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May. 8th, 2010 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreCongratulation, Richard Yancey, you have succeeded in totally icking me out.
So, I am still reading The Monstrumologist. Since my last posting on this book, we have had a mysterious and cryptic diary, a crumbling and terrifying insane asylum, and a flashback to a ship full of sailors trapped at sea with a monster.* Seriously, if we end up going to the Arctic/Antarctica, this book will contain everything I love in pulpy horror.
And then, Dr Warthrop and his assistant are talking to the Captain of the aforementioned ship, who has been in the aforementioned creepy insane asylum for something like 20 years, since all his fellow sailors were eaten by anthopophagi. The captain is obese to the point of immobility and has apparently been lying in the same position on his bed for several years. (Terrifying insane asylums not actually being that good at patient care.) And his room is filthy and full of flies. Which is because he has infected bedsores that the flies have been laying their eggs into, so that he is full of squirming maggots. And his skin is sloughing off.
It's actually really well done, because the flies are mentioned subtly when the characters first enter the cell, and then the Doctor notices them, and you just know that something horrible is going to happen. But then you get caught up in the flashbacks and the sailors trapped on the ship. And the captain starts talking about how he's cursed because he lived and they didn't, how he shouldn't have abandoned his ship but should have been eaten with his men and how he's paying for his crimes by being eaten now and then, reveal! Horrible maggoty ick.
::shudders::
I'm honestly fairly impressed. The ick is not my favorite kind of horror, but when it's done well and built up to well, it's pretty awesome.
*It also contained a rather regrettable flashback prior to the ship, where the sailors were buying the monsters from the king of an African tribe who was, of course, using the monsters for horrific ritual sacrifice. So, apparently we're doing the bad points of pulpy horror as well. There aren't any women who aren't evil or dead yet, either. ::sigh::
So, I am still reading The Monstrumologist. Since my last posting on this book, we have had a mysterious and cryptic diary, a crumbling and terrifying insane asylum, and a flashback to a ship full of sailors trapped at sea with a monster.* Seriously, if we end up going to the Arctic/Antarctica, this book will contain everything I love in pulpy horror.
And then, Dr Warthrop and his assistant are talking to the Captain of the aforementioned ship, who has been in the aforementioned creepy insane asylum for something like 20 years, since all his fellow sailors were eaten by anthopophagi. The captain is obese to the point of immobility and has apparently been lying in the same position on his bed for several years. (Terrifying insane asylums not actually being that good at patient care.) And his room is filthy and full of flies. Which is because he has infected bedsores that the flies have been laying their eggs into, so that he is full of squirming maggots. And his skin is sloughing off.
It's actually really well done, because the flies are mentioned subtly when the characters first enter the cell, and then the Doctor notices them, and you just know that something horrible is going to happen. But then you get caught up in the flashbacks and the sailors trapped on the ship. And the captain starts talking about how he's cursed because he lived and they didn't, how he shouldn't have abandoned his ship but should have been eaten with his men and how he's paying for his crimes by being eaten now and then, reveal! Horrible maggoty ick.
::shudders::
I'm honestly fairly impressed. The ick is not my favorite kind of horror, but when it's done well and built up to well, it's pretty awesome.
*It also contained a rather regrettable flashback prior to the ship, where the sailors were buying the monsters from the king of an African tribe who was, of course, using the monsters for horrific ritual sacrifice. So, apparently we're doing the bad points of pulpy horror as well. There aren't any women who aren't evil or dead yet, either. ::sigh::
