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xterminal's review
4.0
Edward Lee, City Infernal (Leisure, 2003)
Edward Lee has been around, it seems, just about forever as far as horror authors go. During the eighties, he was considered one of the rising stars, going so far as to get some of his stories in the then-groundbreaking Night Visions anthology (and "Doing Colfax" will never be erased from my memory). Then the horror market died. Lee, unlike many of his brethren, continued to publish in small specialty presses. Those books are now worth a small fortune. And he still continues to publish; his newest novel, as of this writing, is City Infernal. And a typical Edward Lee gut-churner it is.
Cassie and Lissa are identical twins who are enamored of the early nineties goth scene in DC. Lissa catches her boyfriend kissing Cassie, at which point she kills both him and herself. Their mother is long gone, so Cassie and her father are left on their own. A couple of years later, the two of them move out to the country. The house they move to just happens to be a gateway to hell, inhabited by three of hell's outcasts, Xeke, Via, and Hush. Through them, Cassie may finally get a chance to do what she's wanted to since the incident: apologize to her sister.
Okay, so extreme horror is no longer the shock that it was when Lee published "Doing Colfax," the characters have only a shade more depth than cardboard cutouts, and the whole thing is really kind of predictable (though he does throw in a few twists, some explicit and some implied, at the end that will catch the reader off-guard). So why, then, is Ed Lee's stuff such a fun read?
Good question, and one to which I really don't have an answer. City Infernal is more Ghouls than it is The Bighead; you're not going to find anything groundbreaking, and in the harsh light of day this will likely end up being considered one of Lee's minor novels rather than a piece of the classic Lee canon. But still, it's a ball. He creates the Mehistopolis, the major city in hell, as lovingly as China Mieville creates Perdido Street Station's New Crobuzon, and has just as much fun describing it. The Mephistopolis is what Dickens could have done with his place descriptions in A Tale of Two Cities if he hadn't been so stultifyingly verbose.
I will warn you, a good number of horror fans will probably be bored off their butts with this book. But as Adam Parfrey said of the music of NON, "to the chosen few, it is pure balm for the soul." *** ½
Edward Lee has been around, it seems, just about forever as far as horror authors go. During the eighties, he was considered one of the rising stars, going so far as to get some of his stories in the then-groundbreaking Night Visions anthology (and "Doing Colfax" will never be erased from my memory). Then the horror market died. Lee, unlike many of his brethren, continued to publish in small specialty presses. Those books are now worth a small fortune. And he still continues to publish; his newest novel, as of this writing, is City Infernal. And a typical Edward Lee gut-churner it is.
Cassie and Lissa are identical twins who are enamored of the early nineties goth scene in DC. Lissa catches her boyfriend kissing Cassie, at which point she kills both him and herself. Their mother is long gone, so Cassie and her father are left on their own. A couple of years later, the two of them move out to the country. The house they move to just happens to be a gateway to hell, inhabited by three of hell's outcasts, Xeke, Via, and Hush. Through them, Cassie may finally get a chance to do what she's wanted to since the incident: apologize to her sister.
Okay, so extreme horror is no longer the shock that it was when Lee published "Doing Colfax," the characters have only a shade more depth than cardboard cutouts, and the whole thing is really kind of predictable (though he does throw in a few twists, some explicit and some implied, at the end that will catch the reader off-guard). So why, then, is Ed Lee's stuff such a fun read?
Good question, and one to which I really don't have an answer. City Infernal is more Ghouls than it is The Bighead; you're not going to find anything groundbreaking, and in the harsh light of day this will likely end up being considered one of Lee's minor novels rather than a piece of the classic Lee canon. But still, it's a ball. He creates the Mehistopolis, the major city in hell, as lovingly as China Mieville creates Perdido Street Station's New Crobuzon, and has just as much fun describing it. The Mephistopolis is what Dickens could have done with his place descriptions in A Tale of Two Cities if he hadn't been so stultifyingly verbose.
I will warn you, a good number of horror fans will probably be bored off their butts with this book. But as Adam Parfrey said of the music of NON, "to the chosen few, it is pure balm for the soul." *** ½
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