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but local gossip about the couple is intense the rumours culminating in the disappearance of hélène with further revelations of a truly horrific nature this is a long and fascinating story one that does many things so well it captures perfectly the feel of a small town where nothing much happens and so becomes fertile ground for rumour and gossip it shows how the lives of the aristocracy differ so completely from that of others and it evokes young love first love the throes of infatuation how the unsuitable nature of the object of affection only adds to its appeal lastly the dark currents that are strong in the story come to a head with final revelations and conjecture that are reminiscent of poe s work in their bizarre awfulness and suppressed eroticism i thoroughly enjoyed it the unknown woman is a provincial high society lady who comes to paris to indulge her love of rough trade with complications when one of her partners is implicated in a murder and only she can give him an alibi but the artist who brokered the deal and tells the story reveals that her perversity runs much deeper it s a shocking and revelatory piece as is the next story the lover of consumptives about a man who only has relationships with dying women but the narrator of the story turns things on their head to find something noble and romantic in the man s behaviour title story the soul drinker tells of serge and his hopeless obsession with a certain woman how it sours everything else for him including the embraces and love of other women and yet at the end there is the sense that he doesn t really want to shake off this woman who taints his life so that he is himself the soul drinker of the title wanting to devour the very essence of the woman and sick because he never can in ophelius the narrator is summoned to the bed of his friend claudius who has been taken inexplicably ill but the woman who calls him is one he knew in the past and hates thinking that she has somehow beguiled claudius to attack him there are deep currents here thick emotions of hatred and outrage laid bare as the two play their games and each seeks to leave the other in the wrong with claudius and his obsessions the battleground on which they compete it s a compelling and elusive story beautifully nuanced and emotionally subtle in hylas a child flees the palace because he fears what the love of the king will mean for him but the enchantment that draws him on is ersatz and he has mixed feelings about the life he has abandoned regret and hope for the future inextricably entangled day s end is an evocative word picture of the aftermath of an uprising in byzantium a survivor wandering through rooms filled with corpses the story ending on a note of pure horror the legend of the three princesses has the daughters of a king fall in love with the son of a gardener and abandon their roles and people in various ways to pursue the infatuation even though it ultimately proves hopeless the story mildly enjoyable for its phrasing and imagery but nothing special in a bohemian tale royalty seeks to conquer and bind a fabled musician who is the embodiment of amour it s a delightful fable well written and engaging but with nothing much to it all the same princess ottilia is both deaf and dumb but falls in love with a nobleman who serenades her only to run afoul of her vicious and degenerate brother this is a strange story with much going on in the background particularly the suggestion that the prince harbours more than brotherly feelings for his sister or that he is jealous his favourite is paying court to her the marquise de spolête is a story with an almost jacobean tinge as the lady makes a fool of her royal husband betraying him with other men and ruling in his stead only to suffer a terrible vengeance when she puts on a play based on the story of salome the princess under glass is in a coma the story relating how at first an object of veneration over the course of time she is forgotten and abandoned though bringing forgiveness to her formerly evil and now repentant brother it is a fairy tale of sorts one that captures our fascination with the unusual and changing attitudes as they are incorporated into the everyday but with a redeeming twist at the end in the mandrake a queen gives birth to a frog setting in chain a series of unfortunate and bloody events this is the last story in the collection and i am not sure i understood it at all the events all seemed rather random and the mandrake nothing more than a distraction though the visions and imagery are nightmarishly effective i think i need to read it again but nothing in the text really encourages that a triumph of style over substance perhaps it was a lacklustre end note to a collection that had some weak stories but whose finest offerings are bound to appeal to the connoisseur of stylish horror fiction posted in uncategorized leave a comment trailer trash fall 2 deadpoint posted on july 27 2026 by petertennant as someone who doesn t get on well with heights i ll probably give this a miss and the music is making me cringe posted in uncategorized leave a comment too old to rock n roll too young to die posted on july 24 2026 by petertennant the best track from jethro tull s 1976 album of the same name and there are days when i know exactly how they feel posted in uncategorized leave a comment nr nightmares of an ether drinker posted on july 22 2026 by petertennant as well as producing a substantial body of work under his own name science fiction writer brian stableford 1948 2024 produced over two hundred translations of books of early science fiction and fantasy by predominantly french language writers over the years a number of publishers have taken advantage of this prodigious output but as snuggly books were the ones who sent me review copies theirs are the titles i m going to discuss on this blog starting with jean lorrain s nightmares of an ether drinker originally published in 1895 under the title sensations et souvenirs this collection was resurrected by stableford and snuggly in 2016 as with his other translations from french language authors brian stableford opens with a lengthy introduction in which he provides us with information about the author s life and literary endeavours jean lorrain 1855 1906 real name paul duval with his lost inheritance repressed homosexuality wicked way with words and facility for getting involved in duels has a more intriguing resume than most and of course there is as the book s title implies his imbibing of ether regarding which stableford has opinions but little to no certainty as to motivation in the end it was the cause of lorrain s untimely and messy death the twenty seven stories gathered in this volume are split into five sections the first of which is early stories the opening story is a conversation piece of sorts set at a fashionable salon and detailing the existence of the egregore a unique kind of monster that feeds on the delusions of its victims in the funeral oration the narrator details the circumstances leading up to the death of his friend how an addiction to ether was his undoing and the woman who introduced him to the drug a memory recounted by a man in old age the locked room is a subtle and understated tale of a ghostly visitation experienced while staying at a rather sinister hunting lodge in magic lantern a man at a concert in the interval accuses a physicist of destroying mystery and magic through his confounded science only to endure a rebuttal where his antagonist points out all the unusual people in the audience as proof that the numinous remains just as strong and present as ever in the world there s a decadent eroticism in the glass of blood as an opera singer who gave up her career and married a man simply to be with his daughter gratifies an unusual appetite beyond recounts how a man whose wife is in ill health was strongly reminded of her while fucking a whore and considered the connection to have a mystic angle the story undercut by an argument about how perceptive young writers are in identifying a mood change to support psychic phenomena such as this finally we have glaucous eyes in which the attraction of an ageing femme fatale is explained by her eyes eyes that can still compel a man to the point of death the sensations section opens with one of them or the spirit of the masque in which a man is beguiled by the unusual costume of a masked reveller and decides to follow him only to wonder if there is some connection between them the story as unsettling as it is ambiguous the narrator s friend serge goes to live in an undesirable residence where he hears footsteps in the walls which eventually drive him close to losing his sanity the story a lovely variation on the haunted house theme and all the more effective for having nothing really explained more hauntings with a troubled night spent by a guest at an old house where he has nightmares of horrendous birds invading his room with a discovery that confirms his culpability in what has happened the story building effectively and then introducing an almost comic ending that nevertheless works extremely well in a posthumous protest an artist who plagiarises an old master in a particularly macabre way ends up haunted by his subject serge is back for an uncanny crime which he witnesses while staying at a hotel two guests arriving for a costume ball but one of them taking advantage of the other and inflicting ether on his companion the whole story delightfully weird and inexplicable with touches of eyes wide shut as if written by ligotti the holes in the mask is the finest story in the collection a superb example of weird fiction as a man is taken by his friend to a masked ball where nothing is quite what it seems the production shot through with disturbing imagery and an anything can happen mood with no succour at all from the it was only a dream style ending bored by paris the visionary has memories of the seaside port he lived in as a child and a hideous image of a giant doll floating into the harbour and in the possessed recurring character serge is terrified of reality all the ugly people he sees every day at the same time realising that the condition is his own fault the protagonist of the final story in this section feels compelled to entertain an unwelcome guest but as their one sided meeting progresses he realises that the young man is talking to an unseen entity the double the story an unsettling word picture of an unhinged mind or perhaps not next section souvenirs opens with another horror story the toad with a man recounting an event from his childhood in which an idyllic family retreat was spoiled forever by the discovery of the dying toad in water from which he had been drinking the story a masterly exercise in setting the reader up and then pulling the rug out from under his feet a young boy sits night watch over his dying mother and during the night frightful manifestations are witnessed there s a folk horror feel to the spirit of the ruins in which a young aristocrat sojourning with a friend in the country has two encounters with an elderly woman thought to be a witch the story building its disturbing effects to cause a gathering disquiet even though nothing truly terrible happens only the sense of the minatory fourth section récits begins with a man regaling his guests with the story of a strange couple a man and boy who stayed in the residence known as dolmance with echoes of something terrible taking place only to then deliver a striking twist in the tale on one january night a book dealer gets lost going home and witnesses a scene of torture through the window of a house a house that he can t find the next morning though what he learns of its previous owner offers something of an explanation for the disturbing vision at a séance the spectral hand offers a prophecy of murder to come which is then fulfilled the details of the séance engrossing and gratifyingly different from the usual run of such things the medium from the previous story falls prey to darkness going into a coma and possessed by demons which need to be exorcised and for the final section of the book we have contes fairy tales of the kind catulle mendes did so well we ll discuss a book by him later the princess of the red lilies is kept in seclusion by her royal father her actions causing the death of men who oppose him on the field of battle until a suitor arrives and the spell is undone at a terrible cost in the princess at the sabbat a vain princess is punished by fairies who lure her to a witches sabbat where her mirror image is stolen the story rich in imagery and lovely touches of detail long story narkiss tells of the terrible fate of the egyptian equivalent of narcissus a descendant of the goddess isis whose power is negated by a jealous priesthood who fear his beauty and so exile him to the ruined temple complex where he dies the tale one of innocence punished ilys in the princess aux miroirs attends a sabbat in the hope of securing a philtre to preserve her beauty but the witches trick her the story rich with imagery and minatory notes a fitting end to this vibrant collection of tales where if some of the individual offerings feel slight as witness the occasional paucity of my comments they are all eminently readable posted in uncategorized leave a comment trailer trash spider man brand new day posted on july 21 2026 by petertennant along came a spider posted in uncategorized leave a comment suicide posted on july 17 2026 by petertennant last track on octoberon bjh s album that turns fifty this year if released now this track would probably have a trigger warning and rightly so beautiful music but the subject matter is as depressing as the title would suggest give it a miss if you re feeling fragile posted in uncategorized leave a comment nr the spirit of the place other strange tales the complete short stories of elizabeth walter posted on july 15 2026 by petertennant in his introduction to this 2017 release from shadow publishing editor dave brzeski gives us a detailed account of the life and career of elizabeth walter 1927 2006 much of that life was spent in publishing but though she rose to the lofty heights of editor of the collins crime club walter s most notable success as a writer was in the horror ghost story genre with five collections published between 1965 and 1975 modern readers are warned though that collections at that time were considerably slimmer volumes than now with her most substantial volume containing only seven stories this omnibus assembles together all five of those collections thirty one stories in all snowfall other chilling events 1965 opens with title story snowfall in which brian s car breaks down forcing him to seek shelter and becoming involved in the fate of an anthropologist who made the mistake of stealing a sacred statue from practitioners of voodoo it s a story that starts ordina...
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