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Post by vaughan on Jul 15, 2009 16:35:47 GMT
A Tower Book (Leisure Occult) - 1981 - 238 Pages Well, as you all know I'm just getting back into this stuff, and this is the first reading of a J.N. Williamson work. So far so good! Also, my ignorance was legion, since I had no idea what a "Tulpa" was. So this was was going to interesting. Finally, my wife took one look at the cover and asked: "What's wrong with testicles". After that, I wasn't sure what I was getting into.  As it turns out an understanding of a "tulpa" might help a bit, but it's not essential. If I might be a classic cinematic comparison, be thinking of the 1958 classic "Fiend Without a Face". If you recall that film included some hideous brains, with spinal column, that crawled around like caterpillars in search of brains. These creatures were created from the mind of Dr. Warren. They were, in more relevant parlance, his Tulpa. The story centres around Charlie Kavanagh and his immediate family (daughter, son-in-law, and their two children). As the story starts Charlie is burying his long-loved wife, and at the funeral he suffers a stroke. Which ends up having unexpected negative effects, such as allowing him to see into the future. Charlie's visions are in the way of warnings about impending doom. First there is a clash at a rally, then a ball game, and so on. As the family become aware of what is going on, they set out to try and prevent needless deaths. Which alone would have made an interesting story, but the book isn't done there. Nope, because Charles, unwittingly, creates a Tulpa in the form of a giant beast, barely a man. And it thinks nothing of ripping off heads and arms just for fun......... And so the tale goes on. J.N. Williamson's style of writing got int he way a bit, for me. What I mean by that is that he feeds the reader some facts that they don't need to know in order to push the story along, with some long introspective passages that don't alter anything. I suppose he was fully fleshing out the story, but in the end I found it a bit off putting. But then again, never so much that I wanted to give up. As the story enters its final third it really hits its stride. Enter some goobledegook about fourth dimensions and this and that, and the novel rides out in a blaze of gore. Nice. All in all this was a fine novel, I think. Not pulp in the strictest sense, since the author sometimes wanders a little too far away from the core of the tale. But as mentioned, never too far, and the final third really is quite nice. Recommended then. (and those are NOT testicles). |
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