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The Piper Trilogy #3
The Codex
In the year 2024, middle-aged Pip Durrant has become a successful author on sabbatical at Oxford University, but is still troubled by harrowing visions of the supernatural figure who has dogged him since the loathsome Piper. He is now on a quest to find the Piper’s blasphemous autobiography, the Codex, in the hope that it will help him finally to overcome this ancient evil. But as events lead him and his friends back to the Romanian village of Arva, with its gruesome history of ritual child rape and murder, what new terrors lie in store for them? The Codex is the long-awaited final book in acclaimed author Helen McCabe’s chilling Piper trilogy.
338 pages, Paperback
First published August 3, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 5, 2022
Again the ending let me down.
November 8, 2016
Ever since I saw the quaint, historical town of Hamlein from atop the shoulders of my father and chortled in delight at the re-enactment of the Pied Piper with his flute, luring the town’s children away, I’ve been absorbed by the genre. Of course, as a toddler I didn’t know it wasn’t real. Yet, that notion returns to bite me in the bum with Helen McCabe’s Piper trilogy. Why? Because The Codex didn’t stop in the middle ages. The piper is transformed and with us today!
The eponymous object, The Codex, refers to an ancient alternative Bible compiled by the dark side around 800 AD. Evil leaks from this tome and part of the mission by Pip is to seek the whole of the Codex and render it harmless. Forces are out to stop him and manifest themselves in unknown ways. This is a quest and in a kind of recursive, self-referencing way. I yearn to write a successful recursive story and find them as rare as black daisies. Not that the Codex has recursive elements. For instance it is the third volume of a trilogy. The protagonist is a writer needing to promote his third book of a trilogy, which in itself is a kind of Codex. It’s as if the readers are invited to be involved in drawing out the hidden elements of horror and evil not just written as writhing inside this novel.
As usual McCabe is a mistress of the artful word although I’m uncertain whether the Codex itself has its finger on her pen as for example: “ ...a headache...skinny string reediness that crept through his skull and stuck like a hapless insect in his memory web.” The author is enviably skilled in oblique dialogue – I already refer my editing clients to chunks of her Piper stories for these writing masterclass elements.
Interesting left-field logic is used throughout such as should a virgin avoid the beast’s attention by giving herself to a willing lad and so change her sexual status?
In Codex we have medieval hardcore horror meeting the 21st Century where “secrets breed lies”
The eponymous object, The Codex, refers to an ancient alternative Bible compiled by the dark side around 800 AD. Evil leaks from this tome and part of the mission by Pip is to seek the whole of the Codex and render it harmless. Forces are out to stop him and manifest themselves in unknown ways. This is a quest and in a kind of recursive, self-referencing way. I yearn to write a successful recursive story and find them as rare as black daisies. Not that the Codex has recursive elements. For instance it is the third volume of a trilogy. The protagonist is a writer needing to promote his third book of a trilogy, which in itself is a kind of Codex. It’s as if the readers are invited to be involved in drawing out the hidden elements of horror and evil not just written as writhing inside this novel.
As usual McCabe is a mistress of the artful word although I’m uncertain whether the Codex itself has its finger on her pen as for example: “ ...a headache...skinny string reediness that crept through his skull and stuck like a hapless insect in his memory web.” The author is enviably skilled in oblique dialogue – I already refer my editing clients to chunks of her Piper stories for these writing masterclass elements.
Interesting left-field logic is used throughout such as should a virgin avoid the beast’s attention by giving herself to a willing lad and so change her sexual status?
In Codex we have medieval hardcore horror meeting the 21st Century where “secrets breed lies”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews