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Hollow Faces, Merciless Moons
A Weirdbook Special Edition
96 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1977
2 people are currently reading
231 people want to read
About the author
William Scott Home
11 books8 followersWilliam Scott Home is the pen name (and, later, legal name) of an American author, poet and biologist principally known for writing horror and dark fantasy.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 8, 2024
This book seems to have issued cacophonously from obscure marmoreal vaults of macaronic monstrosity, the product of a deliquescing cerebrum riddled with syphilitic spirochetes dancing a subcellular quadrille of hairy, drooling, turquoise madness to the accompaniment of a leper spasmodically pounding a flesh-bound drum with his own detached and riddled femur. Most horror fiction is merely deposited like bland and mausoleously dry McNuggets into the small portable Styrofoam carton of Goodreads, but this book is more like a raw flank torn from the black-feathered side of a Nyctalopic mountain chicken by the rabid jaws of writerly consciousness and seasoned with the venom of a stylistic asp incubated in the decaying skull of a lunatic.
December 10, 2017
In these stories, William Scott Home pulls off a veritable rape of the psyche in this Poe-esque and dreamlike dismantling of the brain.
Each story is sort of arcane, taking place in the far past, with soldiers or woodsmen or "out of civilization" figures. And primitives, usually afflicted with some awful curse.
Home spares the reader nothing. Every story has the power of a lucid dream that the reader cannot escape from upon waking. Some of the stories are like bits of dream that most of us would keep ourselves. "The Golem" is definitely one of those.
These stories are unpleasant and effectual and just stare right back at you. This is already a cult classic and I have little doubt that it will be more than that one day.
Each story is sort of arcane, taking place in the far past, with soldiers or woodsmen or "out of civilization" figures. And primitives, usually afflicted with some awful curse.
Home spares the reader nothing. Every story has the power of a lucid dream that the reader cannot escape from upon waking. Some of the stories are like bits of dream that most of us would keep ourselves. "The Golem" is definitely one of those.
These stories are unpleasant and effectual and just stare right back at you. This is already a cult classic and I have little doubt that it will be more than that one day.
August 13, 2017
Quite incomparable strange stories with an incredible level of philosophical and occult erudition behind them. Another thing about them that is incomparable is their sheer strangeness and oft nightmarish quality. Home's themes and prose style are quite unlike anything else in recent weird and horror fiction.
His prose might appear difficult and overwritten, but I wouldn't describe it as poor or purple. He isn't wasting words or engaging in description porn. Rather, he is invoking very specific images, moods and concepts. Concentration and patience are required when reading these stories, but they are more than well rewarded. That said, some of them are more accessible than others and could prove to be enjoyable for some wider audience. "A Cobweb of Pulsing Veins" indeed saw a reprint with much wider availability, and with a good reason, but at least two more stories from this collection deserved such a treatment. First is "The Silver Judgement, Echoing", wherein we follow a group of survivors in initially hazily defined post-cataclysmic world. Story is packed with strange detail as well as many idiosyncrasies as pertaining to the behaviour of our survivors and their reasons for constant fright and caution, but all of it falls into place just perfectly in the end, in this original and horrid manner. Let us just say that both the story's title and the title of the collection itself make perfect sense in relation to this one story, whatever images and ideas they might conujure in you right now. Other one is "The Parasite", viscerally effective tale of body horror with what appears to be SF or fantasy backdrop, redolent of early Michael Shea.
"The Uncomfortable Words" is also more accessible as well as disturbing on a more approachable level, if in the end a bit too conventional and not wholly representative of this author.
Other stories can be quite excellent too, but either their prose or esoteric subject matters might be too much for your average weird fiction reader. "Ship of Ghouls" is a tale with a quality of fever dream, and is quite viscerally disgusting in its details. Peter the Great, that insane and perennially controversial monarch, orders a huge collection of Frederik Ruysch's... art. Strange smell and aura emanate from ship that was meant to transport this macabre cargo from Amsterdam, and one of its sailors narrates a veritable orgy of madness, horror and decay. Prose here is akin to Shiel at his most verbose, but nothing else would do any justice to its subject matter.
"The Lamps are Lighted in the House of Hides" is a veritable gnostic retelling of Lovecraft's "Hypnos", potent brew of metaphysics and Beksiński-grade imagery.
Longest piece in this collection is "Chameleon That Blinks Barbed Stars", and this novella might also be characterised as the most difficult story in this package. It certainly serves to demonstrate the sheer breadth of this author's erudition.
Another thing worthy of note are unique illustrations by Stephen E. Fabian. They are detailed and perfectly attuned to stories themselves.
His prose might appear difficult and overwritten, but I wouldn't describe it as poor or purple. He isn't wasting words or engaging in description porn. Rather, he is invoking very specific images, moods and concepts. Concentration and patience are required when reading these stories, but they are more than well rewarded. That said, some of them are more accessible than others and could prove to be enjoyable for some wider audience. "A Cobweb of Pulsing Veins" indeed saw a reprint with much wider availability, and with a good reason, but at least two more stories from this collection deserved such a treatment. First is "The Silver Judgement, Echoing", wherein we follow a group of survivors in initially hazily defined post-cataclysmic world. Story is packed with strange detail as well as many idiosyncrasies as pertaining to the behaviour of our survivors and their reasons for constant fright and caution, but all of it falls into place just perfectly in the end, in this original and horrid manner. Let us just say that both the story's title and the title of the collection itself make perfect sense in relation to this one story, whatever images and ideas they might conujure in you right now. Other one is "The Parasite", viscerally effective tale of body horror with what appears to be SF or fantasy backdrop, redolent of early Michael Shea.
"The Uncomfortable Words" is also more accessible as well as disturbing on a more approachable level, if in the end a bit too conventional and not wholly representative of this author.
Other stories can be quite excellent too, but either their prose or esoteric subject matters might be too much for your average weird fiction reader. "Ship of Ghouls" is a tale with a quality of fever dream, and is quite viscerally disgusting in its details. Peter the Great, that insane and perennially controversial monarch, orders a huge collection of Frederik Ruysch's... art. Strange smell and aura emanate from ship that was meant to transport this macabre cargo from Amsterdam, and one of its sailors narrates a veritable orgy of madness, horror and decay. Prose here is akin to Shiel at his most verbose, but nothing else would do any justice to its subject matter.
"The Lamps are Lighted in the House of Hides" is a veritable gnostic retelling of Lovecraft's "Hypnos", potent brew of metaphysics and Beksiński-grade imagery.
Longest piece in this collection is "Chameleon That Blinks Barbed Stars", and this novella might also be characterised as the most difficult story in this package. It certainly serves to demonstrate the sheer breadth of this author's erudition.
Another thing worthy of note are unique illustrations by Stephen E. Fabian. They are detailed and perfectly attuned to stories themselves.
August 7, 2017
This collection's sole claim to fame is that Tom Ligotti once described is as unreadable. Unreadable it certainly isn't, whatever else might be said about it, but I can sympathize with Ligotti: nowadays, so much information lays easily available to everyone, and meaning of any obscure word can be deduced in a couple of seconds... Back in 70s, this guy's vocabulary and the concepts from which he drew might have been a stumbling block even for those as intelligent and widely/deeply read as TL.
Home himself appears to be one queer fish, biologist with (judging from these stories) deep interest in history of religion, occult, and folklore from odd corners of the world. Stories range from decent to mehtastic. First story is rather anemic, and few other stories waste perfectly good themes (like the golem one). Couple of them are like incomprehensible dreams. Better stories here are surprisingly conventional and straightforward ones (given the reputation of this collection) like The Parasite, EC Comics style The Uncomfortable Word and A Cobweb of Pulsing Veins (second one with a large helping of Pow and Shiel added in the mix), then Ship of Ghouls which is best described as Dosto doing splatterpunk, and the novella Chameleon that Blinks Barber Stars which deals with a whole range of religious philosophies and is based mainly around the idea of survival of ancient religion which is closest to the most aberrant aspects of left hand Tantrism combined with old conception of Sabaism...
Collection can still be found for 5$ on ebay, which is insanely low for old exotic small press release in this genre. I would say that it is more than worth it, at that price.
Home himself appears to be one queer fish, biologist with (judging from these stories) deep interest in history of religion, occult, and folklore from odd corners of the world. Stories range from decent to mehtastic. First story is rather anemic, and few other stories waste perfectly good themes (like the golem one). Couple of them are like incomprehensible dreams. Better stories here are surprisingly conventional and straightforward ones (given the reputation of this collection) like The Parasite, EC Comics style The Uncomfortable Word and A Cobweb of Pulsing Veins (second one with a large helping of Pow and Shiel added in the mix), then Ship of Ghouls which is best described as Dosto doing splatterpunk, and the novella Chameleon that Blinks Barber Stars which deals with a whole range of religious philosophies and is based mainly around the idea of survival of ancient religion which is closest to the most aberrant aspects of left hand Tantrism combined with old conception of Sabaism...
Collection can still be found for 5$ on ebay, which is insanely low for old exotic small press release in this genre. I would say that it is more than worth it, at that price.
January 8, 2021
I do love reading stories where the author has a thesaurus and a crushing grasp of eldritch phrasing in mind when they are working. Lovecraft and his circle used archaic words and phrases to describe the horrors outside of what mortals are meant to know and experience, and WS Home seems to have the same sourcebooks available for his writings.
Once described as unreadable (quote: “A quarter-moon smeared a feverish glow on the marble slabs and dappled the trodden weeds that beleaguered them with a pale dewy leprosy; only the massy shadows which clustered around the trunks of the ancient oaks and beeches escaped its infection.”), Hollow Faces, Merciless Moons is a tough read not for the subject matter, but how it is formatted and put to print. The whole thing is a jumbled run-on sentence of a mess that makes my reviews look Shakesperian in prose and length.
Not a bad read, just be prepared to reread, skip, or contemplate some sentences over and again to get the meaning is all ;)
Once described as unreadable (quote: “A quarter-moon smeared a feverish glow on the marble slabs and dappled the trodden weeds that beleaguered them with a pale dewy leprosy; only the massy shadows which clustered around the trunks of the ancient oaks and beeches escaped its infection.”), Hollow Faces, Merciless Moons is a tough read not for the subject matter, but how it is formatted and put to print. The whole thing is a jumbled run-on sentence of a mess that makes my reviews look Shakesperian in prose and length.
Not a bad read, just be prepared to reread, skip, or contemplate some sentences over and again to get the meaning is all ;)
December 26, 2022
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 1, 2025
I’m always chasing after the “favorite horror writer’s favorite horror writer”. I think that particular Russian doll has been what led me from Jeff Vandermeer to Thomas Ligotti to Michael Cisco but now I feel like I’ve skipped a couple steps. William Scott Home feels like my favorite horror writer’s favorite horror writer’s sleep paralysis demon’s favorite horror writer. His stories demonstrate an absolute commitment to the feel of the otherworldly, an ability to untether me and assail me with grim and extraordinary imagery on a level that feels at once wholly unique and completely “classic”. A combination of really enduring horror imagery - the gothic castle, the jungle wilderness, the haunted ship, the wasteland - in a sumptuous prose style of the sort that I absolutely love. But a prose style that, due to the strange word choices and bizarre sentence construction, feels like it’s from another plane altogether. Combined with stories thick with atmosphere and heavy on the transcendental and unknowable, these were challenging reads, but incredibly rewarding ones. Definitely not for everyone - I have seen some people online who were clearly annoyed by Home’s overwritten style, which I do get, but man, I just love that kinda stuff.
Gonna break down the stories that really stuck out to me which, is most of them. Still an honorable mention to the others, which were all good but simply may not have cohered as fully as these.
From this point on, I’ve written these after reading each individual story:
The first story to deeply hook me was the second and one of the shortest: “Unpleasant Words”, a pure banger of (comparatively) straightforward weird horror. It “answers the question” more than Home typically does, but the answer to the question is just all the more rattling and leaves just enough unsaid for there to be deeply disquieting suggestion.
“The Silver Judgment, Echoing” is one of the most fascinating horror shorts I’ve ever read. This was an extraordinary consistent elevation of raising questions with what exactly could be happening in a way that not only was just effective mystery and horror, but really just fully encapsulated what I love about weird fiction. To have questions raised constantly, answered in tantalizing ways that only continue to raise further questions, questions that are satisfying and compelling to ask and remain satisfying and compelling whether answered or unanswered. What are these guys running from? Why aren’t they looking at each other? Why are they “safer” if the windows are broken in the houses they come across? Every “stipulation”, every discovery, every turn in their journey deepens the mystery, the questions. And these questions do get answered satisfyingly, but the answer is so WEIRD and so out-there in its presentation that it keeps that feeling of mystery and wonder alive. An utterly phenomenal piece of weird fiction.
I wrote the above before reading “The Lamps are Lighted in the House of Hides” and I feel that “Silver Judgment” may have been topped. It’s hard to say. This story is more confounding for sure, even more bizarre, I can’t even say if I even close to grasped everything about it but that ungraspability is clearly part of the point, if not the whole point. This is a tale of the struggle to attain the unattainable, to breach beyond human understanding and achieve the eternal. And in breaching beyond that understanding you are brought to the absolute brink of anything that makes any kind of sense. But Home is so compelling in the way he weaves his grim absurdity, comes so tantalizingly close to meaning that you leave feeling you have been given glimpses of things impossible to truly cohere. The shred of odd worldbuilding with this one, that in medias res feel that you are coming into what just happens to be the most impactful of many grim, surreal adventures that this man and his beloved leader have gone through - it’s that archetypal feel, so bizarrely and directly deconstructed by the story’s end, that makes this truly special. “The Lamps Are Lighted in the House of Hides” is the strangest story I’ve ever read, and I fully expect it to be outdone by the end of this collection. God, how am I only 41 pages in? I feel like I’ve discovered new worlds and modes of being in every page.
“The Parasite” - glad to have one that doesn’t have me completely unmoored from reality, Home’s decision to follow “House of Hides” with this more conventionally-structured but still phenomenally written and visceral body horror piece was a fantastic choice if intentional. Just some great grody descriptions throughout this one and a truly pitiable narrator, with exactly the kind of concluding twist I love - one that feels classic yet fresh at the same time, somehow.
“Ship of Ghouls”. Man. I am a sucker for nautical horror and this one has it all. In this case, the viscerality of the ship’s cargo makes for some unsettling and grotesque imagery. But what really makes it for me is the fact that about two thirds of the story (and where the bulk of the horror content comes from, really) feels like it’s done almost in the style of Willem Dafoe’s outburst from The Lighthouse, but of course written decades earlier. I will admit the significance of the ending eluded me with this one, and maybe would’ve been better with a better prior understanding of Ruysch’s works. I suppose this one was anticlimactic, but it’s one that works - especially since so far, anticlimax has been used very sparingly in this collection.
“Chameleon that Blinks Barbed Stars” - a titanic story. I took detailed notes on what was going on while I read this one to help me with it and I’m glad I did. Incredibly complex and deep, classic weird fiction but with more thought than I’ve ever seen put into the mechanics of how an outer god would actually “work” in terms of its science and motivation. While that kind of thing might make it too “familiar” to remain frightening and otherworldly, Home’s writing means that knowing these things only makes them more unknowable. Contains a psychedelic sequence beyond compare in my experience of reading weird fiction, one that makes “House of Hides” read like Hemingway.
At the end of it all, I’d give the title of “favorite” a three way tie between “The Silver Judgment, Echoing”, “The Lamps Are Lighted in the House of Hides” and “Ship of Ghouls”. Three very different but in their own way transcendental horror stories that show Home’s unique stylistic strengths while still each being utterly unique, both from each other and from any other story. Shouts out to “Chameleon” for ambition and giving me some of the best classic weird fiction ideas I’ve read, and “Unpleasant Words” and “Parasite” as the perfect “this is what I’ll tell people to try reading first” picks.
Gonna break down the stories that really stuck out to me which, is most of them. Still an honorable mention to the others, which were all good but simply may not have cohered as fully as these.
From this point on, I’ve written these after reading each individual story:
The first story to deeply hook me was the second and one of the shortest: “Unpleasant Words”, a pure banger of (comparatively) straightforward weird horror. It “answers the question” more than Home typically does, but the answer to the question is just all the more rattling and leaves just enough unsaid for there to be deeply disquieting suggestion.
“The Silver Judgment, Echoing” is one of the most fascinating horror shorts I’ve ever read. This was an extraordinary consistent elevation of raising questions with what exactly could be happening in a way that not only was just effective mystery and horror, but really just fully encapsulated what I love about weird fiction. To have questions raised constantly, answered in tantalizing ways that only continue to raise further questions, questions that are satisfying and compelling to ask and remain satisfying and compelling whether answered or unanswered. What are these guys running from? Why aren’t they looking at each other? Why are they “safer” if the windows are broken in the houses they come across? Every “stipulation”, every discovery, every turn in their journey deepens the mystery, the questions. And these questions do get answered satisfyingly, but the answer is so WEIRD and so out-there in its presentation that it keeps that feeling of mystery and wonder alive. An utterly phenomenal piece of weird fiction.
I wrote the above before reading “The Lamps are Lighted in the House of Hides” and I feel that “Silver Judgment” may have been topped. It’s hard to say. This story is more confounding for sure, even more bizarre, I can’t even say if I even close to grasped everything about it but that ungraspability is clearly part of the point, if not the whole point. This is a tale of the struggle to attain the unattainable, to breach beyond human understanding and achieve the eternal. And in breaching beyond that understanding you are brought to the absolute brink of anything that makes any kind of sense. But Home is so compelling in the way he weaves his grim absurdity, comes so tantalizingly close to meaning that you leave feeling you have been given glimpses of things impossible to truly cohere. The shred of odd worldbuilding with this one, that in medias res feel that you are coming into what just happens to be the most impactful of many grim, surreal adventures that this man and his beloved leader have gone through - it’s that archetypal feel, so bizarrely and directly deconstructed by the story’s end, that makes this truly special. “The Lamps Are Lighted in the House of Hides” is the strangest story I’ve ever read, and I fully expect it to be outdone by the end of this collection. God, how am I only 41 pages in? I feel like I’ve discovered new worlds and modes of being in every page.
“The Parasite” - glad to have one that doesn’t have me completely unmoored from reality, Home’s decision to follow “House of Hides” with this more conventionally-structured but still phenomenally written and visceral body horror piece was a fantastic choice if intentional. Just some great grody descriptions throughout this one and a truly pitiable narrator, with exactly the kind of concluding twist I love - one that feels classic yet fresh at the same time, somehow.
“Ship of Ghouls”. Man. I am a sucker for nautical horror and this one has it all. In this case, the viscerality of the ship’s cargo makes for some unsettling and grotesque imagery. But what really makes it for me is the fact that about two thirds of the story (and where the bulk of the horror content comes from, really) feels like it’s done almost in the style of Willem Dafoe’s outburst from The Lighthouse, but of course written decades earlier. I will admit the significance of the ending eluded me with this one, and maybe would’ve been better with a better prior understanding of Ruysch’s works. I suppose this one was anticlimactic, but it’s one that works - especially since so far, anticlimax has been used very sparingly in this collection.
“Chameleon that Blinks Barbed Stars” - a titanic story. I took detailed notes on what was going on while I read this one to help me with it and I’m glad I did. Incredibly complex and deep, classic weird fiction but with more thought than I’ve ever seen put into the mechanics of how an outer god would actually “work” in terms of its science and motivation. While that kind of thing might make it too “familiar” to remain frightening and otherworldly, Home’s writing means that knowing these things only makes them more unknowable. Contains a psychedelic sequence beyond compare in my experience of reading weird fiction, one that makes “House of Hides” read like Hemingway.
At the end of it all, I’d give the title of “favorite” a three way tie between “The Silver Judgment, Echoing”, “The Lamps Are Lighted in the House of Hides” and “Ship of Ghouls”. Three very different but in their own way transcendental horror stories that show Home’s unique stylistic strengths while still each being utterly unique, both from each other and from any other story. Shouts out to “Chameleon” for ambition and giving me some of the best classic weird fiction ideas I’ve read, and “Unpleasant Words” and “Parasite” as the perfect “this is what I’ll tell people to try reading first” picks.
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September 5, 2023Even for Weird Fiction, deeply weird with a small "w". Florid, overwritten prose is no stranger to weird fiction readers, but the vocabulary is almost Vancian sometimes though in the service of concepts that are hyper-Lovecraftian. The closest parallel in my mind was Ligotti, in terms of the subject matter's subtlety and tone, but Ligotti is both a better stylist and forms his stories better. Oh well. I was hoping this obscure collection would be a grand secret handshake among horror cognoscenti, but it's more of a curiosity than anything else.
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