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Title: Dark Gods by T.E.D. Klein ISBN: 0-670-80590-4 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: December, 1987 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Promising tales that fail to deliver
Comment: Since reading Dark Gods and Klein's novel The Ceremonies a dozen years or so ago, I had built up a legend of Klein's amazing talent and horror writing prowess in my head, fueled in part by this author's virtual disappearance from the world of publishing since the mid-1980s. I especially hailed this collection of four novellas as examples of unparalleled, Lovecraft-infused marvels of horror. Having now reread Dark Gods, I have to wonder just what I was thinking about years ago. Klein is definitely a talented author, but each of these novellas is disappointing in its own way. Children of the Kingdom has its moments, building up a story with giant worm-like entities insinuating themselves into a senior adult facility in New York, introducing us to a single-minded Costa Rican man attempting to prove that the birthplace of man was actually in Costa Rica and, tossing tradition upon its head, arguing that the lost tribe of Israel was in point of fact a lost tribe of Costa Rica. The ending, though, is just too ambiguous to be wholly satisfying - this is a problem that repeats itself in the remaining tales. Petey forces us to endure a smarmy dinner party, tossing in occasional insinuations about the former owner of the house; the best it manages to produce are some trivial parlor tricks with a certain Tarot card, refusing in the end to even acknowledge the type of denouement which the reader necessarily anticipates.
Black Man With a Horn is much better than the previous two novellas, introducing us to a failed missionary returning home in disguise in fear of something unspeakable happening to him. Our protagonist becomes an audience to this man's story of his work in Malaysia and witnesses his heavy unease regarding a symbolic black man blowing a horn (finding out later that the man is doing quite the opposite of blowing). Eventually, the protagonist comes to realize that the Chauchas his new acquaintance is running in fear from are none other than the Tcho-Tcho people described by H.P. Lovecraft , forcing him to conclude that these people actually exist after all. Much of the effect of this story is harmed by the protagonist's identity as an old horror writer who held a place in the Lovecraft Circle. Finally, there is Nadelman's God, the best story of the bunch but one that also ultimately disappoints. The premise is very good, though. Nadelman is a normal guy who wrote a lengthy decadent poem about a dark god who shows his love for man by punishing him. Some twenty years after the poem was published in his small college magazine, a rock group bases a song on the poem. This, indirectly, brings a strange young man into Nadelman's life, one who has taken the song literally, built an image in the likeness described therein, and claims to have given the creature life and a bid to do his god's work. The unwanted encroachment of this seemingly disturbed new "groupie" has an effectively stifling effect on Nadelman, but once again the conclusion fails to deliver much of a punch. The atmosphere is made ready for an impressive thunderstorm of an ending, but the storm never materializes.
Basically, Dark Gods contains two average stories and two promising pieces of fiction, all of which seem to shy away from delivering a conclusion of any force or satisfaction. I really hate to give this book only three stars, but I must. No matter how much I enjoyed these tales over a decade ago, I have to say that they each prove something of a let-down to me today.
Rating: 5
Summary: Worth Tracking Down
Comment: Most people who approach H.P. Lovecraft's peculiar genre of "weird fiction" do it in a way owing more to imitation than invention--such that modern Cthulhu Mythos tales have the sycophantic feel of fan fiction.
T.E.D. Klein, on the other hand, really twists those familiar themes about angry gods and forgotten races into new shapes. Here, Upper East Siders in the seventies contend with subterranean beasts during a blackout. A creature raised from hell upsets a house-warming party. A terrible poet accidentally writes a conjuring spell.
And what's more, it's scary--Klein understands how to make the juxtaposition between the familiar and the fantastic, more often mined for humor and irony, into something pretty unsettling.
This book is a lost classic.
Rating: 5
Summary: Well worth seeking out!
Comment: T.E.D Klien doesn't seem to haven't written much but whathe has written is brilliant. I guess its only his sparse output that prevents him being one of the best-known horror writers of moment. Dark Gods is a set of four equally novellas, my favourite being the one about a housewarming party that goes badly wrong (the title escapes me) but they're all equally good.
Unlike other tediously formulaic horror writers (step forward Koontz, Saul, Laymon etc) this author does not rely on stereotypes and overblown descriptions of nastiness to cause chills.
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Title: The Ceremonies by T. E. D. Klein ISBN: 0553250558 Publisher: Bantam Books Pub. Date: July, 1985 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
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Title: Gallery of Horror by Charles L. Grant, Stephen King, Eric Van Lustbader ISBN: 0451455150 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Son of the Endless Night by John Farris ISBN: 0312744684 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: February, 1985 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Shudder Again: 22 Tales of Sex and Horror by Michele B. Slung ISBN: 0451451856 Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: December, 1993 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Bad Dreams by Kim Newman ISBN: 0786702273 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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