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The Mona Lisa Sacrifice

by Peter Roman

The ’Geisters

by David Nickle

Connoisseurs of dark fantasy experience genuine joy in encountering authors who revel in the genre as much as they do. Two new books from ChiZine Publications set out to feed the desires of genre aficionados in different ways. 

The ’Geisters, a horror-fantasy tale that seeks to impress through sheer invention, offers a twist on familiar monsters. David Nickle, who displayed his knack for the uncanny in the short-story collection Monstrous Affections, tells the tale of Ann LeSage, a young woman who possesses her own poltergeist. She calls the creature “the Insect,” and has learned how to keep its more destructive tendencies in check. Fair enough, until she discovers she has married into a secret society of terror junkies, who want to take control of her ghost for their own ends.

Nickle takes his time unspooling the story, leaving readers to experience it through the disorienting perspective of his main character. However, the author squanders narrative momentum by alternating chapters between Ann’s encounters with her spook-addicted in-laws and her own family upbringing. Ann’s backstory feels mundane and overly detailed, even though it does tie in to the final payoff. The novel’s main attraction is the truly intriguing idea of the society of ’Geisters manipulating Ann and her ghost. To be fair, Nickle does get to the point eventually, with climactic scenes that are genuinely transgressive and deliver the right degree of skin-crawling revulsion.

If Nickle reinvents traditional genre tropes, Peter Roman, alter-ego of B.C. novelist Peter Darbyshire, simply knocks readers over the head with every imaginable concept. The Mona Lisa Sacrifice is a hard-boiled fantasy that mixes the immediate, visceral thrills of supernatural action with a tough-talking, noir-styled narrator named Cross, who approaches uncanny events and figures with a deadpan wit and glib asides.

That Cross also inhabits the reincarnated body of Jesus Christ, and spends his time running around stabbing angels, will likely prove the biggest stumbling block for readers, who will have to decide for themselves if the book leans too far into Dan Brown territory. Readers who choose to stick with it will be rewarded with a quixotic quest for the historical figure in Da Vinci’s most famous painting, whom Roman imagines as a gorgon out of Greek myth. There’s more to the plot of course – the usual threatened apocalypse, a stab at romance – but the journey is much more important than the destination.

Similar to authors like Jasper Fforde and Neil Gaiman, Roman plunders far and wide for his source material. Cross fights alongside King Arthur, romances Morgana le Fay, hangs out in libraries with Lewis Carroll’s Alice, and resurrects Princess Diana to shake her down for clues in his investigation.

The risk here is that too much wild humour might tilt into parody, a tendency this novel does skirt. At times, the book becomes a little too self-conscious, and the constant asides seem like a stylistic tic. For the most part, however, Cross’s tale sweeps you up with its gallows humour, whether you’re revelling in the pleasures of two-fisted, angel-punching action or the cleverly rendered language.

 

Reviewer: Ian Daffern

Publisher: ChiZine Publications

DETAILS

Price: $16.95

Page Count: 300 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-1-77148-145-8

Released: June

Issue Date: 2013-6

Categories: Fiction: Novels

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Reviewer: Ian Daffern

Publisher: ChiZine Publications

DETAILS

Price: $16.95

Page Count: 300 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-1-77148-143-4

Released: June

Issue Date: June 1, 2013

Categories: Fiction: Novels