Review: Nil-Pray

by Christian Read, Gestalt Publishing, 2017

a review by Kyla Lee Ward



Nil-Pray, "No Skin Land" (poor Aingelish translation).

The Great War began when an Archduke was assassinated by a minor death cultist. What gave the Aingelish the advantage that eventually saw them the victors was their embrace of Science--only the hopelessly parochial call it magic any more. But it is now 1925 and the consequences of creating werewolfen and binding asuras are starting to come home. Destruction on such an unprecedented scale has caught the attention of the Mortis Kings of Nil-Pray and for the first time, the ancient city of the Dead has accepted a Quick ambassador.

Richly inventive and wickedly cynical, this is a City narrative of sublime effect. As the young necromancer, Edmund Carver, and Shen, his suspiciously efficient batman, negotiate the Coriaceous Way through layer after layer of plots, assassins, bizarre rituals and downright disturbing architecture, they are forced to interrogate their own convictions, alongside the universals of power, difference and hatred.

"Nil Pray was a peculiar place to hate in. It was a refuge where the Dead found a queer felicity but, for all that, often kept habitudes from their Quick days. It was harder to hate for race when most skins had faded to leather brown or illness grey. Harder still when the skin had faded to muscle and bone. Often, gender was equally flimsy a foundation for bias, Breasts sagged to nothing. Penises rotted. Scrotums burst…. There was one simple divide immediate to all. The Carnal remained embodied and incarnate and the Spectral did not."

It is difficult for either kind to damage the other. But Lord Stricken of the Carnal and the Geistenrex of the Spectral have not only remembered war, they have discovered technology..

To read the full review, please go here.

Review: The Body Horror Book

edited by C. J. Fitzpatrick, Oscillate Wildly Press, 2017

A review by Kyla Lee Ward

Do you like your horror stories with a healthy dose of violated taboos, grotesque bodily transformations and images that shock you out of complacency? Claire Fitzpatrick (author of Only The Dead) does and, in her introduction to this non-fiction collection, shares her urge to understand why. But first must come the question, what constitutes Body Horror? The answers provided by the writers, editors and critics herein include "...a method of us confronting disease, disability and disfigurement in a safe way..." (Peter Sutton), "...a fundamental violation of what we know about matter and energy..." (Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc), and "All horror is Body Horror." (Dmetri Kakmi). There may not be a consensus, but there is plenty of lively debate.

Although the entries include essays, articles, memoirs, poetry and rants, they tend overall to focus on film rather than literature and on the classic works of the 80s and 90s, with much attention given to the first Alien movie, Hellraiser and David Cronenberg's The Fly. But the lead essay, "Eat, Drink and be Wary: Autosarcophagy and Autoeroticism in Body Horror Cinema" by Kirsten Imani Kasai, is also one of the most contemporary, dealing with depictions of cannibalism in such recent films as Raw and Neon Demon, and how the trope dramatises the conflicted attitudes of women towards their own bodies. And what is probably my favourite piece in the whole collection, Anthony Ferguson's "Exposing the Ideological Monster Beneath the Skin: the Reptilians and Other Demons", charts the development of this trope into a full-fledged conspiracy theory that is thriving in the world of Brexit and Trump.

If there is an overall theme to the book, it is that to those who produce it and those who consume it, Body Horror is a very personal thing. As Kakmi points out in "A History of Violence", its effect is immediately inscribed upon the body of the viewer/reader, by way of gut reactions and involuntary shudders. But in "Skin Deep", Sutton writes movingly of his experience of psioriasis and uses this to reflect on skin, as the specific boundary which Body Horror flouts. In her essay, J. J. Roye wonders "...how humanity manages to perpetuate itself without succumbing to crippling fear with each pregnancy", given how this process mirrors the genre's obsession...

To read the full review, please go here.