Dark Gods

I must disagree with the reviewer who found these four novellas weak. Of course, I should clarify my criteria for rating such works: I am not a big fan of the graphic, bloody, "modern" horror fiction: I have reservations about Stephen King (I think my favorite work of his is his novella "The Mist" -- though bloody, it is not gratuitously so-- and in it he is not as callous with his characters as in his novels) -- and most other popular modern horror writers. I think the finest horror fiction is, almost by definition, shorter: horror must extablish a pervading and insistent atmosphere of dread -- carefully built up and cumulative. This is difficult to sustain over novel-length works and shock is employed rather too lavishly to compensate. For the type of horror I rank highly, think Shirley Jackson, Lovecraft, Blackwood, Leiber (in his rare but brilliant forays into the genre). Well, in my opinion, Klein is, simply, one of their peers. The four works in this collection are all excellent. Even the weakest ("Petey") is interesting and beautifully written. The other three are all, in my estimation, masterworks of modern horror. "Children of the Kingdom" is more than that other reviewer indicates: it builds up the notion that there is a terrifying subterranean world that is on the move, spreading, actively looking to usurp our position in the world (the creatures, who do far more than just invade an old folks' home, are called in Costa Rican folklore "usurpadores" -- usurpers. The citywide blackout pictured in NYC is, by implication, caused by them -- and in the darkness they run rampant, all over New York, raping women by the hundreds (the only way they can reproduce).) The final vignette at the sewer grating is chilling: and implies (or did so to me, at least) that WE can be corrupted into THEM. "Black Man with a Horn" is a Lovecraftian tribute that never descends into pastiche; its subtle accretion of evidence for the pursuing terror is masterly. H.P. himself would have heartily approved. One has to applaud the variety of outlooks Klein employs, as well: "Petey" and "Nadelman" are third-person narratives; in "Kingdom" the first person narrator is a young married Jewish man; in "Black Man" it is an elderly horror author who was a friend of Lovecraft. And the references to Lovecraft are totally pertinent. He dealt with parallel themes. In Klein's novellas, the notion of horror lurking hidden in remote places (and implacable in its pursuit of trespassers into its realm) is a fine counterpoise to that of horror lurking beneath the surface of our everyday world in "Kingdom". The final story is quite the equal of the other two just mentioned: "Nadelman's God" tackles the notion that sometimes things we do or say can have terrifying consequences, however innocently they may have been done or uttered. It also tackles the Lovecraftian idea that the universe is indifferent at best, hostile at worst, to the lives of mere humans. In the midst

I wish this guy was still writing, his work is outstanding.I liked it then and still love re-reading now. One of the finestexamples of this genre.

Most people who approach H.P. Lovecraft's peculiar genre of "weird fiction" do it in a way owing more to imitation than invention--such that modern Cthulhu Mythos tales have the sycophantic feel of fan fiction.T.E.D. Klein, on the other hand, really twists those familiar themes about angry gods and forgotten races into new shapes. Here, Upper East Siders in the seventies contend with subterranean beasts during a blackout. A creature raised from hell upsets a house-warming party. A terrible poet accidentally writes a conjuring spell.And what's more, it's scary--Klein understands how to make the juxtaposition between the familiar and the fantastic, more often mined for humor and irony, into something pretty unsettling.This book is a lost classic.

Simply put, this book is one of the best collections of horror fiction written in the latter half of the 20th Century. Similar to the work of H.P.Lovecraft thematically, but with very strong characterization, striking imagery, and contemporary themes; Klein tears aside the world of (frequently humorous) mundane existence, to reveal a landscape peopled by terrible monsters. In the award-winning "Children of the Kingdom" the sewers and ghettos of Manhattan conceal a race of faceless mutants connected to the Gnostic Gospels and MesoAmerican lore. In "Black Man With a Horn" an aging Lovecraft protege discovers that some of the old gent's tales might not be fiction after all. But possibly the best of all is "Nadelman's God" where an ad man becomes a most unlikely and unwilling prophet for a divinity of slaughter and cruelty. Dark, witty, and frequently profound.

Drag Lovecraftian cosmic paranoia chanting and wailing into the latter 20th century, and you capture the disturbing and brilliant world of Klein. With dark gems like Petey and Nadelman's God, this tome deserves a place on the mantle with Lovecraft, Machen, and Dunsany.