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Pearl Death
PEARL DEATH is a historical account told through objects, each depicted and described on a loose full-color playing-card. PEARL DEATH includes 100 object cards in a special sleeve.
- GenresHorrorFictionLiterature
100 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 4, 2020
A real work of excellent, experimental "literature."
The cards convey a fragmented story about a land plunged into plague called "Pearl." They describe religious orders, political entities, and tools of science and ritual. No chronicle or extensive details about these events emerges upon reading the deck. The cards remind me of FromSoftware's item descriptions in their games, especially Bloodborne's.
That being said, you can't interpret this work in terms of its influences. Bloodborne players are notorious for trying to understand game fully in terms of other similar games or the Berserk manga series, and you end up with really piss-poor, boring engagements with the game as a result.
So...
"Remember....
1. Shuffle thoroughly. Only fools believe there is any sense or order to this.
2. Everyone lies. Especially historians.
3. Whether these cards depict events that have already occurred, are yet to occur, or are presently occurring is wholly dependent on when they are read. Respond accordingly."
The cards convey a fragmented story about a land plunged into plague called "Pearl." They describe religious orders, political entities, and tools of science and ritual. No chronicle or extensive details about these events emerges upon reading the deck. The cards remind me of FromSoftware's item descriptions in their games, especially Bloodborne's.
That being said, you can't interpret this work in terms of its influences. Bloodborne players are notorious for trying to understand game fully in terms of other similar games or the Berserk manga series, and you end up with really piss-poor, boring engagements with the game as a result.
So...
"Remember....
1. Shuffle thoroughly. Only fools believe there is any sense or order to this.
2. Everyone lies. Especially historians.
3. Whether these cards depict events that have already occurred, are yet to occur, or are presently occurring is wholly dependent on when they are read. Respond accordingly."
May 12, 2022
Pearl Death is less a story than a glimpse into a fantasy world that is ravaged by centuries of plague and conflicting societal sects. BR is my fave.
April 24, 2021
B.R. Yeager's PEARL DEATH is my favourite small-press book since Maierhofer's PERIPATET. It's a text that places the reader in the position of author. That is to say, the reader is in a constant process of narrative creation, whereas Yeager and Trefry have provided the tools for the creation of narrative itself.
One of two 'title' cards states that the reader should remember that everyone lies, especially historians; the key here is that the reader is the historian in question, *not* Yeager himself - we are given a hundred different anthropological/historical artefacts and spend our time reading the text sorting and organising these textual remnants into something resembling 'plot,' i.e. we undertake the a literal fictional historiographical process. It feels 'real' in the sense that the liminal domain between fictive undertaking / non-fictive process is blurry and we as readership are constantly crossing this line.
The book on its surface may appear like a disintegrative reading project, but I would argue that it is instead an integrative reading project. The first card revealed (ideally after shuffling) becomes the ur-text that the rest of the text is read through.
Highly recommended. Find one of the 160 copies and cherish it.
One of two 'title' cards states that the reader should remember that everyone lies, especially historians; the key here is that the reader is the historian in question, *not* Yeager himself - we are given a hundred different anthropological/historical artefacts and spend our time reading the text sorting and organising these textual remnants into something resembling 'plot,' i.e. we undertake the a literal fictional historiographical process. It feels 'real' in the sense that the liminal domain between fictive undertaking / non-fictive process is blurry and we as readership are constantly crossing this line.
The book on its surface may appear like a disintegrative reading project, but I would argue that it is instead an integrative reading project. The first card revealed (ideally after shuffling) becomes the ur-text that the rest of the text is read through.
Highly recommended. Find one of the 160 copies and cherish it.
October 5, 2020
Any praise for this sold out deck is somewhat sadistic, but well deserved.
The relics left by Pearl can be weaved into a sort of story of surgery, witchcraft, self-flagellation, and rot. Whatever you can glean from them will be a patchwork and the gaps left open about the events are a welcome reprieve from the sense of completeness that most worldbuilding seems to strive for.
Haven’t played any From Software games, so I liken this more to the feeling of a tabletop RPG where the world and narrative are suggested but not dictated.
The relics left by Pearl can be weaved into a sort of story of surgery, witchcraft, self-flagellation, and rot. Whatever you can glean from them will be a patchwork and the gaps left open about the events are a welcome reprieve from the sense of completeness that most worldbuilding seems to strive for.
Haven’t played any From Software games, so I liken this more to the feeling of a tabletop RPG where the world and narrative are suggested but not dictated.
November 7, 2020
my boy is literally incapable of not pumping out solid gold classics. yeager is operating on a different plane than the rest of us.
February 22, 2022
An evocative piece of fragmentary avant-garde fiction that's pretty much a compendium of information regarding the fall of a kingdom to a mysterious and undefined disease called Pearl. Evokes this sense of marginality to storytelling, it's the barest of bare bones regarding narrative and the book in fact instructs you to read everything out of order to further the sense of disorientation. Unfortunately it was limited to only 100 physical copies and reading it in PDF format takes away some of the intrigue, but it is worth the money.
Beautifully illustrated with a rusty and barbed color scheme, and Yeager's blunt, brutal yet poetic prose shows up here although in a more fragmented fashion than the twisted coming of age narrative of "Negative Space" or even the hallucinatory chatroom-oblivion structure of "Amygdalatropolis". As others have said it's reminiscent of FromSoftware's item descriptions and their storytelling methods, but this may be even more esoteric considering even those games have character and environmental cues to give more context to the overarching narrative. Not much to say about this one, it's just real cool and showcases further Yeager's immense creativity and willingness to bend literary form, as is expected for not only him but all of the talented authors of "Inside the Castle".
"A token binding oneself to the elements; a key to another plane. The blind leviathans that writhe there. The grey, glaucomic oceans. Its vast, salty embrace. One need only find the entrance."
Beautifully illustrated with a rusty and barbed color scheme, and Yeager's blunt, brutal yet poetic prose shows up here although in a more fragmented fashion than the twisted coming of age narrative of "Negative Space" or even the hallucinatory chatroom-oblivion structure of "Amygdalatropolis". As others have said it's reminiscent of FromSoftware's item descriptions and their storytelling methods, but this may be even more esoteric considering even those games have character and environmental cues to give more context to the overarching narrative. Not much to say about this one, it's just real cool and showcases further Yeager's immense creativity and willingness to bend literary form, as is expected for not only him but all of the talented authors of "Inside the Castle".
"A token binding oneself to the elements; a key to another plane. The blind leviathans that writhe there. The grey, glaucomic oceans. Its vast, salty embrace. One need only find the entrance."
February 19, 2022
This is honestly so fucking rad. I read it digitally. Wish I had a physical copy.
March 1, 2023
I awoke in the middle of the night, the light of a full moon so thoroughly illuminating the slats between my blinds that it may as well have been dawn. My wife remained still beside me, seemingly undisturbed by the selenic glow, nor the sustained, tinnitus-like tone that accompanied it, but between the two of them, these unnatural crepuscular stimuli began to exert a strange pull upon my mind. As quietly as I could, I slipped out of bed and made me way outside, padding barefoot across the damp grass of my unkempt backyard.
The moonlight was oppressively bright, and yet somehow still obscurant - filtered as it was through a patchwork canopy of tall pines, as well as an unseasonably warm mist - and the further I waded into it, the more it took on the aspect of something almost corporeal, enveloping me in its amniotic mar even as it guided me on to the farthest corner of my property line. There, enhaloed by a luminous shaft, I found an old shovel lying across a patch of loamy ground that, at any other time, would draw no more attention to itself than any other square yard of my humble 3 acres, but which I then knew immediately had to be exhumed.
I picked up the shovel as though under hypnosis - and indeed, looking back, perhaps I was - and dug with a fervor I doubt I could ever summon of my own free will. I worked for the better part of an hour without rest, my muscles spasming from exhaustion, my pinstriped pajamas growing sodden with sweat, my shoes plastered in mud as they descended, inch by inch, into the displaced Earth. Before I even realize what I'd done, I was standing in a hole deep enough to be my grave, and the eerie doppler pitch that summoned me there had reached an acoustically concussive volume, having grown louder with every scoop of dirt I tossed up over my head. But at the moment I was sure I would collapse and could dig no more, I struck upon a solid object. Abandoning the shovel, I cleared away the last layer of moist red clay with my aching fingers and returned a small red box, adorned with a human skull, and the words PEARL DEATH, all in a tarnished gilt gold. Inside were a set of ornamental cards, numbering 100 in all.
"What could this be?" I wondered. "A parlor game? A soothsayer's deck? A forgotten work of art?" With just enough room to sit down, and more than enough light to see, I curled into my newly excavated womb and began to read (this after acquiescing to yet another unaccountably mystical compulsion, that of shuffling thoroughly for several minutes). I soon discovered that each card featured an illustration of some practical object - clothing, weapons, medical instruments, religious totems - accompanied by a brief description, and that nearly all of them made reference to a mysterious plague known only as Pearl, one which by all accounts spelt the agonizing doom of an entire settlement somewhere in the murky, Medieval past. Telling a kind of history through artifacts - from the preserved spores blamed for its rise, to the masks and spells that failed to stop its spread, to the blades and talismans that fought it, both vainly and valiantly, to the bitter end - PEARL DEATH unfolded, card by card, into a slow-developing Grand Guignol; a grim portrait in fire and blood of a civilization that turned from fearful, to panicked, to desperate, to mad, as its various competing forces turned against one another in their separate, futile attempts to turn back the all-consuming, exterminating tide. It was as sobering and harrowing an account as I've ever endured. To say more would, I fear, only further pain the countless dead.
I noticed myself shivering as I turned over the last card - the warmth that had surrounded me at the start having given way to a spectral chill which, along with my soggy bedclothes, alerted me to the encroaching danger of hypothermia. With my fever broken, and my bodily autonomy more or less returned to my own power, I summoned all my remaining strength and hoisted myself up and out of the crevasse. The moon was still bright, but no longer abnormally so, and the fog had mostly lifted. The air was silent once again. Filthy, confused, and practically dead on my feet, I still remember taking a moment to look around and commune with the beauty of the natural night. I considered briefly what I might do with my mysterious find. Should I call the local news? Offer it to a museum? Might it even, perhaps, fetch a handsome sum at auction if it crossed the right buyer's eye? But no sooner than these options passed across my cortex did I dismiss them all. The tragedy of Pearl was no media sensation, nor was it meant for cloistered academia or personal gain. It was a gift for me alone, and so without a second thought, I tossed it back into the ground.
I looked away for but a moment, thinking to retrieve the shovel and commence with reburial, but upon turning back I found that the dirt had already replaced itself, packed as tightly as if it had never been disturbed at all. In the space of another weary blink, I was back in my bed, clean and dry, my wife quietly murmuring "five more minutes" as I pulled her in tight. It struck me in that moment that this was the most any of us could ask for. That no one knows the day, nor the hour. That death, on scales both small and massive, lurks around every corner, every day, and even our most trusted institutions and solidly built safeguards are little more than psychic comforts - rusted deadbolts and crosswired alarms - swords and guns - potions and pills - all are but prayers to keep at bay that inexorable thief in the night.
The moonlight was oppressively bright, and yet somehow still obscurant - filtered as it was through a patchwork canopy of tall pines, as well as an unseasonably warm mist - and the further I waded into it, the more it took on the aspect of something almost corporeal, enveloping me in its amniotic mar even as it guided me on to the farthest corner of my property line. There, enhaloed by a luminous shaft, I found an old shovel lying across a patch of loamy ground that, at any other time, would draw no more attention to itself than any other square yard of my humble 3 acres, but which I then knew immediately had to be exhumed.
I picked up the shovel as though under hypnosis - and indeed, looking back, perhaps I was - and dug with a fervor I doubt I could ever summon of my own free will. I worked for the better part of an hour without rest, my muscles spasming from exhaustion, my pinstriped pajamas growing sodden with sweat, my shoes plastered in mud as they descended, inch by inch, into the displaced Earth. Before I even realize what I'd done, I was standing in a hole deep enough to be my grave, and the eerie doppler pitch that summoned me there had reached an acoustically concussive volume, having grown louder with every scoop of dirt I tossed up over my head. But at the moment I was sure I would collapse and could dig no more, I struck upon a solid object. Abandoning the shovel, I cleared away the last layer of moist red clay with my aching fingers and returned a small red box, adorned with a human skull, and the words PEARL DEATH, all in a tarnished gilt gold. Inside were a set of ornamental cards, numbering 100 in all.
"What could this be?" I wondered. "A parlor game? A soothsayer's deck? A forgotten work of art?" With just enough room to sit down, and more than enough light to see, I curled into my newly excavated womb and began to read (this after acquiescing to yet another unaccountably mystical compulsion, that of shuffling thoroughly for several minutes). I soon discovered that each card featured an illustration of some practical object - clothing, weapons, medical instruments, religious totems - accompanied by a brief description, and that nearly all of them made reference to a mysterious plague known only as Pearl, one which by all accounts spelt the agonizing doom of an entire settlement somewhere in the murky, Medieval past. Telling a kind of history through artifacts - from the preserved spores blamed for its rise, to the masks and spells that failed to stop its spread, to the blades and talismans that fought it, both vainly and valiantly, to the bitter end - PEARL DEATH unfolded, card by card, into a slow-developing Grand Guignol; a grim portrait in fire and blood of a civilization that turned from fearful, to panicked, to desperate, to mad, as its various competing forces turned against one another in their separate, futile attempts to turn back the all-consuming, exterminating tide. It was as sobering and harrowing an account as I've ever endured. To say more would, I fear, only further pain the countless dead.
I noticed myself shivering as I turned over the last card - the warmth that had surrounded me at the start having given way to a spectral chill which, along with my soggy bedclothes, alerted me to the encroaching danger of hypothermia. With my fever broken, and my bodily autonomy more or less returned to my own power, I summoned all my remaining strength and hoisted myself up and out of the crevasse. The moon was still bright, but no longer abnormally so, and the fog had mostly lifted. The air was silent once again. Filthy, confused, and practically dead on my feet, I still remember taking a moment to look around and commune with the beauty of the natural night. I considered briefly what I might do with my mysterious find. Should I call the local news? Offer it to a museum? Might it even, perhaps, fetch a handsome sum at auction if it crossed the right buyer's eye? But no sooner than these options passed across my cortex did I dismiss them all. The tragedy of Pearl was no media sensation, nor was it meant for cloistered academia or personal gain. It was a gift for me alone, and so without a second thought, I tossed it back into the ground.
I looked away for but a moment, thinking to retrieve the shovel and commence with reburial, but upon turning back I found that the dirt had already replaced itself, packed as tightly as if it had never been disturbed at all. In the space of another weary blink, I was back in my bed, clean and dry, my wife quietly murmuring "five more minutes" as I pulled her in tight. It struck me in that moment that this was the most any of us could ask for. That no one knows the day, nor the hour. That death, on scales both small and massive, lurks around every corner, every day, and even our most trusted institutions and solidly built safeguards are little more than psychic comforts - rusted deadbolts and crosswired alarms - swords and guns - potions and pills - all are but prayers to keep at bay that inexorable thief in the night.
December 5, 2023
A grand experiment in non-linear disconnected choose your own adventure narrative. Pearl Death is a set of cards, each one representing an item, adding up to something much more interesting than it has any right to be. It's worth noting that there were only about 160 copies printed.
May 4, 2026
I figured out how to use Python to shuffle the pages of the PDF copy I had, which simulated in some sense the experience of reading this as disjointed, randomly distributed cards. But an ideal reading experience would entail creating stacks of resonant cards. Despite the limitations of the digital medium, I found myself following that process mentally -- creating stacks, aggregating lines of information to map out this strange terrain. A tactile experience, well in keeping with the viscous, gloopy content of the text.
Want to Read
September 24, 2020Anyone who has this, and doesn't want it anymore, let me know!
February 22, 2021
Game and story? This is a great one to "read" with friends as you pick cards and imaginatively reconstruct the occurrences surrounding these infernal lost objects.
May 26, 2021
Pretty cool - does, though, make you wonder what you could do with this medium if you didn't stick so closely to the bloodborne (or even FromSoft more generally) atmosphere.
November 8, 2022
Haunted. Awesome. A deck of cards that tells a story. Shuffle them up and jump inside.
November 17, 2021
It's really a shame that this was limited to such a short run. I read as an ebook, and really wish I had an opportunity to shuffle and pluck the cards out. Scrolling to a random page just doesn't have the same effect. Nonetheless, Yeager provides a tantalizing glimpse into the fall of a kingdom.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews