Reviews

• Lovecraft with a message.

  A great lovecraftian horror with just enough of a twist to make it a great read. It's well told and keeps you going to the end. It won't take you long so give this story a try, you won't regret it.

• Brilliant!

  Victor LaValle’s “The Ballad of Black Tom” is a novella that I’ve been hearing quite a lot about. Most of the praise has come from people I trust in the community so I figured it was high time I investigated to see what all the fuss was about. “The Horror at Red Hook” is perhaps one of Lovecraft’s more infamous short stories in the sense that it had racist overtones, stemming from his dislike of living in Brooklyn for a time and the contempt that he felt over the number of immigrants in the area. This story is a little different for H.P. in the way that it is set completely in an urban area. Victor LaValle has taken the idea from “The Horror at Red Hook” and transformed it into a brilliant novella that features some of the characters from the original story along with Charles Thomas Tester – a black musician who assists in the unearthing of a pathway to the other side where “The Sleeping King” lurks. Tester (Black Tom) is a superb character, a down-to-Earth man trying to do right by his father and keep a roof over their heads. He is a competent musician that comes across an opportunity to earn some fast cash. And although Tester has his doubts, he can ill afford to pass it up. “The Ballad of Black Tom” is beautifully written. The setting of 1920s New York provides a superb backdrop and although this book is only relatively short, I had a real sense of what life was like during this time. The culture and feel is portrayed perfectly as Tester becomes involved in a shadowy quest to bring upon the end of mankind by awakening the Sleeping King! The novella is split up into two parts with the first half focusing on Tester and then a character shift to detective Malone (A character from Lovecraft’s original tale). The stories intertwine brilliantly and as the dread begins to build you can feel the darkness begin to close in around you. For me, Lovecraftian horror is all about the suggestive horrors that lurk in and beyond the shadows, a sort of show, don’t tell approach to storytelling. LaValle does a great job with this as well as creating some vivid and unsettling scenes of gore and horror. All manner of terrors await should you decide to pick up this outstanding novella. Madness, destruction, blood and fear; it’s all here in abundance for those brave enough to venture into these pages. LaValle has brought to life a tired old story by injecting some of his own personality into it and delivers a superb tale of Lovecraftian horror set in the 1920s. You can probably guess that I am very impressed.

• Very interesting, but not amazing.

  Not as radical a re-writing as I was expecting given the Black perspective, and definitely not enough anti-sexist subversiveness, but it's still a good read if you're looking for the flavour of good old cosmic horror.

• Excelente

  Excelente. Bem escrito, narrativa instigante. Um universo fantástico e ainda assim permite o florescer dos drama humanos. Uma imperdível leitura.

• Rafraichissant et fascinant

  Le genre de livre qu'on voudrait lire d'une seule traite et qu'on relit avec plaisir plus tard. Il aura parfaitement sa place dans n'importe quelle collection du mythe lovecraftien.

• Hinter Lovecrafts Fassade geblickt

  Charles Tester ist eigentlich ein Antiheld. Ohne besondere Talente fristet er sein Leben als "African American" anno 1924 in Harlem und verdient sein Geld durch Kurierdienste aller Art. Mehr läßt der krasse Rassismus der zwanziger Jahre nicht zu. Solange er von dem Verdienst seinen arbeitsunfähigen Vater ernähren kann, stört ihn das nicht weiter. Das ändert sich, als er eine mächtige Hexe namens Ma Att wissentlich betrügt und ein gewisser Robert Suydam ihm eine fabelhafte Summe anbietet, wenn er ihm für zwei Abende Gesellschaft leistet. Suydam führt Tester in eine Art Magie ein, die mächtiger ist als jede Hexerei: die Magie der Grossen Alten, zentriert um den Kult des "schlafenden Königs." Nun beginnt der sozial Abgehängte zu erahnen, welche ungenannten Möglichkeiten sich ihm eröffnen-selbst wenn er dafür seine Seele aufgeben muss... Dass Lovecraft und sein "Grauen von Red Hook" hier Pate standen, ist unübersehbar, genau so klar ist aber, dass der Autor-anders als Lovecraft-hier bei den Charakteren in die Tiefe geht und Schwarz/Weiß-Malereien gekonnt umschifft. Wer Spaß an hintergründigem Horror in einer komplexen Form hat, ist mit dieser Novelle bestens bedient!

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