before it’s all done with. For that matter, the copy of Jim Thompson’s Savage Night that I own has a ridiculous, lurid cover that would really need to be hidden in public. Not that I ever go out in public, considering that I’m a MONSTER and people would try to KILL ME. What was I talking about?
Powers researches real events and produces stories that are as historically accurate as possible, and then puts a major twist on them, and sort of tells a “secret history” of the event. The event being re-framed in The Drawing is the 1529 siege of Vienna by the Ottomans. If you have read and liked The Anubis Gates, the good news is that this book has something of the same flavor. It’s about adventure and strange underworld goings-on in 16th Century Europe. Powers also explores his interest in the Fisher King, which also figured into the plot of his later book Last Call (1993). To give you a summary, The Drawing of the Dark is about an aging mercenary who is hired by a wizard to be a bouncer at a brewery in Vienna. On his way to his assignment from Venice, things start getting weird. Different groups of people try to kill him. Supernatural beings, including a troop of dwarfs, come to his aid at strange times. Once he gets to Vienna he gets pulled deeper and deeper into a struggle between near-mythological forces. He feels like an ordinary mercenary, but it becomes obvious that larger forces are at work.
There is fighting, romance, adventure, and plenty of weird magical realism. The fighting is painful, the romance is complicated and maybe a little sad, the adventure is imaginative and interesting, and the magic is strangely plausible. This book also has a humorous edge to it. Sadly, for me the book really got bogged down about halfway through. Although some of the characters still don’t get what’s going on, the reader will have it figured out, and that tends to water down the tension of the narrative. Also, the ending ended up being a little anti-climactic.
Let’s see those numbers.
Creepy Factor: 2 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 3 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 3 out of 5
Final result: If you’re already a Powers fan and are working your way through his books, you’ll probably like this book. If you’re curious about Powers, I would instead recommend Three Days to Never (2006), or the oft-mentioned-here, Anubis Gates (1983). If you are interested in the One Thousand and One Nights (a.k.a. 1001 Arabian Nights), you will probably find Declare (2001) to be an amazing read. I thought it was really mind-blowing, but a friend of mine couldn’t get through it.
The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers – Del Ray – 1979
Buy The Drawing of the Dark on Amazon
Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. See you next time!
What is Lady Gaga doing on my favorite blog? You might be wondering that to yourself right now. Lady Gaga ended up on my radar when somebody sent me an interview clip where she talked about being fascinated with monsters. I was immediately charmed. I Googled her and found pictures of her in all kinds of awesome costumes. Then I went from “charmed” to “enchanted”. So I did what anyone else would do in my position: I ordered my rat army to the nearest record store to secure a copy of all her music (“and no chewing on the packaging this time!” I added.)
Look at her! She’s saying “RAWR!”
I figured that anybody who looked that amazing and hot would be putting out some really bizarre music. In my mind’s ear I heard J.G. Thirlwell and The Knife with a dash of ’80s-era Madonna. Or something. What I got was all of the latter and none of the former. It was a letdown. I recovered quickly and simply contented myself with watching her great costumes. That’s enough for an old monster like me, who bumps around in attics. You can tell me that she’s really subversive under all that pop music and I’ll believe you, really I will. I mean, she’s on the Vigilant Citizen’s short list.
Observe as Lady Gaga makes everyone else on stage uncomfortable. Mmmmmm. The woman on the left is faking cool, I can tell.
Hello operator. Give me number 9. And if you disconnect me. I’ll grab you from behind.
Enough of the eye candy. On to the belly. Here is Lady Gaga crowd-surfing.
You can see our belly licker in this next picture. Amazed to find himself in this position.
And here it goes!
It’s only fair for me to say that I was alerted to this development by this post on Gawker. They also have a great graphic which I didn’t want to pilfer, and is totally worth it. You can also see video of this here on Youtube.
Join Salad Fingers and its rotten teeth as it licks, fondles, squishes, and negligently murders the desolate world that it finds himself in. More information about the artist, here and here.
Om nom nom nom.
If I wasn’t a monster, I would be a detective. Actually, that’s not true. If I wasn’t a monster, I would be a mad scientist. I would be a mad scientist who might have dreams sometimes of being a detective. The mad scientist would emerge from these dreams feeling haunted and maybe sometimes beaten up. The characters who populated his dreams would swim with the fishes, or become wallpaper. The guts of the mad scientist would be twisted up like hamburger. Of course, this is all if I was a mad scientist. What was I talking about?
Finch is a something of a science fiction fantasy book written like a detective novel. The front and back covers bristle with references to noir fiction greats like David Goodis and Raymond Chandler, but it reminds me more of James Elroy. The main character is hyper-masculine in an Elroy way. Finch follows the classic noir trope of the lone righteous man in a pressure cooker. Which is:
You can’t tell me that you haven’t already read this story. It doesn’t matter. I’ve read this same story in countless other books, and in the hands of a skilled author, it’s still worth reading. In fact, I had a hard time putting Finch down and read it in two or three days.
Author Jeff Vandermeer fully imagines a dystopian world where fungi have replaced technology, food, weapons, disease, AND drugs. Think about that! Monstrous mushrooms have taken over the city and life has become dire for its inhabitants. Reading it, I was also reminded of Philip K. Dick: The detective is not a detective. There is nobody to trust. The story has nightmarish qualities and the main character struggles to keep a grasp on what is real and what is not. The goings-on are mostly depressing.
It wasn’t until I was about halfway through Finch that I found out that it is the last book in a trilogy. Luckily, it appears that all three novels can stand pretty well alone. Besides wishing that I had a little more information about the creatures called “gray caps,” I don’t think that I was missing much. Of course, maybe I was and don’t know it.
Creepy Factor: 4 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 5 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 2 out of 5 (hmmm. There is sex but not so erotic or weird.)
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 5 out of 5
Final result: You might not be able to tell by my review but I really loved this book. If you’re a fan of dark fantasy, this book will be straight up your alley. Vandermeer has created a compelling world, populated it with interesting characters, and used it to tell an old story in an exciting new way. Finch has been nominated for a Nebula award. (I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the awesome cover to this book was illustrated by John Coulthart.)
Finch by Jeff Vandermeer- Underland Press – 2009
Buy Finch now at Amazon
Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. See you next time!
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