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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A meticulous and powerful look at magic,
This review is from: Black Easter (Paperback)
This is a thesis novel in the sense that its events seem to have been carefully thought out before Blish even began to write the book - from the first page to the last, he leads the reader towards a powerful and inevitable conclusion. This isn't a work which should be read for `plot surprises', but rather for its tight structure: Blish looks at magic with precise, almost clinical attention; as he set out to do in writing this work, he strips the book of extraneous details and instead confines himself to a select few questions and themes. The four main characters - Black magician Theron Ware, monk and White magician Father Domenico, weapons-maker Baines and his assistant Jack Ginsberg - all play clearly defined roles, each providing the reader a different point of view from which to evaluate what is being said and done. This is a difficult but memorable book.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Short, leisurely outline,
By
This review is from: Black Easter (After Such Knowledge) (Library Binding)
Given the high concept plot, a munitions dealer contracts a black magician to loose all the demons of hell for one night, surprisingly little happens in this short work. That it is actually enjoyable is due to the skill and craft with which Blish writes his prose.
The author states in the foreword he wanted to treat magic as if it were a rigorous discipline in the mold of science or engineering and he succeeds. However this makes the scenes of ritual magic detail heavy and tedious. Nor is their any real build up of tension in the book as you would expect with such a catastrophic event being asked for. The reason for this is probably the lack of conflict. Though the forces of good appear, and are even represented with an observer, Father Domenico, at the lair of Theron Ware the magician, due to a Covenant between the higher powers he can do nothing but ask Ware not to do it. The idea is a good one, the execution Blish chose just wasn't that appealing. However the prose is. Blish writes it tightly, and the characters are actually interesting given the little that happens. You'll be left vaguely unsatisfied though as the book doesn't really deliver what it promises. As one reviewer mentions, it really takes place in only two locations and all the demonic carnage happens off page. Almost as if this was an outline of a longer work, or a novella with a novel screaming to get out.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Black Easter Hype,
This review is from: Black Easter (After Such Knowledge) (Library Binding)
1968 was a dark year. Robert Kennedy was assassinated and the world was still in shock over Martin Luther King's senseless murder. Hippies rioted at the Democrat's convention in Chicago, Charles Manson had begun his murderous rage, Vietnam was a debacle, the Cold War was still on and it seemed the world (humanity calls home) was on a downward spiral headed to bummerland.
In 1968, James Blish was writing disposable Star Trek "fan-novels" and was (pretty much) considered the"poor man's" Aurther C. Clark-- when he published the second novel (Black Easter) of his trilogy "After Such Knowledge". "Black Easter" remains a touchstone compendium of that nasty year. No other sci/fi/horror author, before or since, has captured the paranoia of a particular time with such supernatural, black magic volcanism. Warning: The book feels dated but why grouse. Violent, debauched, corny and utterly fascinating, "Black Easter" will give every fan of densely plotted intelligent horror more than a few chills.
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