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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