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Title: Black Easter (After Such Knowledge) by James Blish ISBN: 0-89968-392-4 Publisher: Buccaneer Books Inc Pub. Date: July, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (8 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Hell's Showing Its Age
Comment: This isn't a bad book by any means, but it's very period (one gets the impression the author desires to shock, but, almost 40 years later, there's nothing here to ruffle your maiden auntie's delicate feelings, I assure you.)
The book is brief, and tells a simple tale: a gentleman hires a magician to perform a task (after two earlier trials). There, that's it, that's the plot. Nowadays (not that now is better, but we're used to Now) that would be the set-up to the plot ... the book ends just as things are about to get interesting.
There is a sequel, the Day After Judgement, which picks up immediately afterward but which also somewhat disappoints.
Another fault--well, not a fault necessarily, but certainly a less-engaging choice--is that the horrors one might expect in a book about black magic are entirely played offstage, and only referred to. Imagine a Lord of the Rings with passages like "two weeks later they decided to go through Moria, where Gandalf died, unfortunately, fighting a Balrog. Still, with Lothlorien ahead, the Fellowship was somewhat optimistic." It's not a good thing.
There is a demon fashion-show/parade near the end which is worth a chuckle, but it's still not scary.
Blish' A Case of Conscience is much more compelling reading, so go there instead--unless you're a completist, or in the mood for a brief, non-unnerving look at the dark arts, circa 1967.
Note: a 3 star ranking from me is actually fairly good; I reserve 4 stars for tremendously good works, and 5 only for the rare few that are or ought to be classic; unfortunately most books published are 2 or less.
Rating: 5
Summary: A meticulous and powerful look at magic
Comment: This is a thesis novel in the sense that its events seem to have been carefully thought out before Blish even began to write the book - from the first page to the last, he leads the reader towards a powerful and inevitable conclusion. This isn't a work which should be read for 'plot surprises', but rather for its tight structure: Blish looks at magic with precise, almost clinical attention; as he set out to do in writing this work, he strips the book of extraneous details and instead confines himself to a select few questions and themes. The four main characters - Black magician Theron Ware, monk and White magician Father Domenico, weapons-maker Baines and his assistant Jack Ginsberg - all play clearly defined roles, each providing the reader a different point of view from which to evaluate what is being said and done. This is a difficult but memorable book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant, Pungent, Satanic Fun
Comment: First off, the fact that this is such a brilliant, pithy, amazingly tight little tome is doubly amazing when one realizes that the quite gifted Mr. Blish also wrote novelizations of Star Trek episodes. Ah well, even the best have to pay rent.
Second, there is no finer fictional chronicle of diabolism, either ancient or modern, in English, and none that I know of in most of Earth's other tongues. Each of Blish's characters is deftly crafted with a minimum of prose, a compliment which can extend to the rest of this slight and delicious book; Blish accomplished in a few pages what today's pompous and prolix authors take hundreds of pages to say...Stevie King, though the man can write when he wants to, comes to mind.
Finally---and a mild criticism---while it is delightful that Blish takes care to present Malefica as a discipline, it is (or was, for when I first read this I was merely thirteen) somewhat disenchanting to see that Blish gets most of the Satanic formulae, Latin incantations, and demon summoning paraphernalia hopelessly wrong. I have since found older grimoires to draw upon, though, and Black Easter is a work of fiction, so no victim, no foul.
All in all a devilishly clever and delightful book; for more nastiness pick up The Day After Judgement, which is actually the third in a trilogy (the first of which was After Such Knowledge).
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Title: Cities in Flight by James Blish ISBN: 1585670081 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: A Case of Conscience (Del Rey Impact) by James Blish ISBN: 0345438353 Publisher: Del Rey Books Pub. Date: 05 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Best Ghost Stories of J.S. Lefanu by Joseph Sheridan Lefanu ISBN: 0486204154 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 June, 1964 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Day After Judgement by James Blish ISBN: 0380595273 Publisher: Avon Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1982 List Price(USD): $2.50 |
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Title: Dr. Mirabilis by James Blish ISBN: 0380603357 Publisher: Avon Books Pub. Date: August, 1982 List Price(USD): $2.95 |
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