Author: Liz Worth
First Published: 2022
Contains spoilers
The blurb: Have you ever seen a ghost? In Starling City, there are spirits on every street corner. Everyone in town seems to have at least one ghastly tale to tell.
So, it’s no wonder that a place like this breeds people like Blue and Julie, who summon demons just for fun and are obsessed with a local legend of a vampire named Matter. They hang out in dark clubs on a desolate downtown street and hope, desperately, that Matter will one day find them.
Because if they could become vampires, all of their problems will disappear. Just like the movies, they’ll never get old, and they will never die. They won’t have to worry about working or making rent, because the mundane world will no longer apply to them.
One night, their wish comes true: It turns out Matter is real. Except Blue and Julie soon learn that being a vampire isn’t exactly like you see in the movies. Abandoned, they are left on their own to figure out how to live as the undead – not to mention what to do with all those dead bodies piling up.
The review: When describing the Mouth is a Coven, Liz Worth has said “The style is literary, poetic and sometimes experimental, with occasionally unreliable characters whose grasp on reality loosens through a haze of occult rituals, blood pacts, and late nights at the local goth club.” I reproduced this because it actually describes the book really well.
It is set in Starling City and, as I read it, I felt it had a vibe of Santa Mondega from The Book with No Name at times, or even Bad City from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, not that it was the same as these locations but there was an air. Within the city we meet, first, Blue and later Julie who both obsess over the urban myth of the vampire Matter and, eventually, help invoke the vampire.
I say invoke as Matter is as much an elder God as a vampire and when brought into corporeal reality possesses a body and so we have vampiric possession in this. Whilst Matter is a God, with an agenda that is beyond mortal wishes, when Blue and Julie are turned their vampirism is perhaps not so grand and brings about definite problems as described in the blurb. In both the case of Matter, as a higher vampire, and Julie and Blue, as pale facsimiles, the volume offered an unusual take on the genre, which was welcome.
The joy of the volume is within the prose, as experimental and lyrical as they are (as per the author’s description) they are also evocative and magical, building characters you want to follow and weaving a world that draws you in. I marked one passage as I read it, not only because it contained interesting, none standard, vampiric imagery within it but because the prose struck me as macabrely beautiful:
I have mentioned the two texts above that the city itself reminded me of, but I also had a feel within the prose of the works of Poppy Z. Brite and Tanith Lee, again more a vibe than anything else and the setting of the Goth scene, of course, played into that. It was great that the characters were simultaneously compelling but also not necessarily reliable witnesses and I adored the play throughout the book on the power of urban myth and the collective nature of reality. I absolutely devoured this volume and at no point was it less than a joy to read. 9 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
So, it’s no wonder that a place like this breeds people like Blue and Julie, who summon demons just for fun and are obsessed with a local legend of a vampire named Matter. They hang out in dark clubs on a desolate downtown street and hope, desperately, that Matter will one day find them.
Because if they could become vampires, all of their problems will disappear. Just like the movies, they’ll never get old, and they will never die. They won’t have to worry about working or making rent, because the mundane world will no longer apply to them.
One night, their wish comes true: It turns out Matter is real. Except Blue and Julie soon learn that being a vampire isn’t exactly like you see in the movies. Abandoned, they are left on their own to figure out how to live as the undead – not to mention what to do with all those dead bodies piling up.
The review: When describing the Mouth is a Coven, Liz Worth has said “The style is literary, poetic and sometimes experimental, with occasionally unreliable characters whose grasp on reality loosens through a haze of occult rituals, blood pacts, and late nights at the local goth club.” I reproduced this because it actually describes the book really well.
It is set in Starling City and, as I read it, I felt it had a vibe of Santa Mondega from The Book with No Name at times, or even Bad City from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, not that it was the same as these locations but there was an air. Within the city we meet, first, Blue and later Julie who both obsess over the urban myth of the vampire Matter and, eventually, help invoke the vampire.
I say invoke as Matter is as much an elder God as a vampire and when brought into corporeal reality possesses a body and so we have vampiric possession in this. Whilst Matter is a God, with an agenda that is beyond mortal wishes, when Blue and Julie are turned their vampirism is perhaps not so grand and brings about definite problems as described in the blurb. In both the case of Matter, as a higher vampire, and Julie and Blue, as pale facsimiles, the volume offered an unusual take on the genre, which was welcome.
The joy of the volume is within the prose, as experimental and lyrical as they are (as per the author’s description) they are also evocative and magical, building characters you want to follow and weaving a world that draws you in. I marked one passage as I read it, not only because it contained interesting, none standard, vampiric imagery within it but because the prose struck me as macabrely beautiful:
“Around here, people talk about things that happened years ago. They say the soil in the cemetery on Cedar Road had gone black, that the man who’d sanctified the ground had a crow’s eye for a heart. It was said that when the dead were buried there, the roots of nearby trees wrapped themselves around the decaying bodies to suck up whatever life was left behind. As winter changed over to spring, the tree blossoms no longer held the youth of new growth, but hung heavy, their petals black with old blood. As spring gave way to the sweat of summer, those trees would glisten, weeping crimson.”
I have mentioned the two texts above that the city itself reminded me of, but I also had a feel within the prose of the works of Poppy Z. Brite and Tanith Lee, again more a vibe than anything else and the setting of the Goth scene, of course, played into that. It was great that the characters were simultaneously compelling but also not necessarily reliable witnesses and I adored the play throughout the book on the power of urban myth and the collective nature of reality. I absolutely devoured this volume and at no point was it less than a joy to read. 9 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
No comments:
Post a Comment