Something strange is happening around London, and while no one person has a real sense of the extent of these events, several individuals have inklings, clues to the larger picture. Bo Mulvey is a photographer who, as something of a lark, agrees to become possessor of a map he cannot see, to a location (called the House of Flies) that cannot be real; he soon comes to learn that there is more to the world that what he perceives, and more to appetite that he has previously experienced. Sarah is on the run from the man responsible for the death of her husband; however far she goes, she soon comes to discover that death has a way of finding her. Sarah’s daughter Claire has had an encounter that resulted in both a psychological breakdown and apparent physical illness; is the cancerous growth appearing on her body something from inhuman origins? Manser is a man drawn to darkness, with a pastime that involves dismemberment and a mysterious mentor that requires blood sacrifices; has he, in fact, been playing a role in a monstrous plan even larger than he might have imagined? Over the course of the work, the city itself seems to be changing around these characters, becoming something unfamiliar and incredibly disturbing.  Its citizens are either vanishing or undergoing a bizarre transformation into something other than human…

On the surface, Conrad Williams' novel, The Unblemished, seems to be yet another addition to the varied offerings of apocalyptic horror. However, The Unblemished offers discerning readers the distinction of being more impressive than the typical tales currently filling this subgenre. This is due to top notch writing skill. Williams possesses a poet’s appreciation for language, a talent for painting Boschian nightmares with generous dabs of prose as beautiful as anything by Keats. This prose is at turns stark and hallucinogenic, building surrealistic and sadistic imagery upon the mundane and familiar.  The effect of such a conglomeration of sequences is disorienting in all the right ways. At turns witty, shocking, and (yes) actually horrifying, The Unblemished is a triumph of the macabre. This novel is nothing less than truly epic, though still nasty and thoughtful and meaty. In short, it's full of the things that actually made this reader a fan of the horror genre, and has revitalized my somewhat waning interest in apocalyptic fiction by offering up creative horrors of many splendors.

And yet... With so many things going for it, the book is rather slow to get moving. A bit distancing. Oh, the Prologue is certainly eerie, and the opening chapters read well enough. Yet they are delivered in such a fashion as to woo the reader. They did not grab this reader by the ears and race merrily off. As such, I found the book a little too easy to set down for about the first third, but shortly after this it becomes nothing less than compulsive reading.

If the book has a flaw, it may very well be found in the sheer number of nightmarish sequences. A few of these feel a tad extraneous, perhaps unnecessary. However, as a longtime fan of novels that include moments of what others might deem authorial self-indulgence, this reader certainly did not mind the imaginative bombardment of darkness.

This novel received quite a bit of acclaim (and the International Horror Guild Award for best novel) upon its original, small press release. With luck, this new edition from Virgin Books will garner even wider attention. I, for one, am stunned by all this work accomplishes in its 300 pages.

The Unblemished by Conrad Williams
288 pages
Virgin Books
April 2008

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The title of Rob Roger’s novel, Devil’s Cape, refers to a fictional city in Louisiana, a neighbor to New Orleans. Devil's Cape has earned its moniker of "Pirate Town" by a long history of crime, violence and corruption dating from its founding (by dread pirate St. Diable) to the present day. The story recounted is a complex one. The first quarter of the novel is dedicated to presenting the character of the city as well as some of its colorful characters, including the latest crime lord, the masked businessman who calls himself the Robber Baron. In addition, we meet a carnival of murderers and several other people bearing supernatural abilities. Did I say supernatural? Perhaps superhuman is the more appropriate word: these folks are budding superheroes and villains.

All of the many years of build-up lead through “Today” and the days following. “Today” is marked by an event of enormous magnitude, a series of deaths that just about rock the entire world. Afterwards, only a handful of people seem capable of finding justice for this momentous act. A woman whose father was murdered many years ago finds herself with a yearning for revenge and enough knowledge of superscience and technology to make her impossible goal a reality. A pair of twins, blessed or cursed with strange abilities, find themselves at odds over their extended Greek family member's business, which of course involve dealings with the infamous Robber Baron.

A street tough turned psychiatrist discovers that his whole world is not quite as orderly and logical as it seems, when an old hallucination is revealed to have very real roots. These disparate characters soon unite (in proper superhero fashion) to wage a sort of war against the darkest elements of Devil's Cape. However, this world is no four colored place where people cannot die, but tries to evoke the more gritty qualities of works by such comic book/graphic novel luminaries as Alan Moore (Watchmen), Frank Miller (Dark Knight Returns), J. Michael Straczynski (Rising Stars), et. al.

The writing is quite good. The characters are layered and intriguing, the setting is well defined, the supernatural and the paranormal powers and their uses are imaginative, and the language is of that "invisible" style, which communicates without calling attention to itself.  Rogers is a gifted storyteller, and the tale he weaves is one that probes the darker corners of its subject matter as well as the hopeful, inspirational ones.

However, it does not delve quite so deeply into the darkness as this reader might have hoped. This work does not fully explore the questions it raises. Yes, the novel plays with darkness, yet it draws the classic hard line delineation between good and evil, right and wrong. It does not present many shades of gray, but hearkens back to the golden age of comics where the "good guys" always act in a certain way. Why? Because they are heroic.

This resonates most clearly in the choice for the novel's alternate universe to exclude the impact of Katrina. While this reviewer tries to remain impartial to real world details while reading, the lack of even a single reference to that hurricane and its profound effects on both the area and its people made things seem a little... off.

Certainly there is madness to be found in these pages, and pain is no stranger here, but the story is ultimately a reassuring one. By the end of the book, a few of the major questions are resolved, but there are enough loose threads to feed another book or two (this reader suspects... wait for it... trilogy!). While those books, if they are given half the care of this, will undoubtedly be fine reads, thrilling stories of paranormal powered people trying to find justice in an essentially corrupt city, they have yet to venture down the darkest roads to which they aspire (see those authors above).

Have I been jaded by reading too much Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Frank Miller, Michael Millar, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, etc. etc.? This is a viable question. However, to review a book for a site like Horror Reader, I have to look at the material through a certain kind of lens.

Make no mistake:  Devil's Cape is a well told tale, a fine dark fantasy. But horror, alas, it is not. It shies away from consequences, and this reader found its emotional resonance limited.

This is not to say I'm less than eager to see What Happens Next (which, of course, is the driving question behind much of genre fiction). Fans of intriguing takes on superheroes will find much to savor in this work. Sure, it's not quite up to the aforementioned seminal works by Moore, Miller, &cetera, but the author is still growing. Give him a few more books, and we'll see where he takes us.

Devil's Cape by Rob Rogers
243 pages
Wizards of the Coast Discoveries
Release: April 2008

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