Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Carmichael's Dog by R. M. Koster ::
by William the Bloody
Carmichael is a famous science fiction writer. He is also besieged by demons. Demons can enter anyone who makes a plea, you see, and the first to answer Carmichael's call was Odvart a sloth demon. Carmichael had entered his summer of mandatory military service before university and he didn't care for it at all. He begged for a way to cope, and enter the sloth demon. The sloth demon made him simply not care about his shabby treatment and mind numbingly dull routines; Carmichael was creative and a thinker, but the military wanted nothing more than to stifle this and the sloth helped him to cope. Upon leaving the military, however, Carmichael realized his laziness was still upon him and wondered what happened to his drive and ambition? Enter several Pride demons to compensate and reinstate drive. And so it went within Carmichael for decades: discontentment breads pleas which brought on more demons. Then a particularly ambitious Pride demon, one with an actual rank, sees potential in Carmichael and makes him his project. See, like people, demons also enjoy bragging rights. Any demon with eyes to rise in rank will want to claim he was the fiend who bedevilled the rich, famous, and talented, the historically significant. The Pride demon saw The Knack within Carmichael, the flow of creativity, and gave him the push to write, and write Carmichael did. His books became well known and one adapted to film. But the Pride demon also wanted to be the head devil to a legion of fiendish followers, and so the active seeking out of more demons to pester Carmichael was enacted. Any excuse to take on more devils was implemented and it made Carmichael a greater writing machine. The demons numbered in the thousands and were content with the perfect host body. Decades of being under subliminal torment had made Carmichael a cranky bastard that no one, save his wife and son, particularly liked. He was mean to magazine writers who interviewed him, he was a jerk to his fans, he was a dick to the check out girl at the supermarket and so on. Carmichael had just finished the last book in his epic series and the demons were celebrating the night Carmichael's wife decided to get a puppy to fill the hole her son created when he left for university. Thus the dog entered the Carmichael household. Furfante was technically Nicole's dog, but he knew that Carmichael was the real lord and master of the house. Carmichael never experienced self doubt, therefore never wrong, and all within his domain obeyed his command. The dog knew who was the real lord, but Carmichael hated the dog. The dog feared for his life since the lord hated him so, but knew his lord was tormented by devils. Dogs can sense such things. Perhaps, Carmichael, his lord, would be pleased if he were to be purged of demons? Maybe he would be grateful to the one who freed him from almost constant torment? Furfante, the dog, saw little option but to become an exorcist.
The Good: It is no doubt a unique premise: an exorcist dog. Who would've thunk it? The resulting tale is cute, fun, suspenseful, entertaining, at times hilarious, and quite interesting. The whole thing is told from the point of view of Odvart, the sloth demon, him being the first demon on Carmichael's premises. He recounts his first entry of Carmichael, the arrival of other demons, their general disarray until the Pride demon Orcis shows up, and their impact on Carmichael's life and attitude. It's a very much round-about method of storytelling. Odvart is telling the story of how the dog entered their lives and changed the demonic way of life, but goes about it by first building up certain events, then going back to retelling others, in a nonlinear way to tell a linear tale. The main linear story is the retelling of how Nicole decides to get a dog, gets a dog, and what happens thereafter, but this is periodically interrupted by the need to go back and fill in past events so that we can get a clear understand of the whole story. As a result, the story is about the dog, but the dog isn't really in the story until about halfway through the book. This method of writing does keep you on your toes and forces you to pay attention in keeping events in their right order. After the dog gets into it, the story is very cute and made me smile. The parts that happen before the dog arrive tell you quite often as to how much of a real bastard Carmichael is, and well, these entertained me greatly. I found it very amusing this one part where he's just yelling at his wife for pages upon pages. So many pages in fact, that the narrator felt the need to insert an intermission! It was pretty funny.
The Bad: I have a first edition of this book, and noticed quite a few typos in it. This disturbed me. Also, I didn't quite catch on the round about storytelling right off and was a little disoriented at first. I should mention that I am a weird person who visualizes books as I am reading them. As a result, I couldn't quite get into Carmichael until I started picturing him as Gregory House. I don't know why that is, maybe because they both have similar character traits of being highly intelligent and cannot suffer fools. After I started picturing Carmichael as looking like House, it all fell together for me mentally.
Overall, I ended up enjoying this novel quite a lot. If you want to read a story about a guy who is a jerk, but not beyond redemption and the cute little dog who saved him, well this is your book.
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