Dark Entries

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In “Choice of Weapons” a man abandons his heiress girlfriend, and the secure future she represents, to chase after a girl he glimpses across a restaurant. His obsession leads him to cross swords with a dangerous otherworldly rival for her love. The hero in “The View”, meanwhile, meets a beautiful, enigmatic woman on the ferry from Liverpool to the Isle of Man and is soon sharing her stately home and her bed. Such is his infatuation that he is not deterred by the way the landscape around the house is constantly changing or the weird, shambling figure – like some sort of nameless pagan god – who roams the grounds.

Vertigo Crime που διαβάζω, το οποίο όμως ξεφεύγει από τα στενά όρια του αστυνομικού, μιας και πρωταγωνιστής είναι ο John Constantine, ή αλλιώς Hellblazer, ένας ντετέκτιβ παραφυσικών φαινομένων με ξεχωριστές δυνατότητες. Η αλήθεια είναι ότι παίζει να είναι η πρώτη φορά που ασχολούμαι με τον συγκεκριμένο χαρακτήρα, μιας και στο παρελθόν δεν έτυχε να διαβάσω κάποιο κόμικ με αυτόν πρωταγωνιστή και δεν έχω δει καν την ταινία με τον Keanu Reeves. Θα επανορθώσω όμως! The six stories here are all good, yet each differs greatly from the others: “The School Friend” (grammar school girlfriends reunite after years, and the old house of the returning woman suggests disturbing revelations), “Ringing the Changes” (a May-December couple in a small seaside village encounter their own mortality ... and the risen dead), “Choice of Weapons” (an extraordinarily nightmarish account of love at first sight, involving a beautiful eccentric woman, a suburban London house of Ancient Egyptian design, and what may--or may not--be a duel), “The Waiting Room” (a lonely traveler communes with the dead who lie beneath the train station floor), “The View” (a convalescent middle-aged Foreign Service Officer accompanies a Circe-like woman to an isle off the English coast), and “Bind Your Hair” (an engaged young woman visits her husband’s family in the country and encounters a bizarre country ritual). After giving it a moment of reflection here’s my final two cents: Dark Entries is a John Constantine story for fans of John Constantine. If you’re in the fan club, I’m sure you’ll dig it. If you’re not in the club, you’ll probably be bored just like I was. The premise as described in the blurb is that of an "occult detective" investigating strange goings-on in a Big Brother-style reality TV house. I count Ben Elton's Dead Famous as one of my favourite novels, so I was expecting something vaguely similar. I was sorely disappointed. Basically, half way through it turns out that all of the contestants are actually dead and in Hell, changing the entire genre of the book. I felt completely cheated. Last month, I described The Colorado Kid by Stephen King as "a bait and switch of a book". It promises hard-boiled crime and resoundingly doesn't deliver, but when all's said and done, it's still a crime novel. Dark Entries doesn't even end up in the same ball park as advertised. I think my favorite story in this collection was the last one, "Bind Your Hair". I'm still thinking about it. I'm still thinking about "Ringing the Changes" as well. Don't ask me why, because I don't know...but it's still turning round in my noggin just the same.Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow. He is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award, and he received two Dagger Awards for the year's best short story and the Gold Dagger for Fiction. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews, and Edinburgh. This is a classic example for novels of horror, ghost, exorcism, monster, spooky genre! Ian Rankin starts the story as if the plot is small and easy and just another Haunted-house story. But with one after another surprisingly enjoyable twists it becomes so huge and so epic (from Heaven to Hell all the way) that it is beyond explanation!

The first in the series, “Dark Entries”, was written by Ian Rankin, a popular British mystery writer best known for a series of novels featuring his detective John Rebus. Dark Entries is one of these self-contained graphic novels featuring characters from DC comics in an alternative, more relaxed universe. Specifically, Dark Entries tells the story of how Constantine was invited to contain a situation where the haunted house on a horror reality show began to act on its own. While it is immediately given away that the gentlemen who invited Constantine had a lot more in mind than a simple exorcism, I found the plot developments that followed to be least expected and quite enjoyable. This was my personal favourite in this collection, an unusual zombie story in which a dance with the dead allows a young wife a glimpse into something that is more alive than anything her husband might offer her will ever be.Slowly but unmistakably the tension of community and sodality waxed among them, as if a loose mesh of threads weaving about between the different individuals was being drawn tighter and closer, further isolating them from the rest of the world, and from Pendlebury: the party was advancing into a communal phantasmagoria, as parties should, but in Pendlebury's experience seldom did; a sombre chinoise of affectionate ease and intensified inner life." Apro il commento con un sincero elogio alla casa editrice: non è da tutti rilanciare i nomi di autori classici vinti dal tempo. Straddling a very wobbly line between neo-noir and straight-out horror, “Dark Entries” is also a satirical criticism of reality-TV. The View was the only story I didn’t enjoy at all, and unfortunately it’s also this collection’s longest. An artist sees a different building every time he looks out of the window of his lover’s coastal home and… bleh?

The tale of “an ever-open mouth of a house”, which gets hold of a middle-aged woman, plunging her into madness and tapping her vitality, told by her former school friend who learns that it may not be too wise an idea to pry too closely into other people’s life. It may be that the narrator’s friend is a victim of domestic abuse but it may also be that the house is possessed by an evil force that tries to feed on her. You live surrounded by the claims of other people: to your labour when they call it peace, your life when they call it war; to your celibacy when they call you a bachelor, your body when they call you a husband. They tell you where you shall live, what you shall do, and what thoughts are dangerous.” Choice of weapons : A weird love/obsession story with many twists and curves. A nightmarish narrative with an abrupt ending that it will make you start over. Surprisingly devoid of any crime, Ian Rankin’s Dark Entries was strangely printed under the now defunct Vertigo Crime Imprint. Perhaps not crime-ridden in regards to the events that unfold, our beloved John Constantine is present with all his established charisms of rakism and unfiltered roguishness that could very well fit into a story of a more illegal nature. With our hero in the picture the only thing left to establish is the setting. And, weirdly enough, it’s a demented take on The Truman Show that sets the stage for this contradictory story to take place.

In tal senso, un racconto come “La scelta delle armi”, piuttosto raffinato nell’evidenziare con minacciose allusioni la scarsa consapevolezza di sé nel momento dell’esercizio sentimentale, avrebbe guadagnato nella portata drammatica con un’atmosfera surreale meno pervasiva e, al contrario, più attenta ai dettagli del contesto reale. Enter “John”, a music promoter, as a last-minute contestant. It doesn’t take Constantine long to figure out what is going on, but it may be too late for him to do anything about it. A young fiancée spends her first weekend in the country with the family of her betrothed. Although she finds them all basically nice, she also senses that their life is a tad too commonplace and passive for her. There is, however, an alternative of how to spend one’s time in the country offered to her.