Voice of the Fire

Rating:
Summary: Best Novel of the 90s?
Review: Most comics readers have heard of Alan Moore, and EVERYONE working in comics has been influenced by him. So when he released his first prose novel several years ago (1995?) I bought a British import and read it in a few days. Devoured it. Savoured every concrescence manifesting through the man's words. Loved it.

And then the book went out of print...

Until Top Shelf brought it back! (yesh)

Watchmen? From Hell? Tom Strong? Swamp Thing? A Small Killing? Halo Jones? Naw, it's different from all of them. Here's a quote from a current Moore interview: "I'd like to think that if I've shown anything, it's that comics are the medium of almost inexhaustible possibilities, that there have been...there are great comics yet to be written. There are things to be done with this medium that have not been done, that people maybe haven't even dreamed about trying. And, if I've had any benign influence upon comics, I would hope that it would be along those lines; that anything is possible if you approach the material in the right way. You can do some extraordinary things with a mixture of words and pictures. It's just a matter of being diligent enough and perceptive enough and working hard enough, continually honing your talent until it's sharp enough to do the job that you require."

He does the same thing with prose, pushing the medium in surprising directions. The closest literary equivalent I know of is 'Ulysses' - but that takes place in one day. 'Voice of the Fire' covers a few thousand years. Both are equally dulcet and disquieting. It's a book worth owning. And rereading.

Rating:
Summary: Best Novel of the 90s?
Review: Most comics readers have heard of Alan Moore, and EVERYONE working in comics has been influenced by him. So when he released his first prose novel several years ago (1995?) I bought a British import and read it in a few days. Devoured it. Savoured every concrescence manifesting through the man's words. Loved it.

And then the book went out of print...

Until Top Shelf brought it back! (yesh)

Watchmen? From Hell? Tom Strong? Swamp Thing? A Small Killing? Halo Jones? Naw, it's different from all of them. Here's a quote from a current Moore interview: "I'd like to think that if I've shown anything, it's that comics are the medium of almost inexhaustible possibilities, that there have been...there are great comics yet to be written. There are things to be done with this medium that have not been done, that people maybe haven't even dreamed about trying. And, if I've had any benign influence upon comics, I would hope that it would be along those lines; that anything is possible if you approach the material in the right way. You can do some extraordinary things with a mixture of words and pictures. It's just a matter of being diligent enough and perceptive enough and working hard enough, continually honing your talent until it's sharp enough to do the job that you require."

He does the same thing with prose, pushing the medium in surprising directions. The closest literary equivalent I know of is 'Ulysses' - but that takes place in one day. 'Voice of the Fire' covers a few thousand years. Both are equally dulcet and disquieting. It's a book worth owning. And rereading.

Rating:
Summary: a disturbing, stunning, even heartrending meditation
Review: These reviews I found would express what I think better than I can.

"Part mythic cycle, part fictional history of Moore's hometown, part collection of fireside ghost stories, Voice of the Fire is as clever and well-crafted as Moore's other genre experiments, and by taking his dialogue out of word-balloons and panel arrangements, it gives his limitless literary ambition room to stretch out into new and fascinating forms." -- Tasha Robinson, The Onion

"[Voice of the Fire] blends witchcraft, savagery, subjectivity, and the darkness that lies within each of us. The resulting narrative is a meditation on the twisting annals of history, the supernatural world between life and death, and the oft-thin line between fantasy and reality." -- Lloyd Babbit, MetroPulse.com

By summoning up the voices of the dead and burned, Moore stakes his claim as a grand magician and, unlike his colleague in Oz, he invites us to look at him behind his curtain of fire. Now singing, now screaming, he signals his message through the flames." -- Adam White, Indyworld.com

Rating:
Summary: a disturbing, stunning, even heartrending meditation
Review: These reviews I found would express what I think better than I can.

"Part mythic cycle, part fictional history of Moore's hometown, part collection of fireside ghost stories, Voice of the Fire is as clever and well-crafted as Moore's other genre experiments, and by taking his dialogue out of word-balloons and panel arrangements, it gives his limitless literary ambition room to stretch out into new and fascinating forms." -- Tasha Robinson, The Onion

"[Voice of the Fire] blends witchcraft, savagery, subjectivity, and the darkness that lies within each of us. The resulting narrative is a meditation on the twisting annals of history, the supernatural world between life and death, and the oft-thin line between fantasy and reality." -- Lloyd Babbit, MetroPulse.com

By summoning up the voices of the dead and burned, Moore stakes his claim as a grand magician and, unlike his colleague in Oz, he invites us to look at him behind his curtain of fire. Now singing, now screaming, he signals his message through the flames." -- Adam White, Indyworld.com

Rating:
Summary: England's burning
Review: This book's characters face down disappointments, corruptions, madness and dreams in a series of short stories - which all take place in a short radius in central England but are spaced over 6000 years (not 5000 as it says on the cover) until the present day. What can I say - one of the best books to travel through the history of England. Dark, bitter, loving, and embedded in the earth below and burning with the fire above. Passages of brilliant prose will linger - no, just stay - with you. Ideas bounce around the confines of the book, ignited by the fires it tells of. From inventing a language in the first chapter (in which Moore imagines an English language of 6000 years ago, using a vocabulary of few words) to passages that make you realise just how rich the language can be (and infrequently is) you get the sense that Moore is in control and really working at this book. Stand-outs: that first chapter, a Roman facing both the loss of Empire and the savagery of the locals, a Crusader facing his own madness and the madness of his faith - and, in one of the most beautiful descriptive texts I know, the burning at the stake of two "witches" in love.

Rating:
Summary: Strange read
Review: This is a rather difficult book and it will not fare very well for a casual reading. It forced you to think, to look and rather more to feel what it is around you. It actually demand a lot from a reader, which is not a problem as long as the pay off is this good.
This is one of the most visual book I read. I think the writer have a picture of the events in his mind and describe it, rather than just thought of it as a prose. The think is, this will not work very well if the structure of the book allow it to be. And amazingly, I think it works quite well. The last chapter of the book make me look around in my dark room, feeling a breath of someone else on my neck.
Just don't read it when you are alone.

Rating:
Summary: Highly literate, highly original
Review: This neo-pagan novel is a psycho-spiritual portrait of one English town told in a dozen first-person snapshots over a period of 6,000 years, beginning with the story of a Neolithic man and ending with a mystical, poetic monologue in the author's own mind in the Northampton of 1995. Northampton is examined as a phenomenological entity with Moore attending as occult detective, a shaman mapping its mental geography. Brilliant, disturbing, overwhelming and highly original.