Dawn Song

by Michael Marano

"The Succubus was newly born, nurtured by the loving care of a horned prince from the pummeled soul of a camp-following whore (who had, in fleshy life, serviced one of Napoleon's best officers). With skilled hand and eye, like a master jeweler, he fashioned his child from this twisted spirit, purifying and distilling her ... burning and sculpting this ghost of a once human thing into a crimson-skinned siren--her form holding the secret fire of cinnabar and the muted light of a November sunset."

According to Michael Marano, there are two great powers in the depths of Hell. Belial, the Unbowed One, is the horned prince who treasures beauty--the beauty of individual human souls, the beauty of a future when all is "despair and the terror of the omnipresent sublime." Leviathan, the Enfolded One, is an enormous armored worm, a blind idiot whose only purpose is the perpetuation of ugliness--the banality of evil, human souls entrapped in a gross, undifferentiated mass. The battle between these two comes to a head in Boston, at the end of 1990, the dawn of the Gulf War. The combatants are a newborn succubus and a handful of benighted human beings. The backdrop is the darkness of the River Charles, the lavender-gray of the winter sky, and the millions of lonely voices of the city.

Dawn Song is an ambitious first novel, enriched by the author's grad school background in medieval history, alchemy, and the kabbalah. Marano's measured, often lyrical prose uses a host of gritty details to evoke the desperation of a handful of Bostonians--their unique, yet sadly predictable, plights, and their multilayered inner worlds. The complex plot is skillfully woven together around the themes of evil-as-beauty vs. evil-as-ugliness. The book's only flaw is that the ending is rather muddled, but you'll have been treated to so many poignant moments and amazing horrors by the time you get there, you'll hardly mind. --Fiona Webster

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction

572 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Michael Marano is a horror and dark science fiction writer, with stories in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 11 and Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories from the Edge; his first novel Dawn Song won the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards. He is a former Fiction Editor of the award-winning dark fiction magazine Chiaroscuro. Stories From the Plague Years, a collection of Marano’s new and reprinted short fiction, published by Cemetery Dance Publications, was named one of the Top Ten Horror publications of 2011 by Booklist. His novella “Displacement” was nominated for a 2011 Shirley Jackson Award. Stories From the Plague Years was reprinted as a limited edition trade paperback in 2012 by ChiZine Publications of Toronto, who also reprinted Dawn Song in 2017, which will be followed by two sequels, A Choir of Exiles and Winter Requiem.
Since 1990, he has also been reviewing movies and doing pop culture commentary for the Public Radio Satellite System program Movie Magazine International, produced in San Francisco and syndicated in more than 111 markets in the US and Canada. Mike is a former Writing instructor at Buffalo State College, and his non-fiction has appeared in venues such as The Boston Phoenix, The Weekly Dig, The Independent Weekly, Paste Magazine, SuicideGirls, and Science Fiction Universe. Marano is a leading critic of horror films, with a column on horror movies in Cemetery Dance Magazine.
He is currently an Instructor at Grub Street, a non-profit creative writing center based in Boston, where his classes on applying literary techniques to the writing of genre fiction have been consistently popular. As a performer, he is an amateur circus aerialist performing at night clubs, street fairs and other venues, and has dabbled as a Wrestler.

Reviews

[Μιχάλης · Rating 1 out of 5]

Δεν είναι το χειρότερο βιβλίο που διάβασα στη ζωή μου, αλλά σίγουρα είναι στα δέκα χειρότερα, κυρίως επειδή ο συγγραφέας έχει μία πραγματικά δυνατή πένα (χάρη στην οποία και πιθανότατα να πήρε και το βραβείο Bram Stoker πρωτοεμφανιζόμενου) αλλά έχει χάσει τη μπάλα εντελώς.

Είναι ένας γκέυ υπάλληλος βιβλιοπωλείου στη Βοστόνη (νομίζω) που γουστάρει έναν πελάτη αλλά δε του το λέει και παράλληλα μία σούκουμπους σκοτώνει διάφορους για λογαριασμό ενός από τους δύο άρχοντες της κόλασης που κάνουν έναν ψυχρό πόλεμο επί της γης και από την άλλη έχεις και κάτι cultists του άλλου άρχοντα που ίσως και να της αντιτίθενται, αλλά δεν κατάλαβα και πολλά.
Η γραφή είναι ποιητικότατη και λυρική με κάποιες πολύ όμορφες εικόνες και κάνει όλα αυτά που ήταν hip στον τρόμο την εποχή που κυκλοφόρησε.

Αλλά η πλοκή έχει τρομερά προβλήματα, κενά, τρύπες και ανολοκλήρωτες ιδέες: Πχ, σε ένα σημείο διαβάζουμε επί δέκα σελίδες για έναν σύζυγο που ανάβει ένα προς ένα τα φώτα του σπιτιού του, γιατί η γυναίκα του φοβάται το σκοτάδι και δεν μπάινει. Ε, μετά από αυτό η σύζυγος δεν ξαναεμφανίζεται ποτέ.

Συνολικά, μείνετε ΜΑΚΡΙΑ εκτός κι αν θέλετε πολύ να διαβάσετε έναν Clive Barker του 90 με πολύ πιο ασαφή και ξεχειλωμένη πλοκή

[Electric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was für eine seltsame Erfahrung....Wer hätte gedacht dass ein Buch das die Geschichte eines Sexdämons erzählt dermaßen melancholisch und langatmig daherkommt. Sehr charakterzentrierte Story eines Autors der offensichtlich keinen gesteigerten Wert auf Spannung oder Plot legt, dafür aber kein der Menschheit bekanntes Adjektiv in seinen blumigen Schilderungen ausläßt. Dass ich es trotzdem zu Ende gelesen habe liegt an der Wirksamkeit mancher der Bilder und Szenen aus einem deprimierenden eiskalten Boston das als Schlachtfeld für einen schwer nachvollziehbaren Krieg zweier Höllenfürsten dient. Die politischen Untertöne der Erzählung sind zwar symphatisch können aber auch nicht davon ablenken dass sich Autor ein bischen dafür schämt einen "Genre" Roman zu veröffentlichen. Impressionistisch und überfrachtet aber trotzdem ein lesenswerter Versuch ein altes Thema neu aufzurollen.

[Cori Crooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in my early 20s, I, Cori Crooks, lived on Alcatraz Ave, (no joke) in a neighborhood on the Oakland/Berkeley (CA) border. On a cloudless, junkie-free day, you could safely stand in the middle of the street, turn toward the water, and be held captive by the clear view of Alcatraz Island.

It was quite the block of artists, musicians, and hopeful dreamers. My roommate and best friend was actress Amber Tamblyn's big sister, who would one day become the singer/guitarist of the celebrated indie girl band, "The Kirby Grips." Two houses down was where "51O Magazine" was printed... where the "Loved Ones" lived next door to ex-members of "Social Unrest"... but I digress.

I lived on the second floor of a 5 story apartment building, which sat right beside another 5 story apartment building. There was a small alley between them, filled with crabby grass, beer bottles, and left over mattresses. The two buildings were so close that if the light was right, you could see all the goings on in the apartment across the way. You didn't need a telescope.

That's where I met "Mike," a friendly-faced punk who always waved and was always home. We said our first hellos through our open (cell) windows. Turns out Mike was a writer. A horror writer actually. He lent me a short story he had just finished and I was so fucking freaked out after reading it that I avoided him for awhile and started closing my curtains. :)

Well, my friend Mike ended up becoming the famed Mike Marano, or "Mad Professor Mike," creator, host, and producer of "Mad Professor Mike's Headbanger Movie Reviews" on the the nationally syndicated show, "Movie Magazine International"! He is also the fiction co-editor at "ChiZine," and the writer of the creepy-ass book, "Dawn Song," which has received an International Horror Guild Award, and a Brahm Stoker Award. Dude! (Side note: No, the character "Cori" in "Dawn Song" is NOT based on me. He swears!)

We laugh (through emails) now at how incredibly weird it is or was- that so many creative types could come from one street. It must have been the water.

Okay- so all this blah, blah, blah was to direct you to a funny-as-hell article Mike has up over at the Suicide Girls site, "Ten Lessons Spider-Man Can Teach Our First Nerd President." Read it and laugh. Then buy his book, "Dawn Song" and get all freaked out and stay inside your house for a month. :)

[Book Goblin, Page Devourer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This seemed more like a draft than a complete novel. The writing was all over the place and the beautiful language used in it didn't salvage the trainwreck...

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars.
Weirdly enough, I cannot tell if I liked this book or not 🤔

[Robbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was a lot more existential terror than I expected from a horror novel. It was a grand and painful exploration of the weaknesses of the human spirit that can drive them to believe in the horrors they perpetrate on each other expressed as the respective wills of competing demons struggling to gain dominion of hell through the manipulation of humans. And, wow, those were some seriously horrific things. Really, if you need trigger warnings for anything at all, just don't read this book.

This was so beautifully written, with each description flowing with beauty without it feeling overdone or unnatural. And I loved how the city itself is infused into the characters, each of which was so well drawn and so psychologically complete that it was never hard to feel for them in their respective sufferings. The thing that I think that I'll remember the most, though, is how the author made it so that readers had almost no choice but to root for the lesser of two evils only to turn it around the next chapter to remind the reader of the damage they are doing, all of the horrific assaults on life and human dignity they were perpetrating. It created a constant sense of unease not just with the things that were happening but with the actual act of being pulled into story itself. It was really quite brilliant.

[Alyssa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't make it very far - did not like it at all.

[A. E. S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Artistic, aesthetic, poetic and filled with scenes of imagined terrorizing horror. Scenes of hell enmesh with captured sexuality, the "distillation of all men's desires". A fledgling succubi, Tisiphone, sets out on a quest to capture the souls of unknowing male victims, and makes a dangerous enemy when she does.

[Mary Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written and very much like Clive Barker's Great and Secret Show, I just didn't like the ending.

[Stefanie]

DNF on page 46.

I have absolutely no motivation to continue reading this even though it's not bad per se. I guess my taste in books changed too much since I got this, unfortunately ...