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fredsphere's review
4.0
I really liked this collection of stories, but as it is psychological horror in the vein of Ligotti and, yes, Machen, I was expecting to love it. I did not; not quite.
The problem with this kind of writing is the surprise or the reveal needs to be really startling and horrifying because the setup may be dull. Sometimes, the reveal is just that, as in the stories where destruction comes by a force that, because of its dumb, impersonal nature, will not respond to reason, bribes, or pleas for mercy.
With his formal tone, long discursive passages and minimal dialog, the author has chosen to avoid lively dialog and other devices that give the reader relief from the bleak tone. (As Samuels chose mold--yes, mold--for one story's POV character, there wasn't much dialog there!) There is no wit here; whatever humor is going to come in shades of charcoal gray. Like Ligotti's narrators (although not as relentlessly) Samuels' characters are atomized loners moving in a barren, seedy, and industrialized urban landscape. Nowhere is there found the milk of human kindness; nowhere are bright petunias growing in flower boxes. Human contact is either impossible due to the prison-like design of the world or otherwise frustrated by an epidemic of insanity. People never connect in these stories--and that's the point! But as I say, the grim bluntness gets to you after a while.
Here's a example of the elevated diction that links Samuels with the great horror writers of the last two centuries:
My favorite story takes "The Library of Babel" as its explicit starting point and goes in a more bluntly horrifying direction. In fact, the seemingly magical power of words, their power to slip the bonds of their authors' intent to act as free immoral agents, is a recurring interest of this author.
I really liked the resolutions; I didn't quite love them. For the record, I found Ligetti similarly tough to take beyond small doses. Fans of Ligotti or Machen will likely give this 5 enthusiastic stars.
The problem with this kind of writing is the surprise or the reveal needs to be really startling and horrifying because the setup may be dull. Sometimes, the reveal is just that, as in the stories where destruction comes by a force that, because of its dumb, impersonal nature, will not respond to reason, bribes, or pleas for mercy.
With his formal tone, long discursive passages and minimal dialog, the author has chosen to avoid lively dialog and other devices that give the reader relief from the bleak tone. (As Samuels chose mold--yes, mold--for one story's POV character, there wasn't much dialog there!) There is no wit here; whatever humor is going to come in shades of charcoal gray. Like Ligotti's narrators (although not as relentlessly) Samuels' characters are atomized loners moving in a barren, seedy, and industrialized urban landscape. Nowhere is there found the milk of human kindness; nowhere are bright petunias growing in flower boxes. Human contact is either impossible due to the prison-like design of the world or otherwise frustrated by an epidemic of insanity. People never connect in these stories--and that's the point! But as I say, the grim bluntness gets to you after a while.
Here's a example of the elevated diction that links Samuels with the great horror writers of the last two centuries:
Some terrible change hand affected not only my patient, but also the very confines in which the motley drama was being enacted, for the shadows in that phantasmagoric chamber seemed to have taken on a life of their own, flitting up and down the arabesque desings on the tapestries that shrouded the vast and lofty walls.That writing is very Machen--but with a mad patient, not a mad doctor. That writing is very Lovecraft--as is the mention, a few sentences later, of "something I can only put into words as the geometry of the color yellow."
My favorite story takes "The Library of Babel" as its explicit starting point and goes in a more bluntly horrifying direction. In fact, the seemingly magical power of words, their power to slip the bonds of their authors' intent to act as free immoral agents, is a recurring interest of this author.
I really liked the resolutions; I didn't quite love them. For the record, I found Ligetti similarly tough to take beyond small doses. Fans of Ligotti or Machen will likely give this 5 enthusiastic stars.
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