Dark Entries

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A Big Brother type house and it's contestants are being haunted by ghosts so the show's producer gets Constantine in to investigate. Things become stranger as none of the contestants can remember how they came on the show or much about their past. Then about the halfway point things get very Hellblazer and the story takes off.

Ian Rankin είχα διαβάσει μέχρι τώρα (αν είναι δυνατόν!), ούτε κόμικ με ήρωα τον John Constantine, παρ'όλα αυτά το απόλαυσα πραγματικά. Η ιστορία μου κίνησε το ενδιαφέρον από την αρχή και το κράτησε μέχρι το τέλος, μιας και η πλοκή είχε αρκετό μυστήριο και ωραίες αποκαλύψεις, ενώ και ο χαρακτήρας του Constantine ήταν ιδιαίτερα ενδιαφέρων, κυνικός και σαρκαστικός. Το σκίτσο μου φάνηκε αρκετά καλό και απόλυτα ταιριαστό με το ύφος της ιστορίας, με απλά και καθαρά ασπρόμαυρα σχέδια, δίχως αχρείαστες λεπτομέρειες και σκιές. Sally, who is decidedly insane at this point says "Do you love children, Mel? Would you like to see my baby? . . . Let me tell you, Mel . . . that it's possible for a child to be born in a manner you'd never dream of . . .Will you be godmother? Come and see your god-child, Mel." I really loved Ringing the Changes, The View and Bind Your Hair with The Waiting Room being the weakest. 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. Straddling a very wobbly line between neo-noir and straight-out horror, “Dark Entries” is also a satirical criticism of reality-TV.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. If Hell's residents can tunnel so easily into Limbo, well, that's kind of a major mess of story that makes the plight of these few 20somethings seem kinda slight by comparison. And again, it's just left dangling. Choice Of Weapons: A man falls in love with a strange, seductive girl who lives in an eerie old house. She is lost in a dream of love, and so is he. Dreamy and startling. I picture Eva Green as the girl. 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). 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.

This sentence speaks volumes about the tension between the two characters of "The View," but also of the sensitivities of each character toward one another. One should not be surprised, then to find that "The View" is winsome and absolutely heart-rending. It has caused in me a genuine fear of growing old, something I have never really felt before. This is more from the sense of things past and lost than worry about future decrepitude. This is the empty hole at the center of nostalgia, a true existential dread. This story bit deep into my heart. It hurt, and I am better for it. 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!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. I was undecidd as to how rate this collection - I was divided between three and four stars, as some of these stories appealed little to me - but in the end decided on four stars due to the strength and quality of the best stories here collected. Ringing the Changes has a town that embraces the undead, and a couple that becomes trapped there. it has a suspenseful and eventually hair-raising narrative. but it is not about the undead; it is about the distance between two lovers, the distance that becomes apparent when contrasting the new and the old. a younger woman sees things her way, and rushes forward; she may quail in fear but she will dance with the dead. an older man sees his age, his ineffectuality; he will try to cross a gap and he will fail, impotent. 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. 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.