Black Easter

Rating:
Summary: Simply the best modern magickal novel available.
Review:

An excellent book, written on many levels, that follows the final stages of the career of my namesake Therion Ware, who at the bequest of the arms dealer Banes, summons the major devils of Hell and releases them into the world for arts sake.

The book, together with its sequel, "The Day After Judgement" is excellent on the level of a science fiction/fantasy novel, but also touches on some interesting theological points, particularly in Satan's final speech which is rather finer than the Milton on which it is based.

This book and its sequel should be reissued as soon as possible.

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Rating:
Summary: A peculiar book
Review: Blish in this book shows he is far above the average fantasy world building of the normal sci fi novel. With both comic and dramatic elements, Blish is quite transparently echoing in art actual events of the 60s. If one has Baines as Lyndon Baines Johnson, Theron Ware as Nelson Rockefellar, and Ginsberg as Jack or Robert Kennedy, it is quite possible to see the whole scope of the plans of the group that took over the USA at Kennedy's assassination. Baines is a arms merchant, LBJ is the starter of the vietnam war, Ware is the magician who plays a word game with the world and who has compacts with many devils (people who had killed members of their family or who had been conditioned by anal means to obey without question). Ginsberg (Kennedy) is obsessed by sex and is provided with women by Ware (Rockefellar. Father Garelli is the Roman Catholic priest who is present as an observer throughout the whole process. He signifies the Roman Catholic church, who has made a deal with the devil to get rid of Communism.

The city of Dis appears in Death Valley and begins to rule the world, perhaps a reminder of Los Angeles under the rule of the anal sex religion called "Allah" which apparently is very powerful there.

The releasing of the demons onto the world by Ware is the taking over of the world by severely psychologically conditioned people, as happened in the 70s. The chastening, sterialization and controlled proscribing of the dominant peoples by their victims currently goes on.

The reader can see for themselves if the final scene, where the four protaganists appear before Satan in Hell and receives a miltonic verse reply, takes place or has meaning. Let's hope the nucleur bombing of Rome or Dis in death valley never takes place.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, Pungent, Satanic Fun
Review: First off, the fact that this is such a brilliant, pithy, amazingly tight little tome is doubly amazing when one realizes that the quite gifted Mr. Blish also wrote novelizations of Star Trek episodes. Ah well, even the best have to pay rent.

Second, there is no finer fictional chronicle of diabolism, either ancient or modern, in English, and none that I know of in most of Earth's other tongues. Each of Blish's characters is deftly crafted with a minimum of prose, a compliment which can extend to the rest of this slight and delicious book; Blish accomplished in a few pages what today's pompous and prolix authors take hundreds of pages to say...Stevie King, though the man can write when he wants to, comes to mind.

Finally---and a mild criticism---while it is delightful that Blish takes care to present Malefica as a discipline, it is (or was, for when I first read this I was merely thirteen) somewhat disenchanting to see that Blish gets most of the Satanic formulae, Latin incantations, and demon summoning paraphernalia hopelessly wrong. I have since found older grimoires to draw upon, though, and Black Easter is a work of fiction, so no victim, no foul.

All in all a devilishly clever and delightful book; for more nastiness pick up The Day After Judgement, which is actually the third in a trilogy (the first of which was After Such Knowledge).

Rating:
Summary: A meticulous and powerful look at magic
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Hell's Showing Its Age
Review: This isn't a bad book by any means, but it's very period (one gets the impression the author desires to shock, but, almost 40 years later, there's nothing here to ruffle your maiden auntie's delicate feelings, I assure you.)

The book is brief, and tells a simple tale: a gentleman hires a magician to perform a task (after two earlier trials). There, that's it, that's the plot. Nowadays (not that now is better, but we're used to Now) that would be the set-up to the plot ... the book ends just as things are about to get interesting.

There is a sequel, the Day After Judgement, which picks up immediately afterward but which also somewhat disappoints.

Another fault--well, not a fault necessarily, but certainly a less-engaging choice--is that the horrors one might expect in a book about black magic are entirely played offstage, and only referred to. Imagine a Lord of the Rings with passages like "two weeks later they decided to go through Moria, where Gandalf died, unfortunately, fighting a Balrog. Still, with Lothlorien ahead, the Fellowship was somewhat optimistic." It's not a good thing.

There is a demon fashion-show/parade near the end which is worth a chuckle, but it's still not scary.

Blish' A Case of Conscience is much more compelling reading, so go there instead--unless you're a completist, or in the mood for a brief, non-unnerving look at the dark arts, circa 1967.

Note: a 3 star ranking from me is actually fairly good; I reserve 4 stars for tremendously good works, and 5 only for the rare few that are or ought to be classic; unfortunately most books published are 2 or less.