The Divinity Student, by Michael Cisco
Fiona Webster
of the Bram Stoker Award winners, I post my own award winner
in the category of
1999 Horror Novel Most Worthy of Making
a Special Effort to Obtain and Read:
_The Divinity Student_, by Michael Cisco (Buzzcity Press)
It won the International Horror Guild for Best First Novel of
1999. Buzzcity is a tiny press, so you're going to have to
buy it via the mail, on faith (or hope). <smile>
(Stewart O'Nan's _A Prayer for the Dying_ is, in my own
opinion, the Best Horror Novel of 1999, but you don't have
to make a special effort to obtain it. It's out in paper
now, and available from the usual suspects.)
Here's a link to some info about _The Divinity Student_--not
necessarily the best link, but the first one I found:
http://www.bbr-online.com/catalogue/Items/DivinityStudent.shtml
Fiona Bob sez check it out.
Tell you what: I'll go out on a limb and say that I'll buy
up to 5 copies of this book from readers of RAHW, RAB, or RASW,
if they buy it, read it, and can honestly tell me they found it
not worth reading. It's no drop-dead masterpiece--first novels
rarely are--but it's a damn good horror novel. Both unusually
interesting and interestingly unusual. It's as if the Italo Calvino
of _Invisible Cities_ pens a story in which the character Edward
Scissorhands develops a perverse and scholarly devotion to corpses,
and then M. C. Escher joins up with Piranesi to do the set design.
Think surreal, outré, and meticulously detailed.
So again, I'm putting my money where my mouth is, and saying that
for the first 5 folks who find _The Divinity Student_ a real waste
of money and time, you get your money back. (Only if you keep the
book in decent condition, though. And no overseas postage.)
--Fi
Mark Dillon
>For no particular reason, except perhaps the recent posting
>of the Bram Stoker Award winners, I post my own award winner
>in the category of
>
> 1999 Horror Novel Most Worthy of Making
> a Special Effort to Obtain and Read:
>
> _The Divinity Student_, by Michael Cisco (Buzzcity Press)
That does sound interesting -- thanks for the tip!
By the way, Ms. Webster, have you read Richard Calder's recent
book, THE TWIST? Not his best novel (in my opinion that would
be DEAD GIRLS -- ignore the sequels) but vivid, fascinating and
morbidly perverse enough for me to recommend it to anyone
with a taste for weird gothic SF-Fantasy surrealism.
Currently available in British paperback from Earthlight --
try www.earthlight.co.uk for details.
Mark Dillon
Quebec, Canada
Fiona Webster
In the middle of the page, right under the white "Search"
field, you'll see "New Book Reviews." Click there and you'll
find the review.
By the way, I assure you I have no personal connection with
either the author or the publisher of this book. I just felt
like praising it. <smile>
Mark Dillon writes:
> By the way, Ms. Webster, have you read Richard Calder's recent
> book, THE TWIST? Not his best novel (in my opinion that would
> be DEAD GIRLS -- ignore the sequels) but vivid, fascinating and
> morbidly perverse enough for me to recommend it to anyone
> with a taste for weird gothic SF-Fantasy surrealism.
No, I haven't, Mark. Thanks for the tip. I've been hearing and
wondering about Calder for a while, but haven't even read _Dead
Girls_. When it comes to genres--as opposed to mainstream or
"literary" fiction--I'm pretty much a straight horror gal, but
I do read occasional science fiction to remind myself of what
it has to offer.
Let me ask you this: is _Dead Girls_ well-written? I know it's
supposed to be fun and a good story and all that, but does the
prose stand up to close examination? I'm much pickier about writing
quality when I venture outside my chosen genre. SF novels have
no chance of keeping my interest if they're not crafted well on
a word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence level. (Yes, I know that
_Dead Girls_ has a lot of horror content, but the premise is SF,
so I see it as SF until proven otherwise.) And what I've heard
about _Dead Girls_ makes me wonder if it's... how shall I put
this?... kind of sloppy and self-indulgent in style.
But let me hasten to say, I mean no offense toward SF by asking
this question. There's a lot of badly written horror fiction and
a lot of well-written science fiction. I'm just more tolerant
of mediocre and even bad writing in horror fiction.
--Fiona
Andy Katz
wrote:
>It won the International Horror Guild for Best First Novel of
>1999. Buzzcity is a tiny press, so you're going to have to
>buy it via the mail, on faith (or hope). <smile>
Negative. I jotted down the title and author. Read a brief summary on
Amazon--I'm a sucker for necromancy--and ordered it, feeling sly and
fortunate not to have had to leave my desk.
Won't Fiona be proud of me, I thought smugly.
But I spent this afternoon at Barnes & Noble perusing nothing in
particular, when there they were, three copies of the TDS with that
wonderful cover that suggests Kane or something by Piers Anthony done
by way of early Ridley Scott.
I thought, maybe I ought to buy this, read it, and send it to Fiona.
But what if I like it...?
>So again, I'm putting my money where my mouth is, and saying that
>for the first 5 folks who find _The Divinity Student_ a real waste
>of money and time, you get your money back. (Only if you keep the
>book in decent condition, though. And no overseas postage.)
Necromancy ... that's a real no-brainer for me.
Andy Katz
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