Review: Luthor Huss

And yet another excursion into the Warhammer Heroes range, and would you know it; for once I ventured into the ranks of the goodies.

In Middenheim, one of the great cities of the Empire, Witch Hunter Lukas Eichmann has been investigating the machinations of a new cult. Another day, another misbegotten heretic creed, and it seems as if there's no end and no point to the stamping out of heresy and corruption. Over the years Eichmann has grown weary of his duty, and the faith that once gave him unshakable purpose has diminished with the never-ending tide of human weakness. Now, the desperate confessions of dying cultists are pointing him away from Middenheim onto a new trail of darkness.

In the heart of the Empire, in the borderlands where humanity's vies for dominion with beasts, at the edge of the massive Drakwald forest, a young girl's hopes and dreams for a normal life are brutally crushed with the coming of a plague of undeath. With no hope of survival, with everyone dying around her, Mila Eichen takes up sword to rage against the coming darkness. But as death closes in inescapable with ravening teeth, the undead horde is smashed aside by faith and steel.

She is saved by the wandering priest Luthor Huss, a dour, uncompromising man of faith unlike any she's ever known, and with her life in ruins she follows him as he barrels from battle to battle, to crush the enemies of mankind wherever they are found. Soon they find themselves inexorably drawn towards lands where humanity holds no sway.

Because in the depths of the Drakwald something monstrous is stirring. In answer to an unseen design the beastmen have begun to march. And as everywhere the dead rise to kill the living, and as in the cities, the corrupted and the mutated are compelled to cast off their disguise, to respond to a secret summons, it slowly becomes certain that Chaos is on the move, and that it has made plans for the men who rally against them.

     I really enjoyed Luthor Huss. It's a novel that pretty much epitomizes what the Black Library puts out, and it is probably one of, if not the best novel in the Warhammer Heroes range. Chris Wraight is a solid writer and though nothing he puts out here is truly extraordinary, the story, writing and in particular the characters are put together well and delivered with skill. Huss himself is an interesting character and a rather unique one at that. He is in fact a saint, one of those characters who genuinely are able to channel the divine might of their god, whether that is the Emperor in 40k or Sigmar in the Old World doesn't really matter, wat matters is that it's a very rare thing to see and read about, and it gives the story a much different flavour than what is usual for these books. But even though he is a holy man, he can be one harsh bastard at times. He has a complete contempt for human weakness and at times doesn't seem to understand it, and he has a divinely inspired oratorical gift which allows him to raise up from the gutter the downtrodden people of the empire and to turn them into raging zealots as he so chooses. It's a strange and frequently disturbing thing to behold and Wraight depicts it well enough.

     And as for any problems the book might have, apart from some tiny lore-errors that bothered me personally (like why the hell is Morrslieb yellow? or what the hell is that whole Well of Souls business at the end?...), those're pretty much a matter of personal taste depending on the reader in question. Some people seem to think it's too slow, others that the book focuses on battles too much, yak yak yak blablabla.
     To any one reading these books I offer this bit of advice: your expectations are too high. These are corporate-mandated novels: the page count is limited, and there are certain things that they can not deviate from. The story and the lore can't expand too much, and there's almost no leeway for experimentation.
     Now, true enough, in the recent year specifically, the Black Library has gone out of its way to actually encourage creativity in its novels, but you can bet your ass this certainly wasn't always the case, and a lot of these older books, written during the post-2006 years of Black Library will read the same way.

     These days the individual novel is out of print but can be found in the Heroes of The Empire Omnibus from the Warhammer Chronicles range, which also collects the Kurt Helleborg and Ludwig Schwarzhelm duology plus their own short stories, all of which are also very good, though in grim-darkness they are miles beyond the rest of the Old World fiction, which can be a little jarring.

Also included is Luthor Huss' own short story the March of Doom which is awesome, and which I had totally forgotten reading already until I remembered that I also own this little booklet, where I had already read it before.

It's a very short little tale which follows Huss as he and an army of zealots march to relieve a town from a siege by Beastmen. It's a bit like the main novel except here there's almost no real plot to speak of, and instead the story puts a little more emphasis on how messed-up the lives of the people who follow Huss are. Messed-up, a shadow of what they once were, and yet also lifted up into a level of grace reserved for saints and madmen. It is fascinating to see how Huss thinks of them and it shows why that he pretty much is a perfect representative of Sigmar: Fighting for humanity, cherishing so much of them, but demanding that they fight with all they have.

 This little story is a must read for pretty much anyone. It is just fucking great.

Try not to fear.

Pain is fleeting.

Then his smile truly broke out.

Salvation, I tell you, is eternal.

A glimpse beyond The Veil, Torn Asunder

Holy shit, I just noticed that I hadn't posted this one.

Obviously,

Massive Spoilers ahead:

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     In issue 1 of The Veil, Torn Asunder we begin with our main character revealing his innermost desire. He says that that more than anything he wants the truth of his reality. The Truth above all.

 He confesses to us that he has been running away his whole life, hiding in drink, flesh and other assorted debauchery, and that he at one point even deserted from the army. These days when he isn't trying to find out the truth of existence in the musty old tomes of Yharnam's libraries he instead wanders its streets thinking about his past, frequently lingering on the moments after battle where the horrors surrounding him made him believe that there was no meaning and no truth to be found in life.

     But in contrast to this there is also another memory; a moment in his life where he witnessed a monster peering through a fracture in reality, and it is this improbable event that has in subsequent years come to seem more real than anything else. It is this that has spurred him on in his quest for the truth. And somewhere along the way to the end of the first issue he is given the Tarot reading which will guide the rest of the narrative.

     Now, though it might seem as if the Tarot deck doesn't have a place in Bloodborne, it of course does. In fact, the Tarot cards are in some way already present as The Caryll Runes, and there are pages and pages of discussion on the Bloodborne forums over which Tarot Card corresponds to which Caryll Rune, which ones don't fit or seem left out, but this is somewhat irrelevant as Ales Kot, for the purposes of this story, employs them only as they are originally used; as a guide which reveals some of what the future holds.

     The reading as it goes is: all upright; The Tower, the Moon, and in the end; the Star.

If you have any knowledge of Bloodborne at all, these cards will undoubtedly already summon up some associations, but again, this is not so much about what's already in place as it is about what Ales Kot makes of it. The Tower card traditionally means destruction, even though the tower here isn't ablaze. The Moon card signifies occluded things, deception and the hiding of truth. The Star points to enlightenment and contentment.

     Also, by the end of the issue the man has begun to come into contact with an entity that appears to manifest throughout various elements, both living and not. He smiles as he recognizes that this is some sort of echo of his vision beneath the water, a sign that shows him he's on the right track.

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     Issue 2 is appropriate for the Tower Upright as it is both about destruction and awakening, both figurative and, in this world that has layers of dreaming, very much literal. Though we don't know it yet, we start in echoes of the past, and then the man awakes inside a dream.

     The man finds himself on the streets of Yharnam, now clearly under the light of the Blood Moon, which means that the story and world have progressed ahead to the time when the game's protagonist is already tumbling down the rabbit-hole of insight, and stumbling around pants-less, is after a while confronted with a sight that will provoke a profound change in him.

     The Darkbeast Paarl and the One Reborn do battle.

It is interesting to note that in this issue that I have deemed the Tower card, the monster that shows up is the One Reborn who is most associated with the Tower Card on the forums, and that just like the tower in popular depictions of the card, he is struck by lightning, here present as the Darkbeast Paarl.

     And then something happens; the man seemingly disintegrates.

Now, it's very hard to understand the correct sequence of events of the Veil, Torn Asunder, because this moment, the start, the middle, and the aftermath, are spread out over the first 2 issues (and maybe also part of the third). Maybe this is because Ales Kot was too enamoured with the loose structure that Eileen the Crow's story provided and he wanted to use it here again, but I feel the story would've been better served with a more linear approach. Because unlike for Eileen in the Song of Crows, for the protagonist of The Veil, Torn Asunder, time only flows one way... or it should anyway.

     Upon witnessing the monsters the man's body disintegrates, or seems to disintegrate, burning up until only a familiar shape remains; an echo of the form first glimpsed in the water.

Metaphor and literal destruction both; the gaining of knowledge burns the man down, mind and body.

It's very hard to figure out how this could happen but it seems obvious that the key lies with the open-mouthed shape we have been seeing throughout the story. It is because of the nature of this entity that the man will gain the ability to cycle through various moments in the Bloodborne stories.

     As I have stated, this whole sequence is a dream, but the thing about dreams in the world of Bloodborne is that they aren't just dreams. They aren't less than the reality that engenders the dreaming. They are just other, different realities, pocket dimensions that can be slipped in and out of, given the right catalyst.

     Back in his room the man ponders, but the smell of shit and blood and stained sheets intrudes on his senses and he realizes that he needs to face reality. Issue 2 ends with whatever is left of the man's life in shredded tatters, blood coating the surface of the room he's in, and dripping from the edge of the razor he holds. His private story destroyed, now there's nothing to hold him back from his work, his quest for truth, and the only way left is the way forward.

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Issue 3 has as its Card the Moon, which is most commonly associated with deception and illusion,  and as we ended last issue with the destruction of his life, his story seemingly truncated in lovers' blood, and though he needs to face what is happening, because this is a character who has only ever run away from everything, he runs away again, and somehow he runs farther than he ever could have.

He becomes unmoored from his reality, and he becomes a witness to the burning of beasts in the streets of Yharnam.

He sees Hunters fighting the Cleric Beast.

He meets and talks with Eileen the Crow as she trudges trough the forest in A song of Crows.

He sees a Blood Moon over Byrgenwyrth and the streets of the Hypogean Gaol, and he sees the burning of Old Yharnam.

And he comes upon a scene of The Death of Sleep and shares a pity-filled look with the transformed child carried by the Nameless Hunter, who in this moment doesn't yet have the insight required to see both the madness around her, and in her arms.

But our protagonist does see the monsters. His insight in his reality has grown to such an extent that he can see the Elder Horrors that permeate his existence. Of course, given the Lovecraftian nature of the world of Bloodborne, madness walks hand in hand with the seeing, and so, he becomes truly unhinged. But you could also put it that since running away is what he does, what he's always done, he runs away from the knowledge he has gained and that he instead takes his refuge in insanity.

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And so we arrive at issue 4; The Star.

The Star is the card signifying spiritual enlightenment and contentment, and in the case of our main character it signifies the stage where he achieves his heart's desire; the attainment of his much sought-after ultimate truth.

     In the asylum our character lies, sheltered in insanity, having halted his quest for truth. But he is not the one to decide the direction nor the end of this story (or is he? Tum Tum Tum TUUUUUUM), and he is visited in his cell, first, by illusions seeking to perpetuate his private tale, then by the entity that has haunted him throughout the story, this time clothed in the skin of a dead man.

     The entity goads him on, and he is reminded of what knowledge means in the world of Blooborne, that it is gained by the seeing, and accumulation, of eyes, and he is told precisely what it means to cover those eyes up. 

     To be willfully blind in this universe is to choose to just be yet another in an innumerable succession of blind thralls, all in slave to an unfathomable design.

     It is at this point that the man begins to question what the entity wants from him specifically, why he has been pushed in a direction of the entity's design. He realizes that he himself has nothing to offer, nothing to say or reveal, no hidden knowledge to impart.

But then, intuitively, revelation dawns.

     Because of his unique point of view; a life lived, guided only by constantly running away, a constant escapism into anything but the thing he needs to confront, he understands the motivations of the unknown force that has guided him here. He understands that the only thing he's actually giving it is window to look through, a story to follow. Something to distract it from its own reality. He understands that there's nothing he really can offer, nothing except divertissement, and that all that he is, for this entity that dons dead men like clothes, is entertainment.

     At this point we realize that the narrative has become a Meta one, that it's been one all along, that the entity that keeps looking in on our protagonist is probably us, staring with open mouth at the horrors we witness, or that at the very least it is Ales Kot himself, the writer, trying to coax out a story out of a subject whose sole drive has been the discovery of the ultimate truth of his world. And problematic for both subject and writer, the ultimate truth that comes out of this, is that this particular revelation does not stop at the boundaries of the world of Bloodborne, and that it goes beyond its confines to make the audience, the world at large a part of the reveal. All of a sudden Yharnam has becomes a small place in quite a large tapestry.

The man realizes he is in a story, that he is a story and that the entity wishes him to continue on, to put on a show, as it were. But the man denies the formless watcher, and, not without some malice, acts according to his nature. He runs away again, by gauging out his eyes, and since this is Bloodborne, and eyes are here the symbol of knowledge, he takes away his knowing and the possibility of progress, and so denies the entity both the continuation and the conclusion to the story, who leaves and rears away from him.

Then, throughout this section Ales Kot, via our narrating protagonist, addresses us pretty much directly, berating us,for escaping into fiction, while all around us our world is being torn apart by awful forces. Take your pick: corruption, climate change, war, famine, pandemic, any and all, all these destructive forces and yet here we are, hiding away in our stories.

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"The truth is I spent my whole life running and called it conquest'."

A line from our protagonist that hits quite hard with me, a reader who doesn't venture outside much, adding books to my shelves only when I 'conquer' them, finish them. I constantly need to escape into stories, into fiction; books, comics, tv or games because I can not handle the world outside.
I read books, and I finish games, all to avoid interacting with the world. Behold my library and you can only glimpse but an inkling of the things my mind has seen. but the truth is that all I do is run away. Escapism rules supreme.

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A small thought here at the end. Part of a larger section that I scrapped because it didn't seem to add up the way I wanted, but there's a small chance there's something here anyway.

In this way it initially seems as if the Carryl runes did not actually have a place but it does bear noting that where in the previous 2 volumes (issues 5 to 12) the end of every issue was closed out by the same Caryll rune each time, and that in this volume every issue is instead closed out by another one: The Formless Oedon rune.

A secret symbol left by Caryll, runesmith of Byrgenwerth.

The Great One Oedon, lacking form, exists only in voice, and is symbolized by this rune.

Those who memorize it enjoy a larger supply of Quicksilver Bullets.

Human or no, the oozing blood is a medium of the highest grade, and the essence of the formless Great One. Both Oedon, and his inadvertent worshippers, surreptitiously seek the precious blood.

Could Formless Oedon be in the meta way suggested in the story, be the creators that work on the stories of Bloodborne. Could the shade with hollow mouth be a form taken on temporarily to work their will? The artist's will made /almost/ physically manifest?

The Hedge Knight

God damn, this one is good.

If you haven't already, go pick this one up.
And I'm saying that as someone who was completely disillusioned with Martin's world after how Game of Thrones ended. I didn't have any interest in reading any of Martin's other work, Ice and Fire or otherwise, but after deciding to give this one a go, still having it lying around in the shadows, drowning in dust, I'm again firmly of the opinion that Martin's writing is just simply stellar and that when he finally finishes the Song of Ice And Fire saga, it will easily wash away the bad taste of HBO's Game of Thrones.

But that's besides the point. The Knight of the Seven Realms trilogy of novellas, of which the Hedge Knight is but the first, take place a hundred years before the events of A song of Ice and Fire and though the story obviously takes place around certain very recognizable names and places, the stories themselves stand perfectly well on their own.

And even with the caveat that Martin still has story developments for Dunk and Egg planned, and that he'd like to get to them eventually, and that likely the story might end in a way that will be terrible for some of the characters, the Hedge Knight is still a story very much worth picking up.
And I gather that the other novellas, and their respective comic adaptations, continue that trend.

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Yes, obviously I know that this comic, The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight are adapted from the Dunk and Egg novellas, but it's a different format, and so, just as comics might not be an acceptable medium for some, so might prose novels not be for others. Everyone can have their pick, and for me, right now, for a variety of reasons, of which time and a limited attention span are just two, this comic adaptation is my pick.

Boy, that's some disclaimer. Super defensive and everything. You'd think somebody said something, but really, nobody did.

Books of Blood Top 5

Here's a few books that should be on any horror aficionado's shelf.
     I've talked here at various times about my love of Clive Barker's works but I realize that I still haven't actually said anything about his first, and in many ways, still his most significant contribution to the horror genre: The 6 Books of Blood.
     When The Books of Blood were published back in the long forgotten yesteryear of 1984 they were an instant success, and though Barker attributes that mostly to the generous endorsement by Stephen King, the quality of the work itself makes The Books of Blood, even now 35 years later, stand out from a lot of other horror literature, despite his detractors all too eagerly labeling them as the very cheapest form of Splatterpunk.
     They still stand out and are still popular now because besides the expected horror-elements there's also an occasional touch of poetry to Barker's writing, and because despite a lot of these stories having heavy elements of violence, sex and gore, there's also an element that is quite bit rarer in horror fiction, and even in fiction in general. Barker manages to evoke something that harkens back to some of the earliest horror masters in the genre; in the tradition of Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood and Lovecraft he frequently manages to evoke awe in the face of the unknown.

     I've felt this quite strongly when reading Weaveworld and Cabal; and of course also here in the Books of Blood. It is a quiet feeling, mute and wondering in the face of something much bigger than ourselves, something darker, or maybe just different, but certainly almost always unknowable, and it is almost always present in his work. Barker has stated throughout the years that he is merely the tool through which something, something outside of himself, makes itself known, that this is where his creativity comes from. It is likely that this belief is relevant to the man's depiction of massive incomprehensible forces that impinge on and transform his character's lives. It is something I've come to expect to be present in all of his works that I pick up. And here in the Books of Blood is where it all started.

    The Ink-Stained Beard and I once had a conversation that led to us listing our top three Books of Blood stories. The Books themselves number 6, with about 30 stories between them (though 2 of those are about a page long and serve as the framing device for the entire collection), and a top three is kind of an easy order, so for the purposes of the post I'm making it 5 now.

Without further ado: My Top 5 Favourite Books of Blood short stories:

5

In The Flesh

Inmate Cleve Smith has been ordered to safeguard his new cellmate, the young Billy Tait, from the attentions of the other inmates. Though he resents the duty, Cleve does as he's told, and takes the vulnerable newcomer under his only slightly indifferent wing, and is in return made Billy's confidant. The young man reveals that he purposefully committed a crime exactly in order to be imprisoned, and that there was a very good reason for it;  his grandfather had murdered almost his entire family, and had hung himself in the very same prison Cleve and Billy are in right now, and that he had been buried here, and Billy reveals that he still has a spot of business with the dead man.

Thinking the young man insane, Cleve does his best to stay aloof, but soon becomes interested despite himself in his cellmate's odd doings anyway after Billy's found weeping and seemingly talking to himself near the prison's graves. From that moment on the boy begins to isolate himself, and Clive can't help but become more and more uncomfortable sharing the cell with him. His nights become burdened with strange dreams of a dead and silent city, and around the boy himself scary things begin happening.

     In the Flesh is a curious little tale, though it's actually one of the longest in the entire collection, and it's curious because its premise is so, well... almost banal. It seems familiar in its set-up of 'the protagonist has an associate who is haunted/tortured or who delves into forbidden secrets, until associate is delivered unto horror' type story. But it's interesting because Barker manages to make the mystery so compelling, his protagonist Cleve so down-to-earth, and the secret that Billy tries to unearth so obviously oh so very bad for him, and that quite quickly Billy also realizes this himself, and that despite of this it is unstoppable. It has creepy moments and the outright splatter and gore that usually is in full effect in other stories is here quite muted. Instead there is strangeness, something that ties into the flow of time, and life after the death. The theme of this one is similar to Cabal, and a few other of his stories, but here is its earliest form maybe.

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4

The Last Illusion

A stage illusionist has had an 'accident' under almost stage-show circumstances, and private detective and frequent dabbler in the occult, Harry d'Amour, has been hired by the late illusionist's wife, Dorothea Swann, in order to fulfill one of the man's requests as stated in a letter to be opened on his sudden death.

And so, beguiled by the lovely eyes of the widow Swann, Harry agrees to take up the ghoulish task of holding vigil over the deceased man's corpse. Soon after he suffers a vivid hallucination and is wakened by the late man's wife and her lawyer and then promptly sent on his way. But it's already too late and Harry is soon embroiled in a demonic struggle between two parties vying over a magician's soul.

     The Last Illusion is one of those that's an absolute favourite for many fans.

Despite being very good on its own, its horror quite strange and exotic, it also features the first appearance of Barker's very own occult Detective, Harry d'Amour, who went on to star in various of Barker's later novels.

     The story moves along at a break-neck speed and once the set-up is complete Barker wastes no time in letting the insanity begin. What follows is some of the most evilly imaginative stuff that only could've come from the mind of Clive Barker. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I've seen it in his other work too, and haven't seen or felt it in any other writer; there's a dark vibrancy to his monstrous creations that quite does away with the usual idea of how evil powers are generally depicted in western fiction. Barker's evil monsters are strange and wholly his own.

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3

Rawhead Rex

In a sleepy village in the British countryside

 an ancient monster has awoken,

 and proceeds to rip the cowering locals to shreds.

Yep,

that's all you need to know.

     Raw-Head Rex is an uncomplicated story; Splatterpunk through and through, shocking in its depiction of violence, and positively brutal in the way that it crosses lines with screaming wild abandon. I can confidently say that Rawhead Rex is a guilty pleasure kind of read. The violence is staggering, and the... ahem, phallic nature of the titular monster is something that is both disturbing and highly intriguing. Barker has no idea he will leave unexplored or un-visited if it's something that genuinely interests him.

     This one was also in The Ink-Stained Beard's top three... Quite an unrepentantly bloodthirsty sort of fellow, wouldn't you say?

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2

The Midnight Meat Train

New York City is awash with rumour and speculation, the nasty ghoulish appetites of teeming humanity on full display, as they latch onto the newest sensation: The Murders in the Underground.

First, a pile of bodies had been found in one of the city's subway cars, all hacked open, and in various stages of disembowelment. Then, another car with a woman inside, her teeth pulled, and her body removed of hair, hung up by a hook to the ceiling and left there to drain of blood like a hog. And now another three bodies in another train car, in similar condition.

The subway is leaking violent death, but Leon Kaufman's only thought is getting home after a late night at work, and the express train is still the best way to go. But as he wakes after a brief doze to the dizzying movement of the swiftly accelerating train and the sounds of slaughter he has no way of knowing that work is only just about to begin.

     I had actually seen and loved the movie before I had read the short story, and to my surprise even knowing how this one would go, I really found it quite an arresting experience. It differed only a little from the movie: Though its story was largely the same it was noticeably shorter in its length, mainly due to the movie's inclusion of more characters and a clearer story arc overall, and there were certain elements of the story's resolution that had been left out of the movie.

     And as it was, I did not expect what eventually would shuffle out into the light, and so was left to taste awe in the face of the unknown. This is what I was talking about earlier. Barker always brings a supernatural element into his stories, and sometimes the shape it assumes is familiar, and sometimes is isn't, and when he just shows it standing there, revealed, and you have no real point of reference, and the character that's come face to face with it has no real point of reference, both of you just end up sitting there in dumb, fascinated shock.

     Still just a perfect little tale.

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1

In The Hills, The Cities

In the villages of Popolac and Podujevo excitement reigns; the annual ritual contest that is about to pit the two villages against each other is about to begin. But venerable Nita Obrenovic, the organizer and leader of 60 years worth of contests on behalf of Podujevo, has died and her inexperienced daughter has no choice but to take up the mantle of her responsibilities. And they weigh heavy indeed, and too many mistakes might prove disastrous.

Judd and Mick have come to realize that their interests really don't match up, and both feel that their relationship has probably run its course. It's only unfortunate that this realization has only come about halfway through their vacation in Yugoslavia, with no quick way out of the others' lives and companionship.

To make the best of it the two men move into the hills, to see new and unexpected sights, but as they feel the rumble of the ground and a deafeningly loud multitude of voices, they can not imagine the sight that'll greet them next.

     Also one of the Ink-Stained Beard's list, and how could it not?

In the Hills The Cities is quintessential Clive Barker. Everything you could expect from the man is in here: graphic sex, violence, the dirty grubby underbelly of human nature, stunning amounts of gore, and an almost paralyzing sense of awe that you won't find anywhere else.

     What's maybe most impressive about In the Hills, The Cities is that nobody but Barker could have written it. It's absolutely remarkable. He weaves his penchant for impressive body horror in such a way that it ends up being the thing that evokes that awe in the face of the unknown. He manages to construct his story in such a way that certain of its elements, despite being explained and understood by the reader, at a certain point in the tale transcend their base and understandable origins and become something 'greater' and almost incomprehensible, to both the characters in the story, and the reader reading it. There is imagery here that is fit to stand alongside the best of the hellish imagery in Dante's Inferno.

     It is also easy to believe that the sight that eventually greets Mick and Judd as they follow the sounds that lead them on could very well prove madness-inducing. Whenever I read Lovecraft and another one of his main characters goes insane looking at something he shouldn't have been looking at I always find it hard to credit. But not so here.

     But also unfortunately, the set-up can't quite entirely work, logically. The premise strains the bounds of credulity just a bit, but who cares really, because Barker somehow manages to draw you in, and he graces you to see his own blood-drenched visions, to share in the delight of horror and awe. The only logical response would be gratitude, wouldn't it?

So, say thank you to the Master, and please understand that you're very much invited to continue further into his worlds, and that he still has such sights to show you.

Bloodborne Comic, A Song of Crows

Well. Eh... This was weird.

I'm honestly quite unsure of how to begin this one.

     Song of Crows is the third installment in the Bloodborne comic series, though every installment stands alone, their stories unconnected. Right out of the gate everything seemed kosher and fine: The art was awesome and though the writing was a bit confusing, I did already get the sense of what the comic was going for, already seeing the hints of a full-circle-resolution type thing that was only going to make sense at the comic's eventual conclusion. But then... shit got really weird.

     Writer Ales Kot did make it pretty clear at the start that things weren't going to be so straightforward.

Woven into the narration where our protagonist Eileen questions her place in time and her reasons for her decision to bury the dead of Yharnam there is also a musing on the nature of the story about to be told. Tres meta.

If you put the fragmented narration together it states quite clearly, addressing both Eileen and us the readers, and it informs us:

No matter how hard you try to understand, you'll never know the whole story.

Not your own, not anyone else's. At certain points you may be convinced you do.

 You may even choose to convince yourself that you've found the right angle from which to see the totality of the world, of the universe. You'd be wrong.

For time is the deepest grave of all. And graves tell no complete stories.

There's a hole in the center of the story.

There's a hole in the center of my story. And time is the deepest grave of all.

It has no shape. But time has a flow.

Time doesn't have a shape. But we make shapes of time.

     First things first: This isn't exactly Eileen the Crow's story from the game. It is also not her origin story. Once again, if you came into this comic looking for answers, you're going to be disappointed. Eileen the Crow from the game either vanishes or is killed by you, at the end of her story arc in the game, never having given in to the insanity or the blood-lust that many of the game's other characters do. At no point before that ending did she gave in to madness.

    When we meet her in the game, she, in spite of her age, in spite of being cut off from the Hunter's Dream and thus susceptible to true death, continues to hunt the hunters who've gone mad or who've become beasts, holding fast to her duty, until it finally kills her, or until, after you've helped her in her fights and she finally realizes that she just cannot continue, she ends up giving you her blessing, after which she vanishes from the game. It is unclear what happens to her.

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     If you take the comic's story as possible, then it takes place after that vanishing. But almost nothing else of this story can be discerned. We follow Eileen as she tries to make sense of her situation, confused as she is about her place in time. At points we are gifted with flashes to her childhood, which may not actually be scenes from her childhood and instead could just be a symbolic representation of an event yet to come, or an event that has happened but which she is hiding from herself. Or there might be some strange synchronicity thing going on where one lake hides a dead child, the other a Vacuous Spider or something. The Child might also just be a representation of Eileen herself.

     There's also another hunter who shows up and tries to guide her and who Eileen ends up fighting, but who I'm sure is Eileen herself, and since this Hunter's eyes are visible, I think it's safe to say that this is a representation of Eileen's consciousness that has been given insight. Although she's likely not even there.

What I'm trying to get at is that this is a very non-linear comic book, and that it is all rather experimental. I ended up loving it, but even here at this time when I think I've understood a lot of it, it still remains bewildering and really quite disorienting.

     What does become clear is that there is a definite point where Eileen lost the plot, where she definitively lost her grip on her place in time and reality; at the end of Issue 2 when she met Rom the Vacuous Spider and the spider likely gifted her with eyes, though it is likely this event took place far in advance of issue 1.

     To Have Eyes in the world of Bloodborne is to have gained knowledge, and to have become intimate with the dark secrets of the Bloodborne universe, which frequently also leads to true Lovecraftian insanity of the mind. Which is where Eileen finds herself at the start of the comic.

     The meeting with the spider is represented by a rather experimental approach and the delivery of both subliminal and symbolic imagery. It might also have been padded out a little too much.

A hole in the ice, becomes a whirpool, which becomes a crow tearing out the eye of another crow, which, weeping suppurating goo, becomes the Blood Moon, gashed and weeping fluids, and becomes the other hunter with her visible eyes and all of them originate from the dark eyes of Rom the Vacuous Spider. Or something.

I honestly love it.

It's this type of convoluted story telling that is so easy to dismiss as a creator deep inside his own arse, or trying to be artsy or deep, but because Bloodborne's own stories tend to be focused on insanity, dreams and the nature of reality, and the stories and characters tend to be very difficult to follow or even understand, their information so hidden and secret, that I do think, that even though it certainly won't be for everyone, that of the three so far, this might be the comic that's closest to it in spirit. 

Either way, it was an unsettling but pretty great experience.

Early next year will see another Bloodborne comic and I'm really, really looking forward to it.

In the meantime. If you are confused by all of this but are starting to get interested in Bloodborne. You could do worse than to take a look at VaatiVidya's story video. The man gives a pretty coherent and insightful look at the world, and is likely to really calm you down with his dulcet tones.

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One last thing though. A little niggle I had about A Song of Crows:

Strangely enough. Though Eileen is said to perform sky burials in the game, as a way to honour and 'help' the Hunters who've gone mad, and the first time we see her there, she is standing by corpses she hoisted into the air, and even though there are a few depictions of a form of sky burial in both Eileen's investigation in issue 1 and her flashbacks to a time in her youth in subsequent issues, in issue 1 she bizarrely is introduced to us burying corpses in the ground. I'm not sure why she's introduced burying in the ground rather than actually performing sky-burial, which she then continues to end up doing anyway later in the comic. It's an odd little inconsistency, I think. Or it could be I'm just missing something.

BloodBorne Comic: The Healing Thirst

     I spent a short half an hour back on the streets of Yharnam, once again in comic-book form.

I really liked the first Bloodborne comic and thought it'd be a nice treat if in the horror month I were to continue the story a little bit; there are 2 more installments out right now, after all.

     Strangely enough, or no actually, not really; Bloodborne The Healing Thirst does not pick up where the first volume ended, leaving the Nameless Hunter and his really quite creepy charge to fend for themselves, and instead we are transported to the time when Yharnam was on the cusp of becoming overrun by the curse of the Old Blood. This is that story, albeit very much on a ground level.

We follow two unlikely allies as they team up to try and find the source of the terrible plague that has started to turn men into beasts, and to stop it if they can.

     What's rather new for the setting is that we get to see some of the daily lives of Yharnam's citizens in the days before everything went to hell. We get to see the moment when the city topples from relative normalcy into madness through the eyes of Alfredius and Clement, the first of whom is a scientist dedicating himself to analyzing the bacteria found in the plague victims and who concocts potions to combat it, and who harbours a dark secret, and the other is a priest of the Healing Church, and who starts out as a devout follower of the church's teachings but who over the course of his and Alfredius' investigation gradually begins to suspect that the Church might be doing more harm than good.

     There's a neat progression to both characters' philosophies and outlook, and there is even a very clear moment where the reader realizes that the two men's functions have switched places, and that the man of science has become the man of faith, and vice versa.

     Unlike the first Bloodborne comic this one isn't all that action packed, and is instead more of a character piece, concerned with the pathos of the two men as they try and keep up with a situation that is rapidly spiraling out of control. Also unlike in the first Bloodborne comic, there's a lot to read, with occasionally a page or two filled with introspection, accompanied with a panel or two where one or the other of the two men are hunched over their writings, gloomily mulling it all over.

     I thought this was a daring touch, even a little experimental, as there generally isn't much information to be found either in the game or the first comic, where spoken dialogue or reading material were kept to an absolute bare minimum and where the player or reader was forced to deduce the story from the surroundings, rather than having anything spelled out.

     It isn't like one can find massive revelations in here though. All writing serves instead to build up the characters of the two men, their relationships with the people around them, and the reasoning behind their choices and actions.

     If there is one negative about the comic then it is that it ended a little quickly, if not exactly abruptly. The fall of Yharnam was always going to be inevitable, of course, and here isn't the main point of interest. But, although the two characters' final fates are perfectly in character and well built up I would have appreciated a little more time spent on Alfredius' final pages, a little bit more time spent watching the city deteriorate around him, before his final resolution.

     But, as the comic before it, Bloodborne the Healing Church is an actual worthy addition to the universe. Ales Kot is genuinely very good at writing these things, and I really hope that there'll be more to come. Piotr Kowalski has also returned from the first one for the art duties and is again pretty good. I loved the opening panel which tied this installment neatly to the first volume, where one can see the same scenes in both volumes' first piece of art but with a clear point in time to establish when the story takes place.

     As a fan of Bloodborne I loved it. If you're new to the setting, or haven't played the game: Well, do you like the Gothic genre? Do you like violence and bloodshed, and men fighting werewolves and things from beyond the stars with cruel-looking melee weapons? Do you like being submerged in a sense of doom and terror, and are you not afraid to be completely lost and disoriented in a setting that will not spell out a damn thing for you?

     If the answers to those questions all spell out yes, and I do mean ALL, then do yourself a kindness in this greatest and most terrible of all months and embark on a journey into the universe of Bloodborne, you won't regret it.

Oh, and in the game you'll probably die a whole hell of a lot, so you probably have to be pretty patient. But trust me, it is worth it.