Solomon Kane - Movie Review

Solomon Kane Movie  - 5/5 stars!

Distribution nightmare: This was made for non-USA markets in 2009, not shared in the States until now, Aug 2012, via Video On Demand-iTunes. A complex distribution has it rentable via Amazon Instant Video (Watch Before it's in Theatres) for a limited time (perhaps only before it hits theaters?) ... and intermittently available for purchase/rental from iTunes. US Region 1 DVDs have not been released yet.  It is due it theaters in select US locations this Sept. 2012.

A new Kane: This Solomon Kane is not R.E. Howard’s hero (Howard being the originator of the character with his ~1930’s pulp fiction), but the movie remains true to the core elements that made the Solomon Kane stories so appealing for Howard fans: dark adventure, witches and witchcraft, puritan vs. devil conflict, cool creatures, and emotive imagery.  Rather than a puritan hunting Satan’s devil with immeasurable passion, Michael Bassett portrays Solomon Kane as a rebellious royal avoiding the devil claiming his sinful soul.  

Ultimately the conflict is still “Solomon Kane vs. Devil”, but rather than Howard’s paranoid crusader who was ostensibly “good” (motivated by his perception of God to confront evil), we get treated to an anti-hero who avoids being dragged to hell. This Kane tries to renounce violence, joins a ministry, and eventually gets paired with some Puritans—so he still wears the Puritan hat and fights devils.  Sparse guns exist, but this is best classified as Sword & Sorcery. Those disappointed in the 2011 movies of the same genre (Season of the Witch 2011 and Conan the Barbarian 2011) should be very excited to see horror-fantasy done professionally.  With the mix of adventure and spiritual horror, expect a blend of the infamous Exorcist (1973) with Jackson’s famous Lords of the Rings movie trilogy.   

As captured in an earlier post, Michael Bassett will be delivering the Silent Hill sequel!  

  

Reader Reviews for Lords of Dyscrasia - 2012

2011 reader reviews were captured in a previous post, while the Review Tab (link) attempts to share all reviews. This post consolidates reviews for 2012 (so far) being posted on many disparate websites. The highlights are lines that I considered being particularly helpful.

GOODREADS.COM REVIEWS

• DC Goodreads.com  Read in August, 2012,   Recommended for: lovers of gore, dark fantasy enthusiasts 

"Just be mindful to sacrifice your dark emotions whence you arrive. Your soul will pale. The hue of your memories will desaturate. You will be cleansed. Protected."

This is a story of a man who worked to free himself from a lineage of bondage. He starts with simply denying the Rite of Inheritance of his forefathers, and soon finds himself undead and clothed in the skin of his enemies. For this is the land of the Lords of Dyscrasia, a land where blood and ichor color the landscape.
Reanimation, specters and murderers are ever-present here, as are the traces of insectan elders and terrible harpies. They battle for the supremacy of their masters, fueled by contempt and guilty memories. They fill your senses with sanguine touches, and they haunt your soul with unforgiving murmurs. I would definitely say that this is unique. I haven't read a lot of this genre, of speculative/horror/gore, but I must say that I had quite an enjoyable ramble as I walked through a world where I could sink my feet in bloodied pools or rotten corpses.
While this is not a book for the sick of heart, it is a fairly great story told by quite a technical hand. You have to be rather good at context clues (but it wouldn't be a problem if you're paying enough attention), but the details are consistent, surprising, shocking. I had some problems with the storytelling (rather confusing at times), but I'm sure that some details may be bypassed while still enjoying the story. The unraveling of the plot itself, however, was pretty good. The little details were significant too, which surprised me as I went along.
(Oh, and just to add: I absolutely loved Dey's parts. I liked this young artist of a man, with his sketches and searches for pigment. Bonus points for Dey!) If you have no qualms reading dark fantasy (and feeling as if you've bathed in blood), pick up this book and enjoy. Come, the Lords of Dyscrasia are beckoning, calling you to claim your nightmares. 

• Sherri's review Aug 24, 12   If you like horror, fantasy and mythology, this is your book! I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline. It was a little slow – and at times a little confusing – toward the beginning, but the story picked up by the second chapter and delivered everything I wanted in a horror story: decapitation, disembowelment, cannibalism, castration (my personal favorite), rape, incest, mythological Gods, insects, birds…the list goes on. It was very disturbing, but that’s what I like. I want a story that shocks the conscious and this story delivered! Bravo, Mr. Lindberg, for a job well done! The story was unusual and your artwork was phenomenal. I look forward to reading your future novels. 

• Chris Einhaus's review Feb 24, 12   This book has some curious ideas and strong characterization. The main characters go through many trials and the will of their souls are challanged on every page. The loss that the main characters go through is heartbreakening and yet they carry on. The last 30 pages were harder to read through and I almost gave up but I skipped over a couple of pages so that I would not miss the ending. If Lindberg could shorten the book a little then the story would be tighter and feel less sometimes like a long journey but a great adventure.  This is also the first book I have read on the Nook Color.

Beauty in Ruins - Blog 

Review by Bob Milne, Friday, January 20, 2012

I don't generally read a lot of small-press or self-published books, but when one snags my attention, I'm more than willing to give it a shot. Lords of Dyscrasia is one of those books where everything fell into place - the cover caught my eye; the review blurb comparing it to "the works of Poe and Lovecraft" made me curious; and the concept of infected bloodlines, diseased souls, and necromancy assured it a spot on my shelf.

Stylistically, this was a very interesting read, with a mix of high fantasy, pulp adventure, and visceral horror that worked as well as I could have hoped. Elements of it did indeed remind me, at different times, of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, but I also detected the flavour of Robert E. Howard, and even some early Books of Blood era Clive Barker.  The storyline here is interesting, and the investment in the mythology is quite impressive. It's definitely one of the more unique concepts I've come across in a long while, taking a very Cthulhu-like approach to an otherwise standard fantasy trope of interracial breeding and the mingling of mortal & immortal races. The world-building doesn't quite live up to the mythology, but only because we don't get explore enough of it.

This is a very intense, very frantic, very driven read that leaps from scene to scene. The action and the tension is relentless, which has a definite appeal for some readers, but I felt it suffered somewhat because of it. I think one more pass at the story to build some narrative bridges between the scenes, and to pad out the intensity with some subtler moments of reflection could have really served the book well. It's not very often that I put down a book wishing it had been just a bit longer, but her I would have welcome some fluff to round things out.  That said, what's on the page works very well. Doctor Grave is a fantastic character, secretive and manipulative, but driven by an honest purpose. His ethereal assistant is definitely a nice touch, and the ways in which she is used outside the Doctor's environment were a very pleasant surprise. Lysis, unfortunately, came across as a bit one-dimensional for me. I would have like to see some more vulnerability in him, some lighter emotions, but I suspect that lack is due more to the unrelenting intensity of his quest than to any failings on the part of the book.

Other reviewers have said this is a very dark book, and they're right. This is pulp fantasy for the horror fan (not the other way around), and it is wonderfully grotesque. There's a very clinical detachment from much of the horror, which actually serves to elevate the monstrosities to a higher level. Like I said earlier, this reminds me of Books of Blood era Clive Barker on the page, or original Hellraiser era Clive Barker on the screen, and I delighted in that visceral element.  By no means a perfect book, but one that manages to offer something new, and which does an admirable job of bringing it all together. I look forward to seeing what Lindberg produces next, and would even be up for a reread were he to expand the text here . . . an author's preferred edition, if you will.

Amazon Reviews

Mixed feelings about this one, June 13, 2012; By K. Sozaeva "Obsessive bibliophile"
Disclosure: I received a free ebook copy of this text from the LibraryThing Members Giveaway program in exchange for an honest review.

Dyscrasia is a terrible disease in this book - one affecting mainly pregnant women who, if they survive their pregnancy, give birth to mutated creatures half-way between human and elder. The elders are either avian or insectile and they themselves are becoming extinct, leaving only a few, lesser members behind. The cult of people who worship the elders are called Picti, and Lord Endenken is the last of the Lysis clan, the only ones who can handle the power that is transmitted through their blood, only able to mate with those of the same blood or the dyscrasia takes them. It's quite a dilemma, and Endenken wants nothing to do with it - he wants to make his own way.

Lindberg has a real way with words - the language washes over the reader, completely immersing one within the world being created. But this is a very dark world that has been created - while many scenes occur in the daylight, everything I see in my mind is dark - there is no light anywhere. Also the scope is very large - there are scenes, of course, but overall it feels like everything is taking place at a distance. Analyzing my reaction, I think the reason I felt this way is that there are no "good" sides; everyone is really sort of evil, and there is no hero - or antihero - for which to root. Endenken is the main focus of the story, and he started with good intentions, but he's really not a nice man at all. Without someone to root for, I was left feeling sort of unmoored in the story. Dey was the only one I really felt any sympathy toward, and I much preferred Cypria and her quest for freedom over Haemarr.

All the art in this book - cover image and illustrations - are also done by the author. Amazing the amount of talent in one person! Also, amazing how much he overuses exclamation points... Every sentence that could possibly be emphatic ends with an exclamation point! I didn't notice it at first, but eventually I started to see that there was indeed exclamation point abuse occurring. There was also a lot of very awkward and ungrammatical phrasing throughout the book, although since this was an ARC, that might have been corrected before the final publication.

So, I have mixed feelings about this book. The language is lovely and it is beautifully written in many ways, but there is an excess of exclamation points and awkward/ungrammatical phrasing. There is no real hero/antihero for whom to cheer - or at least there were none for whom I felt any connection - and the scope is so large it is sometimes hard to keep track of it. I am sure there are some fans of high fantasy, especially dark fantasy, who will quite enjoy this tale, but it really wasn't for me.

LibraryThing Reader Reviews

(  )twlite | Apr 4, 2012 | 
I won this book from a Library Thing giveaway

This book is a Fantasy/Horror novel. It's very vivid and has many dark and graphic scenes, so it's not for everyone. That being said, this book is a very intense, but moves along fairly quickly. It will keep you turning pages all the way through.

There is a blood disease that is plaguing the elder of the Underworld. Doctor Grave tries to save them by placing the soul of dying Queen into the blood of Lord Ante Lysis. The soul then passes to his descendants until Doctor Grave can resurrect her again. Edenken Lysis journeys to the Underworld to try to get rid of the plague from his soul. He must fight his own battles though, his past and the Doctor's minions.

It's very fast past and very vivid. This book is very gory, but if you like that, it's a great read and you will highly enjoy it. I haven't read a book quite like this one before, so it was a surprise. The characters are great and well rounded. They aren't just good and bad but a mix of both that makes them much more interesting. I don't normally read this graffic of a novel. There are a lot of very evil subjects in the book that may be very difficult to read, so please by warned. This book wasn't my "type" of novel, but it was well written by the Author and could be a very good read for someone who doesn't mind the gore and some of the stuff they do. Although this book wasn't my kind of thing, I gave it 4 stars because the book was well written and may be to the next persons liking. 

Solomon Kane AND Silent Hill - Michael Bassett Movie Updates

Michael Bassett is director and writer of two movies on my annual Sword & Sorcery film queue (see post: 2012 movie queue), and this month two important updates were announced:

1) Solomon Kane

After three years, Solomon Kane has finally made it across the pond to the US; it is due out Aug 24 (video-on-demand, iTunes) and then select theaters Sept..  Granted Kane uses guns on occasion, but no one denies that R.E. Howard's dark hero is firmly in the Sword & Sorcery genre.  Here is the US trailer:

 

2) Silent Hill Revelations 3D

The sequel is coming to US Halloween 2012!   As I have conceded previously, Silent Hill is not 100% Sword and Sorcery, but it is a mix of Horror-Fantasy and Pyramid Head does have a large sword.   It certainly appeals to the same crowd that enjoys the weird "pulp" style fantasy that included supernatural horror (i.e. original Conan).  I have my doubts regarding the 3D hype since dark imagery does not usually lend itself to clear 3D viewing. 


The yahoo embedded player  crashes in the Chrome Browser, so here is the yahoo movie link: http://yhoo.it/OTKSuY

The Swords of Night and Day - Review of D. Gemmell's Book

The Swords of Night and Day by David Gemmell
S.E. Lindberg's rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Swords of Night and Day is just okay. Given the amount of material Gemmell had to work with, this book falls flat but is still somewhat enjoyable. It merely recaps events explained in the previous books, but in a confusing way. Having read and enjoyed Gemmell's books (i.e. Legend, White Wolf, The King Beyond the Gate) I was anxious to delve into another. However, it does not add much to the series.  Fans of the series will enjoy it, otherwise it is not highly recommended.

- The Drenai series spans eleven books, though it really is several mini-series with connections to the same land. In this case, "Swords of Night and Day" is a sequel to "White Wolf" in which Skilganon was introduced; this book explores the magic/technology of resurrecting him (and other heros and villains). Although the magic/technology of resurrection is loosely explored, it is done inconsistently. One moment, these powers are causing everyone to have cancer and become mutated, the next moment the powers are healing people and allowing them to live indefinitely. I am okay with unharnessed powers doing uncontrollable things, but here the powers are told to be controlled… then shown to be uncontrolled for select people.

- Despite their rebirth, the characters and motivations are not developed what so ever. I would have hoped to learn more about Skilganon, Jianna, etc.

- The book has nothing to do with the titular “Swords of Night and Day”, other than the fact that their owner is a key character; nothing about the demons inside the blade, the weapon's history, its creation, etc. are explored. In fact, the book has several cool powerful items re-emerge from ancient history, but then they are not really used. Seriously, the Armor of Bronze marks a guy as a leader, which elevates his power over a regiment of humans, but it really doesn't do much. One may expect that the armor be magically protective, or impart some supernatural strength to those who wear it--not here.

- Many contrived scenes exist that just appear odd. These instances fail to ratchet up the tension and could have been handled much more smoothly and convincingly.
(1) In one case, the hero mysteriously detects “undetectable” wraiths approaching...has 30min or so to prepare for the fight???...decides to leave the group he is supposed to protect so he can fight the wraiths… but he doesn't actually know where the enemy is (even though he could detect them???) so he goes to a random location to get ready (so the weaker folk are now vulnerable)...then the shadow creatures find him... but our invincible hero begins to lose the battle… until his less-capable party finds and rescue him???. Why not have the wraiths just attack the group directly?
(2) In another case, a women Askari learns her village has been destroyed, and her response is to do nothing emotional... but immediately seduce the man who failed to protect it (and the language is lighthearted…the man calling his wolf-like friends silly rascals as they try to watch).
(3) Stavi spends 250pages building a special pack of warrior creatures, helps them join ranks with the human Legion who is afraid of said creatures (they all join a single “pack” and have a mini ceremony), drags his land-lubber pack many miles on barges to do battle because “the creatures want to fight with him”... then when the battle starts, he dismisses them, commanding them to "go hunt and be free" ??? ... so his pack does leave … but guess what? surprise … they come back to fight.


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Inspiring Natural Sculptures: Beautiful, Scary, Sentient?

Dark Beauty

First let us calibrate our expectations when it comes to the face of evil.  We expect scary, bad things to be ugly, right?  Devils are rarely depicted as pleasing to look at.  Conversely, good things, like angels, are beautiful.  Viewer's perception of art is influenced by these expectations.  For instance, many believe that Frazetta's dark fantasy illustrations are full of gore (despite the lack of blood... see Weird, Dark Art Design: Implicit vs. Explicit Gore and Horror). So if your intention is create dark art, then how do you approach the design?  Should your devils appear ugly?  Does the horror have to be embodied in a devil?  What inspires your art (your muse), and how will you choose to represent it?

Weird fiction masters (Poe, Lovecraft, Smith...) documented their intense philosophies about instilling beauty in their weird works (see prior blog post: Dark Muses I: The undercurrent of "Art" in Weird literature).  They viewed their horror works as beautiful art. Can horrific things, evil enemies or works of art, really be full of beauty?  Certainly fantasy fiction requires some type of monstrous element, usually the antagonist force is sentient and ugly (mythological beasts, aliens, orcs, devils, etc.).  Consider the horror otherwise. What if a terrible threat emerged from something we thought of as inanimate and beautiful?

The Terrible Beauty of Kudzu, a Dark Muse

I discovered my favorite beautiful horror ~20yrs ago on a road trip to Georgia (on Route 75); conveying my awe at the yet-to-be-identified vine sculptures I saw en route, my cousins corrected my enthusiasm for the beauty I had witnessed and educated me on the horrors of "kudzu." Imported to increase ground cover in the Southeast, this uncontrollable, evil vine now extends into Ohio.  However, to the ignorant, the sculptures appear as beautiful, continuous green blankets. The ability to create art is considered a critical point in the evolution of man's intelligence. Usually artificial things (items made by man) are discernible from natural ones, and we gain some sense of security knowing the difference.  But what horrors await us if brainless things like vines begin making large-scale sculptures?  If art self-assembles from chaos, should we be awed or terrified?

Here is recent photo of Kudzu I took while my wife took a turn driving on our trek from Cincinnati, Ohio to Charleston, South Carolina (again on Route 75, image taken in southern KY...okay, a confession is in order, since I took not one...but hundreds of pictures, being so mesmerized, and distracted her driving).  Not shown here, is the imminent devastation of all the growth serving as a template; in other words, all the hidden trees beneath are being smothered. This beauty is terrible!  My fascination remains solid however.  Kudzu has become one of my dark muses.

For more images formed by Kudzu, I recommend touring JJ Anthony’s site:

Natural Beauty

Incidentally, right before vacation, I finally joined the social community for artists, DeviantArt.com (please visit: http://selindberg.deviantart.com/ :) ). The kudzu imagery is reminiscent of ice sculptures captured by Niccolo Bonfadini, a photographer I "watch/subscribe to" (check his work out (link)...actually, I highly recommend browsing DA if you have not already, it is a great wealth of inspiration and talent).  These ice sculptures are another example of natural elements templating trees, however I believe the vegetation in Finland survives the winter.  Regardless, the apparent self assembly of monoliths is ominous.  They evoke Arthur Clarke's strange monoliths: nicely carved, inanimate, intelligent.  

©2012 *niccolobonfadini 

Finnish Landscape by *niccolobonfadini His caption: During winter, with temperatures ranging from -40 to -15, the trees in some areas of the Finnish Lapland get completely covered by snow and ice. This makes for a unique landscape, where everything is white and frozen as far as the eyes can see. That morning I slept in my tent to watch the sun rise from the top of a hill. 

Escapist allegory versus implicit preaching: Can you still enjoy a fantasy novel knowing it derived from established religion?

This month’s (June 2012) CNN article “The Gospel of Stephen King” reveals that his horror novels are influenced heavily by Christianity!  Oh the terror!  This equally terrifies readers (often wanting an escape from enjoying established answers to all things spiritual) and religious folk (how can a Satanic horror novel be representative of our good Savior’s message?).  From the article, King explains:

The Bible is filled with terror: demons, ghosts, floods wiping out mankind and the rising of the dead.  “Good horror examines the struggle between good and evil,” he says. “The Bible is the history of that struggle. “The Bible is in many ways the ultimate horror novel.”

This evokes the common rite of passage that fiction readers experience:

1. Young adults read an introductory horror-fantasy novel from a famous author (J.R.R.Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, Stephen King, Anne Rice,…)
2. They enjoy the first novel, so they consume more from the same author.  
3. They discover that their favorite books are religious allegories (eh gods!)
4. They cope with being disillusioned/betrayed. 

Niel Gaimen summarized this phenomenon well with his twelve year old boy character, Richard Grey, in his short story One Life Furnished with Early Moorcock within the anthology Michael Moorcock's Elric: Tales of the White Wolf:

Richard had, however, finally given up (with, it must be admitted, a little regret) his belief in Narnia.  From the age of six -- for half his life-- he had believed devoutly in all things Narnian; until last year, rereading The Voyage of The Dawn Treader for perhaps the hundredth time, it had occurred to him that the transformation of the unpleasant Eustace Scrub into a dragon, and his subsequent conversion to belief in Aslan the lion, was terribly similar to the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus; if his blindness were a dragon...

This having occurred to him, Richard found correspondences everywhere, too many to be simple coincidence.

Richard put away the Narnia nooks, convinced, sadly, that they were allegory; that an author (whom he trusted) had been attempting to slip something past him.  He had had the same disgust with the Professor Challenger stories when the bull-necked old professor became a convert to Spiritualism; it was not that Richard had any problems believing in ghosts -- Richard beleved, with no problems or contradictions, in everything -- but Conan Doyle was preaching, and it showed through the words.  Richard was young, and innocent in his fashion, and believed that authors should be trusted, that there should be nothing hidden beneath the surface of a story.

Like it or not, speculative fiction is influenced by religion

One the one hand, all fantasy plots have been explored ad nauseum (read Fraser’s The Golden Bough).  After all, a great deal of literature has accumulated since man began recording stories (history).  Every combination of soap opera between man, beast, self, god, etc. has been covered, so much so, that any myth/story can be considered derivative of a prior (i.e. replaced) myth or religious allegory.  Myths even maintain a consistent story structure across beliefs, time, geographies (Campbell’s Monomyth).  In fact, most religions have cannibalized each other's stories (yes, most of the stories in the Bible are derived from pre-existing myths…oh the terror!).

	The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Sir James George Frazer,1854–1941)
	The Hero with a Thousand Faces ( by mono-myth espouser Joseph Campbell )

So whether writers/readers/religious-folk want to acknowledge it or not, fantasy, myths, and religious tales are derivative.

The funny mystery is why that revelation should horrify readers and religious folk alike.  If you enjoyed fiction derived from stories that humanity continues to enjoy retelling, who cares to whom credit is assigned for its creation?  Will the act of reading religious-based fiction automatically indoctrinate atheists into some  institution they have an aversion to?  If you enjoy the Bible, does the fact that many of the stories in the Old and New Testaments evolved from "myths" bother you?  This philosophical mess is what drives readers away from trying to figure "it" all out.  Can we not enjoy stories, escape from assigning credit or truth to any of it?  Going back to Niel Gaimen's thoughts expressed through his character Richard Grey, we are reminded why many of us desire innocent escapism:

At least the Elric stories were honest.  There was nothing going on beneath the surface there: Elric was the etiolated prince of a dead race, burning with self-pity, clutching Stormbringer, his dark-bladed broadsword – a blade which sang for lives, which ate human souls and which gave their strength to the doomed and weakened albino.

Nifft the Lean - Review of Michael Shea's Book

Nifft the Lean by Michael Shea
S.E.Lindberg's rating: 4 of 5 stars

More appropriately named “Nifft the Tour Guide” since the four short stories comprising this do not develop Nifft’s character or his motivations. His presence is a mere instrument for the author (or the author’s fictional historian, Shag Marigold) to describe entertaining adventures worthy of recording.

Shae offers a strange, effective mix: non-scary, detailed, weird narratives (this is weird fantasy to be sure, but a “fun” version). Readers should expect engaging, detail-packed guided tours through hell and otherworlds. There are battles and adventures, but one should NOT expect being terrified (it is not weird horror like Lovecraft) and do NOT expect heroic battles (Nifft is not Howard’s Conan).

Shae’s strength is his meticulous detail of strange worlds which can only be conveyed by using examples:

“Those waters teemed, Banar. They glowed, patchily, with a rotten orange light, and in those swirls of light you could see them by the score: little bug-faced ectoplasms that lifted wet, blind eyes against the gloom, and twiddled their feelers imploringly; and others like tattered snakes of leper’s-flash with single human eyes and lamprey mouths. And there were bigger things too, much bigger, which swam oily curves through the light-blotched soup. One of these lifted a complete human head from the waters on a neck like a polyp’s stalk. It drooled and worked its mouth furiously, but could only babble at us. All these things feared the raft, but you could feel the boil and squirm of their thousands, right through your feet. The heavy logs of the raft seemed as taut and ticklish as a drumskin to the movement of the dead below.” --- From the first story: Come Then Mortal--We Will Seek Her Soul

“Some grottoes, for example, were densely carpeted with victims whose faces alone retained their human form. The rest of their bodies—everted and structurally transformed—now radiated from each face’s perimeter in wormy coronas. They resembled giant sea-anemones. The souls within those faces still—all too eloquently—lived …

And there were others of our species who lay in nude clusters resembling the snarls of kelp which a northern sea will disgorge on the sand in storm season. Their legs and hips merged with central, fleshy stalks, while their arms and upper-bodies endlessly and intricately writhed and interlaced. These were the very image of promiscuous lust, but the multiple voice they raised made a hospital groan, a sick-house dirge of bitter weariness. Crablike giants, hugely genitaled like human hermaphrodites, scuttled over them with proprietary briskness—pausing, probing, nibbling everywhere.” --- From the third story: Fishing of the Demon Sea

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