Jesse Bullington is an author of supernatural horror thrillers that are by turns funny and…well, horrific. Bullington’s work is not for the squeamish, but it offers rich roots steeped in traditional mythology and fairytales for those who can stomach the odd graphic scene of violence or transformation.
Bullington’s first book is The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (4/5 stars, currently priced at $8.89)
Hegel and Manfried Grossbart may not consider themselves bad men – but death still stalks them through the dark woods of medieval Europe.
The year is 1364, and the brothers Grossbart have embarked on a naïve quest for fortune. Descended from a long line of graverobbers, they are determined to follow their family’s footsteps to the fabled crypts of Gyptland. To get there, they will have to brave dangerous and unknown lands and keep company with all manner of desperate travelers-merchants, priests, and scoundrels alike. For theirs is a world both familiar and distant; a world of living saints and livelier demons, of monsters and madmen.
The Brothers Grossbart are about to discover that all legends have their truths, and worse fates than death await those who would take the red road of villainy.
I found this book both hilarious and brutal. Like the original Grimm’s fairytales of old, it pulls no punches with its monsters, magic and violence. It speaks volumes about Bullington’s skill as an author that I soon found myself not only sympathizing with, but rooting for, the dim-witted and murderous brothers, despite the fact that the tale opens with the brothers murdering an innocent farmer’s family and burning his barn. I’m ordinarily very troubled by such terrible crimes in fiction, but Bullington injects just enough fantasy and comedy into even the most otherwise offensive material that somehow, you can’t help but be pulled along with the tide of his storytelling, clinging to protagonists you may even initially despise.
Bullington’s follow-up to Grossbart was The Enterprise of Death (4/5 stars, currently priced at $8.89)
As the witch-pyres of the Spanish Inquisition blanket Renaissance Europe in a moral haze, a young African slave finds herself the unwilling apprentice of an ancient necromancer. Unfortunately, quitting his company proves even more hazardous than remaining his pupil when she is afflicted with a terrible curse. Yet salvation may lie in a mysterious tome her tutor has hidden somewhere on the war-torn continent.
She sets out on a seemingly impossible journey to find the book, never suspecting her fate is tied to three strangers: the artist Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, the alchemist Dr. Paracelsus, and a gun-slinging Dutch mercenary. As Manuel paints her macabre story on canvas, plank, and church wall, the young apprentice becomes increasingly aware that death might be the least of her concerns.
Brothers Grossbart is so original that it’s difficult for me to find anything to compare it to, but Enterprise of Death will likely be enjoyed by anyone who liked Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, or the excellent Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell. Again, Enterprise may be a bit more graphic than these other two, but it strikes that same delicate balance between fantasy and believability. Enterprise is less humorous, but also more lyrical, than Brothers Grossbart.
Bullington’s latest effort is the brand new The Folly of the World (no reviews yet, currently priced at $9.99), which has an official release date of 12/18/12 but is already available for purchase.
On a stormy night in 1421, the North Sea delivers a devastating blow to Holland: the Saint Elizabeth Flood, a deluge of biblical proportions that drowns hundreds of towns, thousands of people, and forever alters the geography of the Low Countries. Where the factions of the noble Hooks and the merchant Cods waged a literal class war but weeks before, there is now only a nigh-endless expanse of grey water, a desolate inland sea with moldering church spires jutting up like sunken tombstones. For a land already beleaguered by generations of civil war, a worse disaster could scarce be imagined.
Yet even disaster can be profitable, for the right sort of individual, and into this flooded realm sail three conspirators: a deranged thug at the edge of madness, a ruthless conman on the cusp of fortune, and a half-feral girl balanced between them.
With The Folly of the World, Jesse Bullington has woven an extraordinary new tale of the depraved and the desperate.
I’ve not yet read Folly, but if it’s anything like Bullington’s work to date (and it sure sounds like it is!), I’ll bet it’s just as good.