Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
[Ed. note: While there are a couple of big articles in the hopper, nothing was ready for today's publishing deadline. Fortunately, the soon-to-be-promoted Brad was waiting in the wings, ready to step up at a moment's notice. Another big thanks to Brad, who will soon be getting his own photo and byline.]
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Susanna Clarke
Let me be frank: I loved this novel. I mean, I really loved it. I know a lot of folks say they loved Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but for me my love of this book goes to an altogether higher level of affection and respect than may be typical for the hackneyed expression, “I loved it.” Sort of like, Susanna Clarke would be my #2 choice[1] for telling me stories late at night on a chilly evening, in front of a blazing fire, with hot chocolate, roasted marshmallows, and snuggling. Or like, the amazing feeling when you find Mr. or Ms. Right and discover this person feels the same way about you. Or in guy terms, your favorite football team crushes its most hated rival in the Super Bowl, and your favorite band pulls of a dynamite halftime show with no bad notes and all the songs you loved as a kid, and Beyonce has a major wardrobe malfunction lasting more than 1 second. Yeah, the novel is that wonderful!
Not only is it a great novel of magic and fantasy, set in an alternative England of the early 19th century, it is a superb work of literature that also just happens to be a great novel of magic and fantasy, set in an alternative England of the early 19th century. And it has an oddly compelling love story as well. Even grumpy old guys like me can have our hearts softened once in a great while, and the winsome Ms. Clarke does that quite well; the reader ends up caring very much about Jonathan and Arabella, the fictional lovers. Summary: There’s nothing in Jonathan Strange that I didn’t find absolutely wonderful, with one major exception. The book checks in at a hefty 782 pages, causing me to offer up this one complaint: It’s far too short! And it cries out for a sequel. No, for sequellae.
Those who haven’t read it may ask, “What’s so cool about this book?” Imagine Harry Potter meeting up with Charles Dickens; the two of them then amble down the road to the home of the redoubtable Jane Austen, there concocting amongst themselves an epic tale of history, chivalry, valor, love and betrayal, all with a magical overlay. Toss this tale into a witchery cauldron of your choice, throw in a dash of Oscar Wilde, a pinch of 21st century postmodern skepticism, and bring a very competent author—prepared to invest about 10 years in a labor of love—who pours in a thorough knowledge of English history from the late 18th and early 19th centuries (the kind you’d only get in an English public school). Then skew your plot just enough so it’s charmingly cockeyed in places. Bring this concoction to a slow boil, stirring constantly for about ten years; violá!–you have the finest work of alternative history it’s ever been my privilege to read. There’s real history mixed in: For example, the mad King George gets his moment in the limelight; and the English war to stop Napoleon Bonaparte form much of the novel’s sub-text. In the richness of its world, Jonathan Strange is on a par with Lord of the Rings; better, deeper, more compelling than the aforesaid Harry Potter series. In fact, Jonathan Strange very much resembles Charles Dickens’ finest work in this regard—those who have read any Dickens will find themselves in familiar literary territory. The only modern historical novels I’ve read recently to which I can compare it in terms of depth and intricacy are Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost, and Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx.[2]
But like LOTR and the later Harry Potter novels, Jonathan Strange—though it deals with rare magic, cunning fairy princes, inaccessible castles, and damsels in distress—is no kid’s book.[3] In creating its own world, a world that hangs together throughout, it’s equal to LOTR and to the Dune mythos as well, as well as more outre works of science fiction or fantasy like Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy[4] or Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun (works which remind me of each other—but that’s a subject for another—as yet unwritten—review).
This glorious novel is set in an England where magic exists but has gone dormant. In a wonderful scene, conjuring up something oh-so-typically-English, the book opens with a meeting of the City of York Society of Magicians. But the Society’s members don’t actually do magic. In proper English fashion, they present to each other lengthy scholarly disquisitions about magic as it once existed, complete with footnotes, arcane quotes from foreign languages and obscure reference works (all of which Ms. Clarke duly cites in footnotes of her own, set out in proper scholarly fashion), and good old 18th century English stuffiness. What could be more blue-blooded?
It takes Mr. Norrell (we never learn his first name) to show the York Magicians what real magic is. And he creates a sensation. Riding on the crest of his fame, he moves to London, where he becomes the toast of the town. Reluctantly, he takes Jonathan Strange as a pupil, a pupil who will finally become the master (and where have we found that plot device before?). Norrell and Strange complement each other, but also become rivals, because each has a different magical ethos. That difference forms the heart and soul of this riveting book. I won’t give away more than that—no spoilers here! If you haven’t yet read the book, go for it. (As a bookseller, I have it on good authority that new or like new copies of the hardbound edition can be found in many remainder bins or on-line at reduced prices. You really have no excuse not to read this wonderful book!)
From now on, when we talk about the fictional worlds that mean something to us, that shape our personal identities, that resonate with our “real world,” we must add to Middle Earth, Dune, Hogwart’s, “a galaxy far, far away,” and 221B Baker Street, that achingly beautiful England chockablock full of strange magic, inhabited by Messrs. Strange and Norrell. We must hope that Jonathan can dispel the Darkness and return to his beloved Arabella. We must hope the good Ms. Clarke comes up with a true sequel to Jonathan Strange, one that has a happy ending. Finally, we must believe (as all good children know in their heart of hearts) that magic is real, and can heal us like, well, like . . . magic.
Rating: The World Cup finals! I cannot recommend this magical book highly enough. Buy it, read it, read it to your older kids, re-read it, immerse yourself in Susanna Clarke’s wonderful world of magic, and regret that our oh-so-skeptical age has marginalized magic—the magic that exists in each person. Invite Messrs. Strange and Norrell into your home; they will be very good, polite, English guests, and you will enjoy their odd company immensely.
Musical inspiration: No metal here, death or otherwise. I wrote the first draft this review listening to Pat Metheny’s The Way Up; and did the re-write listening to Metheny’s magical and heartbreakingly beautiful song “Más Allá” (“Beyond”), from an earlier album, The First Circle. I especially recommend the version with Argentinian vocalist/bassist Pedro Aznar performing with the Aca Seca Trio, found on You Tube at this URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWKPK-mZZWE&feature=share. Aznar was Metheny’s vocalist for a time, and wrote the Spanish lyrics for this haunting tune.
[1]The #1 choice for this difficult duty is Brad’s significant other, since even grumpy footie coaches need lovin’.
[2]The Quincunx and An Instance of the Fingerpost are not a fantasy or sci-fi novels; they’re historical fiction. Moreover, they are very good historical fiction. When you, gentle reader, tire of either sci-fi or fantasy (assuming something so horrible could ever occur!), I highly recommend either book (or both) as worthy of your consideration. (NB: The OED defines “quincunx” as “an arrangement of five objects in a square or rectangle in which four occupy the corners and one the center.” Such a pattern is the key to understanding Palliser’s multi-leveled novel, as well as a worthy metaphor for the novel itself.) Much as I’d like to do so, I won’t ask Pep for leave to review either fine work in this esteemed blog, having exhausted my visitor’s privileges on non-fantasy/sci-fi by reviewing The Club Dumas a few weeks ago. And I won’t even bother to ask José; he would simply utter an unintelligible growl, or try to poke my eyes out. (Second NB: If you find well-done historical fiction enjoyable, I understand Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall is also worth the time and effort. I have the book, but have not yet had time to read it—too many cheesy vampire novels, too little time!)
[3]Thankfully, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is a great children’s book! Read a chapter a night to your kids. All of you will be glad you did. They’ll find LOTR on their own when they’re ready for it.
[4]Which Pep swears he will someday review on this esteemed blog—if he doesn’t, I’ll either do it myself or send José and his “magic fingers” after Pep.
The Club Dumas
[Ed. Note: We are pleased to once again welcome Brad to Two Dudes. We were initially skeptical about this review, falling more into "Fantastic Literature" than our usual purview. Brad convinced us, however, because Pep owes him favors and this is a fabulous book anyway. Enjoy.]
The Club Dumas
Arturo Perez-Reverte
I hadn’t planned on reviewing The Club Dumas for this inestimable blog. Quite honestly, I’m not sure that it fits within Two Dudes’ stated purpose of providing “informed reviews, profound commentary, ribald and witty conversation, and insightful snark about all things Science Fiction and Fantasy.” But people who know me (a mercifully tiny but highly exclusive group) also know of my deep and sincere admiration for Spanish author Arturo Perez-Reverte. After Umberto Eco, the godfather of the “literary thriller,” Sr. Perez-Reverte is its foremost living practitioner. Beginning in the late 1980s, highly literate, intelligent, tightly-constructed thrillers emerged from his pen about one every two years: The Fencing Master, The Nautical Chart, The Flanders Panel, The Seville Communion (my personal favorite), The Queen of the South, The Painter of Battles, and the title reviewed, The Club Dumas. Perez-Reverte has also produced an a more straightforward adventure series, set during the Thirty Years’ War in the Spanish Netherlands, whose protagonists are the war hero Captain Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, and his redoubtable sidekick Iñigo. Not one of these titles is either science fiction or fantasy, although some of them, like The Club Dumas, deal with the fantastic. Each one is superb.
Perez-Reverte’s work has an impeccable pedigree. In 1980, Umberto Eco released his great novel, The Name of the Rose; translated from the original Italian, it was published in its English version in 1983. Haunting the pages of The Name of the Rose is another book—the supposedly lost second volume of Aristotle’s Poetics—for whose secrets a sinister group of Benedictine monks were willing to kill each other and anyone else who got in the way.
The book was a smashing success. The big publishing houses suddenly discovered a segment of the reading public that thoroughly enjoyed books about books: hidden books, secret books, lost books that had been found, suppressed books, books containing secret histories, books of magic, subversive books, books whose contents threatened civilization as we know it, books that could bring down Christianity, books to summon Satan himself.[1] Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and in this way many authors “flattered” the great Professor Eco. Needless to say, Eco’s imitators and spurious godchildren produced works of wildly varying quality.
We’re going to by-pass Dan Brownish mediocrity and head to the top of the authorial heap, right next to the Master himself, where we find the redoubtable Spaniard Arturo Perez-Reverte. I’ve read everything of his that I can get my hands on, both in English translation and in Perez-Reverte’s native Spanish. It’s all good! In fact, it’s all great (although I was slightly disappointed in The Flanders Panel—the ending was just a little too contrived, and it felt like Perez-Reverte was struggling just a bit). First among equals are The Seville Communion and The Club Dumas.[2]
So let’s talk about The Club Dumas. It has several plot lines that Perez-Reverte deftly weaves together: The one from which the book’s title is taken involves a mysterious manuscript that may or may not be a missing Alexander Dumas autograph for a chapter in The Three Musketeers. But the more fascinating plot line, one that overshadows everything else, deals with a suppressed book—-The Nine Doors to the Kingdom of Shadows.[3] This (fictional) book, published by an obscure Venetian in 1666, supposedly contained a ritual for summoning the Devil himself. The author and publisher, Aristide Torchia, fell into the not-too-gentle hands of the Inquisition, was condemned as a sorcerer, and burned at the stake in 1667. The Inquisition was thought to have destroyed all copies of The Nine Doors, but surprise! Three copies survived; humanity still has within its grasp the infernal rituals to open forever the Kingdom of Shadows and unleash Ol’ Scratch Hisself on an unsuspecting world, if only somebody can decipher Torchia’s coded messages and inscrutable instructions. Can I get an ominous-sounding chord here, along with a portentous tympani roll?
The protagonist, Lucas Corso, is a middle-aged rare book dealer and book detective, suitably weary, battered and bruised, careworn and cynical. (Selling used books has a way of doing that—I should know!) His client, Varo Borja, a multi-millionaire and unscrupulous book collector, has acquired one of the three surviving copies of The Nine Doors. (Question: Is Varo Borja a literary allusion to the great Argentinian writer/philosopher Jorge Luis Borges, who writes about the fantastic with such felicity and wit? Or perhaps he’s the reincarnation of that dogmatic guardian of orthodoxy Jorge of Burgos, the villain in Eco’s Name of the Rose, which I have already praised to the heavens (and which makes a surprise appearance at The Club Dumas’ stunning conclusion)? Little touches like this abound in Perez-Reverte’s jewel.)
Borja, though not the most appealing character in the book, is no fool. Through his network of book scouts and rare book dealers, he has discovered that of the three surviving copies of The Nine Doors, two may be forgeries, leaving only one of them as the authentic work—a label that immediately challenges the postmodern shibboleths of authorial intention and the independent life of the text. So Borja’s request of Corso is straightforward: Find the other two copies of The Nine Doors; acquire them for Borja by any means, fair or foul; and in the process determine which of the three copies is genuine. And while you’re at it, Señor Corso, here’s a ton of money to throw at the problem to help you grease the skids just a bit. Simple, no? An afternoon’s stroll in the park.
Only, surprise . . . it isn’t so simple. In fact, it nearly costs Corso much more than he’s willing to pay.
The result is one of the most sophisticated literary thrillers I have ever read. It is, in every sense of the phrase, a tour de force. Perez-Reverte recreates the seamy underside of the rare book world with skill and flair. He patiently leads the reader along the primrose path to a plausible solution, and then when the reader’s guard is down, the author deftly stabs him (or her) in the back—a knife job that never felt so good. In the process, the lines between reality and fantasy blur: Corso may or may not have angelic help in his quest; he may or may not have a direct confrontation with infernal powers; Borja may or may not be who he seems, a foolish rich greed-head; or he may be something/someone else altogether—and altogether much more sinister. The solution to this complex thriller is ingenious, it holds together, it doesn’t require an implausible deus ex machina, and it showcases Perez-Reverte’s skill as a story-teller and writer.
As a bonus, the book contains many cool visual representations that look like something between a classic Rider-Waite Tarot deck and Albrecht Durer engravings from the 15th and 16th centuries. These add to the reading experience: Not only does the reader participate in unpacking the contextual puzzles as Corso slowly sorts out the truth concerning the three competing versions of the Nine Doors to the Kingdom of Shadows (an anti-Derridian notion if ever there was one), these engravings add to the otherworldly ambiance that Perez-Reverte’s prose induces and remind us there was a time and place when secret instructions for summoning Satan were not only taken seriously, the possession of the same could result in excruciating pain and death inflicted by the State at the Church’s behest.
My unqualified suggestion: Beg, borrow, buy or steal a copy of this book. Then read it. (Sorry, that was two suggestions. My bad.) If, like me, you find yourself enthralled by Perez-Reverte’s story-telling skills, then read The Seville Communion for dessert. (It’s about a little Roman Catholic church building in Seville that one-by-one, kills the very people who have been commissioned to tear the building down. THAT’S an interesting idea!)
Rating: Barcelona with all cylinders firing against anyone else. Really, the book is that good! (P.S. The movie is good, too. It’s not exactly the book, but weaves a spell of its own. Plus, it has Johnny Depp. What more need I say?)
Musical assistance for this review: For the initial write-up: Swedish black metalers Watain, who are “Sworn to the Dark.” For the re-write: Austrian black metal-industrial Abigor’s CD “Channeling the Quintessence of Satan.” There are Durer-like engravings and paintings throughout the booklet that comes with CD; they look very much like the art materials in The Club Dumas. And Abigor’s subject matter complements The Nine Doors. Who could ask for more from his black metal?
[1]H.P. Lovecraft is a generation earlier; his Necronomicon (the “Book of the Law of the Dead”) may have come to him in a dream in 1937, as he said. On the other hand, there are many who are completely willing to believe the Necronomicon, the blasphemous book of the blackest magic, the fevered scribblings of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, is objectively real. Numerous “editions” have been published.
[2]The Club Dumas was the basis for the Johnny Depp movie, The Ninth Gate, involving a renegade rare book dealer searching for the infernal book. The movie more or less tracks the “magical book” plot line from the book The Club Dumas, although there are major differences. Nonetheless, I recommend the movie whole-heartedly, partly because of Depp, partly because it’s a great entertainment, and partly because I want to expose Perez-Reverte’s writings to as broad an audience as possible.
[3]The Nine Doors is solely a product of the author’s fecund imagination! Although there are many grimoires (books of ritual magic) that were in existence in the mid- to late-17th century, The Nine Doors isn’t one of them—it’s fictional! If you want to know about grimoires that were around at the relevant time, check out Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); or P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Mediaeval Europe, 500-1500: A Documentary History (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Scholars of the occult Stephen Skinner and Joseph Peterson, working independently, have produced updated editions of many of the infamous grimoires in existence in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. Most of their editions are still available through the major on-line booksellers. Older editions of some of these grimoires were produced by English occult scholar Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, acting alone or with the famous mage Aleister Crowley. Practicing occultist Donald Tyson has specialized in the works of the late Renaissance mage Agrippa (Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim), whose Three Books of Occult Philosophy made their appearance in 1531, and were first translated into English in 1651, and whose Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy showed up in 1655.
The point of this lengthy footnote is that there were many, many, grimoires floating around at or about the time the fictional Nine Doors made its appearance. The latter was distinctive, not for the fact it purported to be another book of magic, but because it didn’t beat around the bush. It had one purpose only: To summon up the Devil!
The Tortuous Serpent cont.
[Ed. Note: Here is Part Two of Brad's guest review. Read Part One here. Two Dudes would like to thank Brad for stepping up to the plate while we were enjoying a ill-gotten summer vacation.]
Tyson takes this historical event as his point of departure. In the novel, an infernal organization known as Sons of Coronzon and loyal to the Demon-Queen Lilith, has engineered the theft of a grimoire (a book of ritual black magic) of immense power from Dee’s library at Mortlake, covering up the theft by destroying the library itself. This adventure will take Dee, his scryer Kelley, and their wives (Jane Dee and Johanna Kelley) into Central Europe as they attempt to recover the grimoire and at the same time thwart the Sons of Coronzon’s conspiracy to wage magical war against England. The consequences of such a war would be devastating; as Protestant England was at the time confronting Catholic Spain — a nation then at the zenith of its military prowess. In any war, most expected England to lose badly.
Dee’s only allies in his quest to recover the grimoire are his three companions and a mysterious Jewish rabbi in Prague, who is also a practicing magician and a student of the Kabbalah, a body of esoteric and mystical Jewish doctrine and ritual. The rabbi and his daughter will play an important role before the story ends. Against Dee are arrayed formidable forces: Not only must he confront the Sons of Coronzon and their demonic hosts, led by Lilith the Demon-Queen herself; he must also avoid the clutches of an Inquisition eager to find him. Dee and Kelley are notorious as practicing magicians, trafficking with spirits. Now they are outside of England, away from the Queen’s protection, and in hostile territory indeed. The Inquisition intends to stamp out ritual magic in the most violent and painful ways possible; should Inquisitors get their hands on the good Dr. Dee, he faces the rather unattractive prospect of an exquisitely slow and agonizing death. Ouch!
Tyson is a good writer–only occasionally does his prose get a little too purple. His intimate knowledge of occult arcana stands him in good stead; he creates a credible scenario–credible to those who understand that ritual magic, whether it “actually works” or not, has nonetheless exercised a hold on human minds for millenia. Ritual magic is a phenomenon with its own set of practitioners and adherents, its own vocabulary and jargon, its intensely complex and arcane rituals, and its own set of unpleasant consequences for those who trifle with it.
There’s no sense in giving away more the plot here. Anyone interested enough to have read this far will be interested in the book. Likewise the interested reader will appreciate the deft manner in which Tyson has melded fact with fantasy, using his own deep knowledge of Renaissance high magic to make his story even more credible and interesting.
I first read this book 15 years ago. But I wanted to read it again, so I tracked down a copy on Amazon’s website and purchased it. It’s out of print but there are lots of copies available, and the price is right! Anyone who enjoys reading about the occult — not wizards with pointy hats throwing massive fireballs at each other or turning hapless citizens into newts — but men of iron will and strong courage conjuring up infernal entities from the netherworld, twisting these demonic powers to accomplish their own dastardly ends; who finds interesting the labyrinthine politics of 16th century Europe — the diplomatic dance between Protestant England and her much more powerful Catholic nemesis Spain, with the Holy Roman Empire looking on, not wanting Spain to get too big for its britches, but determined to return the true Catholic faith to English soil; and who enjoys a good yarn with damsels in distress and heroes who save the day, should give this book a shot. I think the brave reader will find it most enjoyable. The flaws are there, but they are few enough, and spread far enough apart, that they don’t detract from an interesting novel.
For those interested in the musical inspiration for this review, I listened to the amazing French black metal band, Blut Aus Nord, and their most recent offering, 777 Sect(S). Like John Dee’s ritual magic, calling up malevolent spirits of the netherworld, Blut Aus Nord is not for the faint of heart. It is rewarding if listened to in the privacy of one’s own home, accompanied by trained professionals.
Rating: The day the U.S. National team beat Spain in the Gold Cup, 2-0. I remember it well; I watched in Pep’s and Jose’s inestimable company, and the three of us exulted together. But the match required me to suspend my belief for awhile; I believed the U.S. side was pretty mediocre. That turned out to be true, but suspension was highly pleasurable, albeit very brief. If one can suspend any disbelief about the efficacy of ritual magic and simply enjoy some of the lush word pictures that Tyson paints, it should be fun. But when putting the book down, the reader will have to remind himself that he isn’t going to be able to send demonic sadists to torment a obnoxious boss, even if the thought felt so good.
The Tortuous Serpent
The Tortuous Serpent: An Occult Adventure
Donald Tyson
[Ed. note: We are once again pleasedto present Brad's musings here at Two Dudes. He has written a learned treatise on what some may consider fantasy, but others treat with the utmost seriousness. We hope everyone enjoys the two part review and learns something new about summoning demons.]
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” So wrote the bard of Stratford-on-Avon, in his greatest play “Hamlet”. The old master wasn’t joshing, either.
Donald Tyson, author of the book here reviewed, is a practicing occultist and an expert in his chosen field. This needs to be known before we go any further. Practitioners and scholars of ritual magic are likely familiar with Tyson’s magnum opus, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (Llewellyn’s Sourcebook), his edition of Henry Cornelius Agrippa’s famous text, to which Tyson has now added The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy: The Companion to Three Books of Occult Philosophy. These works show Tyson is a careful editor and a scholarly writer; indeed, he has made sense of some of the more abstruse writings to emanate from the high magic of the Renaissance. So it’s no great stretch for Tyson to use this knowledge and come up with a very entertaining tale of the great Elizabethan English mage John Dee and his scryer Edward Kelley, as they confront and ultimately best unspeakable evil.
Dee and Kelley are historical characters, and their names are famous among students of the occult. For those who don’t know, John Dee claimed to have contact with a series of angelic messengers, using Kelley as his medium. For whatever reason, Dee himself, though a very learned man and a great magician, was unable to communicate with the spirits he raised through his magical rituals. Edward Kelley, however, was a natural scryer. The two men established a rather dubious partnership; Dee would perform the hazardous rituals necessary to call up the spirits; Kelley would talk to them and reveal the results to Dee, who wrote everything down. Over a lengthy period, these spirit messengers revealed to Dee through Kelley a complex system known as Enochian magic. Tyson has also written about Enochian magic in several works, among them Enochian Magic for Beginners: The Original System of Angel Magic (For Beginners (Llewellyn’s)), Ritual Magic: What It Is & How To Do It (Llewellyn’s Practical Magick Series), and The New Magus: Ritual Magic as a Personal Process (Llewellyn’s High Magick). Dee’s and Kelley’s revelations have also recently been published in a handsome edition from occult scholar Joseph Peterson, entitled John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery: Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic.
Much of what Tyson writes about in The Tortuous Serpent has a factual basis: John Dee was in reality a fixture at Queen Elizabeth I’s court. Whether as her spy, court magician, adviser, or a combination of all three, he was among the most important and well-educated of the brilliant men who found their way to the Elizabethan court; the Virginal Queen relied on Dee as she did on few others. Undoubtedly, this produced not only the usual sordid gossip but also intense jealousy at court, as the galaxy of stars circling around Good Queen Bess jockeyed and fought for positions of influence. The Queen’s patronage meant money, status, and, most of all, power over others. To say this patronage was highly coveted would be a rank understatement; behind the masques of civility and elegance lurked wickedness and constant plotting—the hand that shook yours in a gesture of friendship one moment would, moments later, plunge a dagger into your back or pour poison into your goblet of wine.
The tale opens as Dee discovers the library at his country estate of Mortlake, a library he had built up over decades, has been destroyed and ransacked by his country neighbors, ostensibly concerned that he was trafficking with infernal powers. This is an historical event, well documented in the standard biographies on John Dee, The Queen’s Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, by Benjamin Woolley (New York, 2001), and John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus, by Peter French (New York, 1972). Thousands of books and manuscripts, many of them no doubt concerned with ritual magic, astrology, alchemy, and other occult doctrines, were either destroyed or stolen in the conflagration. Sadly, Dee possessed the only known copy of many of the books or writings that were destroyed or mutilated, so this historical event was truly a loss, not only to occultism but also to scholarship in general.
Continued soon in Part Two.
On a Darkling Plain
On a Darkling Plain
Richard Lee Byers
[Ed.: From time to time, we are happy to present the views of guest writers here on Two Dudes in an Attic. We welcome submissions from anyone out there with strong opinions and too much spare time, so get writing! Today, Brad examines the world of White Wolf's The Masquerade.]
I admit it. Much to my wife’s dismay and disgust, I love vampire novels. No, I’m not talking about Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga or its ilk, the endless crop of paranormal romances where sexy, horny vampires have their way with equally lascivious “victims.” (As any married guy will tell you, all this paranormal hanky panky really is fantasy! And written very badly too.) That said, Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula remains one of the most erotic novels I’ve ever read. The evil Count’s transformation of the virginal Lucy Westenra from the epitome of Victorian female propriety into a deadly and wanton succubus smolders just beneath the surface of main storyline: heroic but seemingly overmatched mortals struggling against overpowering and invincible evil.
And it is the latter feature of vampire novels that has always attracted me. Brian Lumley’s Necroscope novels are excellent examples. His vampires are thoroughly evil and inhuman, his plotlines ratchet almost to the breaking point the fundamental tension between good but weak humans and despicable, apparently immortal subhumans bent on humanity’s destruction.
On a Darkling Plain, one of many novels set in White Wolf Publishing’s “World of Darkness,” approaches the vampire story from a different point of view altogether. Instead of having horny vampires on the prowl for willing females, what we basically have are novels about office politics among the undead. White Wolf’s vampire mythos forms the subtext against which each of these novels is set. Briefly, it runs something like this: Cain, he of biblical infamy who slew his brother Abel and bore Yahweh’s mark as a result, was the first vampire. He in turn created vampires from among antediluvian humanity; these are referred to as Methuselahs because of their great antiquity. The Methuselahs survived the Flood, but are now in a state of torpor. Each subsequent generation saw its own vampires, as this cycle repeated itself over thousands of years. Over time, the vampires metamorphosed into various clans, each with its own powers and weaknesses. The Ventrue, for example, are skilled in business, diplomacy, and public affairs. The Toreador are artists and aesthetes; the Brujah are punks, spiked, tattooed, resistant to authority; the Nosferatu are unspeakably ugly and deformed, but have intellects far beyond the other clans; and so on. There are also the Caitiffs, those without a clan; and a shadowy group known as the Sabbat.
Yet for all these powers, vampires can be killed. Explosions, burnings, and decapitations will destroy a vampire who otherwise might live for millenia as long as he or she can feed on human blood. The Inquisition nearly destroyed the vampires as a race. For their own protection, they adopted The Masquerade. Vampires, who need humans and human blood for sustenance (they call humans “kine”, a reference to the fact that humans are vampiric food), are vastly outnumbered by these same humans and can be destroyed by human weapons. The Masquerade is designed to allow vampires to hide their true identity, keep the vampiric “Beast” at bay, and function in human society as much as possible. The aforesaid Sabbat reject the Masquerade and urge all-out war on humans; because the other clans disagree, there is constant friction between them and the Sabbat.
Notwithstanding, the ancient vampires are not entirely absent from the scene. From behind the scenes, they use the clans one against the other to facilitate their own plans and schemes. Here we have the nub of most World of Darkness novels: the political chess matches, the thrust and counter-thrust that one Methuselah employs against another in an effort to obtain some advantage in the eternal struggle for power, however slight. In these novels, there is little or no romantic interest between vampires, much less between humans and vampires. There is a great deal of time and attention focused on the minutiae of vampire life, the political struggles among members of a clan as they jockey for position within the clan’s hierarchy, and between clans as they jockey for supremacy over a particular territory. Very often, these struggles become extremely violent, and this violence involves both vampires and their human allies and hangers-on.
All of this means that particular plotlines are pretty fungible and formulaic. There really is no surprise in any World of Darkness vampire novel, though most of them are well-crafted. The writing is good; the plots are interesting; the characters, while rather two-dimensional, are still compelling—one cares what happens to the protagonist, even though he or she is a vampire and would likely feed on the reader given the chance. Nobody is going to receive a Nobel or Pulitzer Prize for writing one of these novels, but the authors shouldn’t hang their heads in shame, either. After awhile though, one tends to forget the individual novels; what remains is the more interesting but unexplored back story.
Coming to the novel under consideration, we have the following rather standard plot devices “submitted for your consideration” as the master once said. The Vampire Prince of New Orleans is afflicted with a mysterious ailment that renders him incompetent and violent against his bevy of courtiers and hangers-on. Meantime, Elliott, the Prince’s go-to guy (a member of clan Toreador who’s a passionate art aficionado now devoid of passion now that his beloved wife is dead—yes vampires in this world do marry for love!), finds himself the victim of a violent set-up as he responds to reports of an art theft within the Prince’s domains. Finally, Dan, a violent Caitiff (a clanless and therefore unprotected vampire), who’s newly initiated into the vampires’ world, tries to find his way against the hostile environment into which he’s been thrown. He finds himself drawn into battle against his will by a beautiful and seductive vampire many millenia his senior, someone whom he’s powerless to resist. (There really isn’t a sexual angle here, unlike Anne Rice’s novels which tend to revel in that sort of thing.)
There you have the rather interesting plot threads which the author weaves together into a fairly satisfying story, and into which he throws a few surprises, some of them unanticipated but most of them pretty standard. All in all, a fun way to spend a couple of evenings or a leisurely afternoon at the condo or beach. Or, to put it another way, pretty standard vampire fare without the humiliation of a guy being found with some “paranormal romance,” that’s probably more soft core pornography than vampire story anyway.
Rating: Brandi Chastain ripping off her jersey whilst exulting on the pitch, in celebration of a U.S. Women’s Team victory. It was certainly pleasant, and one wishes the impromptu striptease might have continued awhile longer. But the really interesting things remained hidden from view; it didn’t appear that in the overall scheme, those things in question were all that significant anyway. A perfect metaphor for World of Darkness vampire novels, so as you read one, think of Brandi. [Ed.: I wonder how Ms. Chastain would feel about this comparison.]
P.S. I should probably mention that I wrote this review while listening to the late, lamented Ronnie James Dio and his group Heaven and Hell. Somehow, it all fit together nicely.
