Image of the Beast

Rating:
Summary: A pornographic gothic novel....
Review: Farmer had two mixed genre pornographic novels that I'm aware of. "A Feast Unknown" pitted Doc Savage against Tarzan in a mildly pornographic fight to the death. "Image of the Beast," with its title from the Book of Revelation, is a nicely pornographic gothic novel with an interweaving of bad science-fiction overtones. "Blown," the sequel, rather ruins the effect of the main novel, actually. Farmer's imagination ruins his art in the sequel. I've known several people who found the more sadistic scenes in "Image" to be arousing.

Rating:
Summary: A pornographic gothic novel....
Review: Farmer had two mixed genre pornographic novels that I'm aware of. "A Feast Unknown" pitted Doc Savage against Tarzan in a mildly pornographic fight to the death. "Image of the Beast," with its title from the Book of Revelation, is a nicely pornographic gothic novel with an interweaving of bad science-fiction overtones. "Blown," the sequel, rather ruins the effect of the main novel, actually. Farmer's imagination ruins his art in the sequel. I've known several people who found the more sadistic scenes in "Image" to be arousing.

Rating:
Summary: Raymond Chandler meets DeSade at an Anne Rice cocktail party
Review: I read this book perhaps 15 years ago; it is a re-print, I believe, of an old story of Farmer's called "Blown." (More on that title later.) Fans of P.J. Farmer are familiar with his fascinating attempts to meld canonical fantasy/horror figures with a more current perspective, while throwing in kinky sex and a strong sci-fi overlay. This is a "textbook" example. The protagonist is Harold Childe, a private detective in what appears to be 1980's Los Angeles. He doesn't know it, but "Childe Harold" is the re-incarnation of Geoge Gordon, Lord Byron, the sexually irrepressible English Romantic poet. The book opens with Harold and a high-ranking LAPD official watching a film that has been sent to them; the film depicts, in horrifying detail, the mutilation/murder of a buddy of Harold's. The victim is tied down, an attractive young woman fellates him, and then she slips in a razor-sharp metal mothpiece and bites off the victim's penis, while a male accomplice clad in a Dracula costume looks on. (This scene, redolent of every male's castration nightmares, horrified me as an adolescent; but Farmer, because of his innate skill as a writer, manages to bring it off in a way that is not ludicrous or hackneyed, but rather, for lack of a better term, "gripping" despite its horrific nature.) From there, the story follows Harold's attempts to discover who or what murdered his friend. In the process, Harold encounters a variety of sleazy Hollywood creatures who are not what they seem, including a slutty actress who has a creature living inside her vagina, and that creature turns out to be the re-incarnation of the medieval French general and sadist, Gilles de Railles. (Weird??? Hell, yeah!) Eventually, Harold discovers that this motley gallery of semi-human monsters have extra-terestrial origins, like himself, and that he is the "Captain" for whom they have long waited , to lead them back to their origin in the stars. I've given away entirely too much, but what I found compelling about this book was that Farmer takes a subject matter that lends itself to absurdity and parody, but creates something strong and distinctive, through his own inimitable dark word-craft. Not what you'd necessarily expect from the author of the "Riverworld" series, but certainly intriguing.

Rating:
Summary: A pornographic gothic novel....
Review: I read this book perhaps 15 years ago; it is a re-print, I believe, of an old story of Farmer's called "Blown." (More on that title later.) Fans of P.J. Farmer are familiar with his fascinating attempts to meld canonical fantasy/horror figures with a more current perspective, while throwing in kinky sex and a strong sci-fi overlay. This is a "textbook" example. The protagonist is Harold Childe, a private detective in what appears to be 1980's Los Angeles. He doesn't know it, but "Childe Harold" is the re-incarnation of Geoge Gordon, Lord Byron, the sexually irrepressible English Romantic poet. The book opens with Harold and a high-ranking LAPD official watching a film that has been sent to them; the film depicts, in horrifying detail, the mutilation/murder of a buddy of Harold's. The victim is tied down, an attractive young woman fellates him, and then she slips in a razor-sharp metal mothpiece and bites off the victim's penis, while a male accomplice clad in a Dracula costume looks on. (This scene, redolent of every male's castration nightmares, horrified me as an adolescent; but Farmer, because of his innate skill as a writer, manages to bring it off in a way that is not ludicrous or hackneyed, but rather, for lack of a better term, "gripping" despite its horrific nature.) From there, the story follows Harold's attempts to discover who or what murdered his friend. In the process, Harold encounters a variety of sleazy Hollywood creatures who are not what they seem, including a slutty actress who has a creature living inside her vagina, and that creature turns out to be the re-incarnation of the medieval French general and sadist, Gilles de Railles. (Weird??? Hell, yeah!) Eventually, Harold discovers that this motley gallery of semi-human monsters have extra-terestrial origins, like himself, and that he is the "Captain" for whom they have long waited , to lead them back to their origin in the stars. I've given away entirely too much, but what I found compelling about this book was that Farmer takes a subject matter that lends itself to absurdity and parody, but creates something strong and distinctive, through his own inimitable dark word-craft. Not what you'd necessarily expect from the author of the "Riverworld" series, but certainly intriguing.

Rating:
Summary: Raymond Chandler meets DeSade at an Anne Rice cocktail party
Review: I read this book perhaps 15 years ago; it is a re-print, I believe, of an old story of Farmer's called "Blown." (More on that title later.) Fans of P.J. Farmer are familiar with his fascinating attempts to meld canonical fantasy/horror figures with a more current perspective, while throwing in kinky sex and a strong sci-fi overlay. This is a "textbook" example. The protagonist is Harold Childe, a private detective in what appears to be 1980's Los Angeles. He doesn't know it, but "Childe Harold" is the re-incarnation of Geoge Gordon, Lord Byron, the sexually irrepressible English Romantic poet. The book opens with Harold and a high-ranking LAPD official watching a film that has been sent to them; the film depicts, in horrifying detail, the mutilation/murder of a buddy of Harold's. The victim is tied down, an attractive young woman fellates him, and then she slips in a razor-sharp metal mothpiece and bites off the victim's penis, while a male accomplice clad in a Dracula costume looks on. (This scene, redolent of every male's castration nightmares, horrified me as an adolescent; but Farmer, because of his innate skill as a writer, manages to bring it off in a way that is not ludicrous or hackneyed, but rather, for lack of a better term, "gripping" despite its horrific nature.) From there, the story follows Harold's attempts to discover who or what murdered his friend. In the process, Harold encounters a variety of sleazy Hollywood creatures who are not what they seem, including a slutty actress who has a creature living inside her vagina, and that creature turns out to be the re-incarnation of the medieval French general and sadist, Gilles de Railles. (Weird??? Hell, yeah!) Eventually, Harold discovers that this motley gallery of semi-human monsters have extra-terestrial origins, like himself, and that he is the "Captain" for whom they have long waited , to lead them back to their origin in the stars. I've given away entirely too much, but what I found compelling about this book was that Farmer takes a subject matter that lends itself to absurdity and parody, but creates something strong and distinctive, through his own inimitable dark word-craft. Not what you'd necessarily expect from the author of the "Riverworld" series, but certainly intriguing.

Rating:
Summary: or one star, depending on your perspective
Review: This is, without a doubt, the strangest book I've ever read. Having written the above, I feel compelled to add that "strange" is a criminal understatement and that no amount of extreme adjectives can do justice to this book. The copy I have is coupled with "Blown," the completion of the story begun with "Image of the Beast." I made the mistake of reading this when I was sick a few years back, unable to do anything, feeling as though I was on my deathbed, and soon feared that this hellish, disturbing, nightmare-inducing, stomach-turning THING was the last thing I would ever read. I think it actually made me sicker.

Don't take all of the above as a dismissal, though. I've never taken the time to really pick apart the mechanism that makes this book run (I don't have that strong of a stomach), but there is something underneath all the horror and sex and violence that just pulls you along. Farmer takes the sexual themes of some of his earlier works and goes waaaaaaay over the top with them. It really messes with you in a number of different ways.

Fans of the Riverworld series and some of Farmer's other novels should be warned about this book before reading it. Although it has a number of elements that are representative of some of his major themes, it is like nothing else he has ever written. Nothing can prepare you for reading this, and once you've read it, you'll never be able to forget it.

Rating:
Summary: or one star, depending on your perspective
Review: This is, without a doubt, the strangest book I've ever read. Having written the above, I feel compelled to add that "strange" is a criminal understatement and that no amount of extreme adjectives can do justice to this book. The copy I have is coupled with "Blown," the completion of the story begun with "Image of the Beast." I made the mistake of reading this when I was sick a few years back, unable to do anything, feeling as though I was on my deathbed, and soon feared that this hellish, disturbing, nightmare-inducing, stomach-turning THING was the last thing I would ever read. I think it actually made me sicker.

Don't take all of the above as a dismissal, though. I've never taken the time to really pick apart the mechanism that makes this book run (I don't have that strong of a stomach), but there is something underneath all the horror and sex and violence that just pulls you along. Farmer takes the sexual themes of some of his earlier works and goes waaaaaaay over the top with them. It really messes with you in a number of different ways.

Fans of the Riverworld series and some of Farmer's other novels should be warned about this book before reading it. Although it has a number of elements that are representative of some of his major themes, it is like nothing else he has ever written. Nothing can prepare you for reading this, and once you've read it, you'll never be able to forget it.