A "Roach Motel" for lost souls

kw: book reviews, horror, fiction, occult

The name Slade is distantly related to Glade, and refers to someone from a valley. But whereas a glade is pleasant, "slade" is too close to "slay" to seem nice at all. I don't know if there is a real Slade House in England somewhere—perhaps Cornwall, where the name originated—, but to the modern ear "Slade" sounds sinister. This makes it a good name to use in a horror novel.

Slade House by David Mitchell is of a genre I call Neo-Gothic Horror. You will not find the dreadly phrasings of a Stoker or a Lovecraft here, nor the heartbeat rhythm of Trochaic verse that Poe favored. Like much modern fiction, the writing here verges on being sprightly and upbeat, even when describing abysmal deeds such as soul-sucking.

This is cerebral horror. No blood and gore: only one stabbing, and that with a hat-pin. The soul vampires of Slade House use enchantments and guile to accomplish their ends. Simply put, they need to consume a soul periodically, and not just any soul: Their victim must be "engifted", what we often call a person with second sight. Ironically, such persons are uniquely qualified to detect and possibly counter occult spells. Thus the need for guile. I readily found parallels with the need for pure virgins and other innocent victims in older occult literature.

The word "orison" means a kind of prayer. In Slade House it refers to a bubble in reality, the occult version of "virtual reality", under the control of one or more soul-suckers. Thus the House can appear at a time of their choosing and vanish without a trace when not needed, as can sundry denizens of the temporary domain.

For a long time I've been unwilling to read horror, Gothic or Neo-Gothic, since being thoroughly spooked by Lovecraft some decades ago. Guess I'm more hard-shelled now. But I don't plan to make such books a steady diet. David Mitchell's book is a tour-de-force, and I suspect the book is a nearly unique pinnacle of the genre. I recommend it only if you are not inclined to connect with what you read in any visceral way, and can enjoy a yarn well-told while keeping your heart at a distance.

It isn't your car that is out to get you; it is something much bigger...

kw: book reviews, horror, occult, automobiles, highways

I read very little Fear Fiction. For some reason, I was sufficiently intrigued by the cover blurb to give Destinations Unknown by Gary A. Braunbeck a try. He is certainly a compelling writer; I stayed up a bit too late to finish the first story of the three in the book.

In an essay a decade back or so, Orson Scott Card deconstructs Fear Fiction into three genres, based on the time element. Dread is fear of what might happen, a foreboding. Card happens to be master of the unresolved Dread story. Terror is fear incited by awful events witnessed, or suffered by, the story viewpoint. Horror is remembered terror; it is already over, but you can't get over it. This is used to great effect by consecutive terror-horror-(dread-)terror-horror cyclic "slasher" stories. Braunbeck's writing follows the dread-terror-horror sequence, but of these three stories two end with a cycle-breaking resolution.

The first story, "The Ballad of Road Mama and Daddy Bliss", is by far the best and the best-written. It explores the idea, one sure to twig off droves of conspiracy theorists, that auto "accidents" are really "occurrences", somehow proctored by a godlike entity, The Road, assisted by Road People, including the title characters. It's incredibly well done, and introduces a nearly-believable parallel world for us to contemplate.

The other two stories seem to me to be fillers, to get the book up beyond 200 pages ("Ballad" takes 170). The first, "Congestion", puts the reader under the skin of a fat dude with heart troubles trying to drive himself to the emergency room through a traffic jam. The second, "Merge Right", is a grief fantasy, that goes right about where you'd expect a grief story to go if the depths of grief were physically realized.