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Blackroot
Six years of dogged hunting has yielded the obsessive Renath few clues to the whereabouts of the one murderer he wants to capture most. The Blackroot Murderer perpetrates the most gruesome crimes, turning her victims into human planters for the blackroot vine. His obsession with this case has cost him his marriage, a normal life and probably some measure of his sanity.
His intrepid new assistant however has a fresh new perspective on his favourite case and she comes across clues that lead Renath deep into the murderer's disturbing past and bring him closer to the Blackroot Murderer than he could have ever hoped to be.
This is a Fantasy Thriller novel. Be warned that there are adult themes and graphic violence in this book.
His intrepid new assistant however has a fresh new perspective on his favourite case and she comes across clues that lead Renath deep into the murderer's disturbing past and bring him closer to the Blackroot Murderer than he could have ever hoped to be.
This is a Fantasy Thriller novel. Be warned that there are adult themes and graphic violence in this book.
- GenresCrime
ebook
First published February 24, 2011
5 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 6, 2019
So many corpses, and for each an ominous black flower. A cliché, yes, but when three genres collide, the story turns out to be anything but orthodox.
Large publishers may turn their nose up at tales that does not suit their market, or which does not provide a large enough expected profit; the curse and the blessing of a free market corporation is after all its need for profit. For smaller volume releases we have small publishers, each of whom are often tied to their own particular niche, and who thus shun cross-genre titles. And if your novel does not fall within any of these niches? ― then there is always the print-on-demand presses, whose lack of restrictions and censorship grants a safe haven to those novels who would otherwise, for various reasons, have been denied to the general public. Blackroot is one of these novels with a seemingly low chance of being a candidate for a mass-market paperback. It begins as both a fantasy novel – a genre where it is rumored that the approval of the large presses is exceptionally difficult to obtain – and a crime novel – a genre which share few readers with fantasy literature – but then the novel changes pace and priorities, turning into a romance novel with touches of pretty explicit erotica. In other words, finding a publisher, big or small, for this tale is next to impossible. Blackroot is indebted to the print-on-demand concept, and so, of course, are we readers who thus may enjoy it.
The blackroot is, in Meyer's own words, a "crawling plant" with blossoms that "tended to cascade beautifully over the edge and the leaves, generally a dark purple-black, when ruffled by the wind, would flutter, revealing lovely flashes of the rich blood burgundy of the underside," yet with the ugly quirk that it only "bloomed and pollinated when it could dig its roots into the dead remains" of something, or someone. It is a purely fictitious plant with characteristics that are otherworldly in the sense that they have no connection to our own reality. So, if one were to make a novel about a serial killer that grew blackroot plants using the abdominal cavities of the victims as containers, then it would make sense to make the world where this takes place into a fictitious one as well. Thus I introduce to you a place called Aum-Mavure, whose law and order is policed by its marechals, one of whom is named Renath and whom is charged with finding the Blackroot Killer. He has followed the macabre trail of cadaverous rhizology through nineteen separate murder scenes – most of whom contains two blossoming deceased, usually couples – yet they grow more and more stagnant, the only clues that are left behind are identical to clues already discovered in previous scenes. It took a stroke of ingenuity to change this, for by seeking out similar cases outside of the jurisdiction of the royal marechal corps he discovers three unknown cases, one of which is older than any of those he has so far studied. This scene was discovered by the militia in provincial Ainos, in a house surrounded by such frightening rumors that the townsfolk are still reluctant to approach it. And here the story twists; the first of several twists to come.
The world in which Blackroot takes place may be a fantastical one, but it does not stray far from our own. There seems to be no magic in it and nothing glaringly supernatural; actually, it would seem that the blackroot is the most fantastical part of it. The lands and their peoples are fictitious, at least moderately deviant from our own. Names of both places and characters are appropriately alien and so can their customs be as well. Yet, they are all human in every way which we can recognize someone as a member of the homo sapiens species. The resulting world is therefore an intuitive one which requires so little explanation that there is no reason to give any, and neither does the novel feed us any superfluous information, preferring to let the reader connect the few dots that are required. An excellent example of how one could successfully create a close-to-home fantasy setting.
Where the novel suffers is in its writing style. Print-on-demand publishing comes without editor or proof-reader, which is one of its most unfortunate sides, and spelling errors are not unheard of in Blackroot. With the exception of a sentence where the wrong name was inserted, which led to a premature revelation in the plot, these errors are negligible. The need for an editor becomes more apparent when one takes into account the plot structure, and then most importantly the jerky way in which the story builds its crescendo, filling what should have been a fairly graduate slope with odd pitfalls, and somehow placing the climax elsewhere than the point where the story resolves its final conflicts. Then again, Meyer describes herself as having an attention deficit disordered writing style, and thus it is possible that this particular oddity is simply a part of her idiomatic take on a penmanship. Or perhaps we readers could simply view it as the price to pay for a tale abundant with its own originality. After all, all the three genres I connect to this tale – fantasy, crime, and romance – are genres in which the hunt for originality comes closely tied to the expression 'needle in a haystack.'
To summarize my own thoughts on Blackroot, I found it a rewarding read where its inventiveness is the recipient of my strongest praises. Yet it cannot be truly appreciated unless one is willing to forgive its faults – print-on-demand books does often give their benefits with such disadvantages – and that willingness is up to each reader to decide to hold or abandon. As I see it, at some point one tires of the clichés, or 'tropes' if you prefer, and that is when novels like Blackroot shines at their brightest. It is precisely the cure for such itches, and it is for just that kind of scratch that I recommend this.
Large publishers may turn their nose up at tales that does not suit their market, or which does not provide a large enough expected profit; the curse and the blessing of a free market corporation is after all its need for profit. For smaller volume releases we have small publishers, each of whom are often tied to their own particular niche, and who thus shun cross-genre titles. And if your novel does not fall within any of these niches? ― then there is always the print-on-demand presses, whose lack of restrictions and censorship grants a safe haven to those novels who would otherwise, for various reasons, have been denied to the general public. Blackroot is one of these novels with a seemingly low chance of being a candidate for a mass-market paperback. It begins as both a fantasy novel – a genre where it is rumored that the approval of the large presses is exceptionally difficult to obtain – and a crime novel – a genre which share few readers with fantasy literature – but then the novel changes pace and priorities, turning into a romance novel with touches of pretty explicit erotica. In other words, finding a publisher, big or small, for this tale is next to impossible. Blackroot is indebted to the print-on-demand concept, and so, of course, are we readers who thus may enjoy it.
The blackroot is, in Meyer's own words, a "crawling plant" with blossoms that "tended to cascade beautifully over the edge and the leaves, generally a dark purple-black, when ruffled by the wind, would flutter, revealing lovely flashes of the rich blood burgundy of the underside," yet with the ugly quirk that it only "bloomed and pollinated when it could dig its roots into the dead remains" of something, or someone. It is a purely fictitious plant with characteristics that are otherworldly in the sense that they have no connection to our own reality. So, if one were to make a novel about a serial killer that grew blackroot plants using the abdominal cavities of the victims as containers, then it would make sense to make the world where this takes place into a fictitious one as well. Thus I introduce to you a place called Aum-Mavure, whose law and order is policed by its marechals, one of whom is named Renath and whom is charged with finding the Blackroot Killer. He has followed the macabre trail of cadaverous rhizology through nineteen separate murder scenes – most of whom contains two blossoming deceased, usually couples – yet they grow more and more stagnant, the only clues that are left behind are identical to clues already discovered in previous scenes. It took a stroke of ingenuity to change this, for by seeking out similar cases outside of the jurisdiction of the royal marechal corps he discovers three unknown cases, one of which is older than any of those he has so far studied. This scene was discovered by the militia in provincial Ainos, in a house surrounded by such frightening rumors that the townsfolk are still reluctant to approach it. And here the story twists; the first of several twists to come.
The world in which Blackroot takes place may be a fantastical one, but it does not stray far from our own. There seems to be no magic in it and nothing glaringly supernatural; actually, it would seem that the blackroot is the most fantastical part of it. The lands and their peoples are fictitious, at least moderately deviant from our own. Names of both places and characters are appropriately alien and so can their customs be as well. Yet, they are all human in every way which we can recognize someone as a member of the homo sapiens species. The resulting world is therefore an intuitive one which requires so little explanation that there is no reason to give any, and neither does the novel feed us any superfluous information, preferring to let the reader connect the few dots that are required. An excellent example of how one could successfully create a close-to-home fantasy setting.
Where the novel suffers is in its writing style. Print-on-demand publishing comes without editor or proof-reader, which is one of its most unfortunate sides, and spelling errors are not unheard of in Blackroot. With the exception of a sentence where the wrong name was inserted, which led to a premature revelation in the plot, these errors are negligible. The need for an editor becomes more apparent when one takes into account the plot structure, and then most importantly the jerky way in which the story builds its crescendo, filling what should have been a fairly graduate slope with odd pitfalls, and somehow placing the climax elsewhere than the point where the story resolves its final conflicts. Then again, Meyer describes herself as having an attention deficit disordered writing style, and thus it is possible that this particular oddity is simply a part of her idiomatic take on a penmanship. Or perhaps we readers could simply view it as the price to pay for a tale abundant with its own originality. After all, all the three genres I connect to this tale – fantasy, crime, and romance – are genres in which the hunt for originality comes closely tied to the expression 'needle in a haystack.'
To summarize my own thoughts on Blackroot, I found it a rewarding read where its inventiveness is the recipient of my strongest praises. Yet it cannot be truly appreciated unless one is willing to forgive its faults – print-on-demand books does often give their benefits with such disadvantages – and that willingness is up to each reader to decide to hold or abandon. As I see it, at some point one tires of the clichés, or 'tropes' if you prefer, and that is when novels like Blackroot shines at their brightest. It is precisely the cure for such itches, and it is for just that kind of scratch that I recommend this.
February 20, 2014
This is an entertaining story that follows Renath as he tries to identify and capture the Blackroot Murderer, whom he is convinced is a woman despite his colleagues and superiors believing otherwise. As he uncovers more about the murderer and their past he finds himself caught between his work and his emotions as he finds they share experiences that have had lasting influences on how they live and the decisions they make. A good read that keeps you engrossed from the outset, more so as you find out more about the murderer's past and the reasons behind their behaviour and murderous tendencies. The characters were well written and on the whole fairly believable although the complete change in Renath's opinions and views as he identifies the killer was a little extreme and would benefit from a little more detail and angst as he battles to balance his work and personal self. Otherwise a good read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews