The San Veneficio Canon

by Michael Cisco

Struck by lightning, resurrected, cut open, and stuffed full of arcane documents, the Divinity Student is sent to the desert city of San Veneficio to reconstruct the Lost Catalog of Unknown Words. He learns to pick the brains of corpses and gradually sacrifices his sanity on the altar of a dubious mission of espionage. Without ever understanding his own reasons, he moves toward destruction with steely determination. Eventually he find himself reduced to a walker between worlds - a creature neither of flesh nor spirit, stuffed with paper and preserved with formaldehyde - a zombie of his own devising. The line twixt clairvoyance and madness is thinner than a razor blade. In 1999, The Divinity Student captured the attention of fans of dark fantasy everywhere, eventually winning the International Horror Guild Award for best first novel. Now, The Divinity Student has been paired with its sequel, The Golem, for a must-have book - The San Veneficio Canon. Michael Cisco has created a city and a character that will live in the reader's imagination long after this book has been read...

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Fiction, Weird Fiction, Literature, Dark Academia, Supernatural

248 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2004

About the author

Michael Cisco is an American weird fiction writer, Deleuzian academic and a teacher, currently living in New York City. He is best known for his first novel, The Divinity Student, winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel of 1999.

He is interested in confusion.

Reviews

[inciminci]

I'm giving up and dnf'ing at 50%, having finished The Divinity Student, the first part constituting The San Veneficio Canon.
Never thought a writing could be too weird for me, but this is. There's no sense nor explanation as to what happens, the writing is super dry and often a listing of what the divinity student does, and worst of all, a pet peeve of mine, it is written in present tense, which for some reason tires me.
I like some descriptions of the city, it certainly gave off an atmosphere.
Obviously I'm the minority, so I'm not rating this book, as maybe I just don't get it, and if I knew what the author is trying to do I could say, “Yes he achieved his goal“ or not, but I can't do that here.

[Stephanie Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Words can’t do this justice. It’s like seeing the awe of infinity. Can you understand that?

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

See my reviews of the two novels within. It's Michael Cisco, so be prepared for a very unusual pair of tales (though by his standards, still pretty accessible!).

[Braden A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a loss for words after finishing "The Divinity Student". An incredible work about the power of words and language, told in an intense, surreal setting where nightmares and dreams live together, indistinguishable.
One of the most affecting things I've read in some, time, if not ever.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cisco can most definitely write a scene. There are moments in this book (moments) that are now tattooed onto my brain. The book itself, narrative, characters, and location are already fading quickly from memory. Cisco is a poet, and a talented one, but I had difficulty enjoying the story. The Divinity Student was an uninteresting character who's motivations and psyche had no focus. While the story improved when it was told from another character's POV, these scenes were too short and sporadic.

I also found the allegorical allusions to writing and storytelling to be shallow and exhausting. I'm supremely tired of this trend to write about the wonders of story and the written word, which seems to come at the expense of good storytelling. Gaiman was able to accomplish both quite often in "Sandman" but he's been beating that theme to death since then, and with nowhere near the quality.

[Ty · Rating 5 out of 5]

A writer should not only know how to write well, they also need to know how to create a scene. Everything in this book is deviously well put together.

[Walter Polashenski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give four stars for the language and the mood. Four the characters who were interesting although very opaque. But I wish for more story. Perhaps there are no reasons for what happens, perhaps all is random and beyond control. But I feel like I still can’t put my finger on what happened. And that feels like a failure.

[Trevor · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Divinity Student was alright, but it fell apart pretty quickly after that and I gave up about 80% through. Didn't care about the characters and it stopped making sense.

[Lane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, and I really love me some surrealist, grotesque imagery, but this book (or these books I guess, this being a collection of The Divinity Student and The Golem) made me realize that without a grounded sense of place, character motivations, or at least the glimmer of an explanation for any weirdness that may pop up, too much surrealist grotesque imagery can feel pretty tedious.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cisco's imagery ... it's almost too much for me to handle because it's so intense. It makes his prose slippery and I find myself reading passages two or three times to ensure that I can imagine what's going on (as opposed to understanding). I still don't know what this New Weird means - waiting patiently for the NW anthology for that enlightenment - but this book and author have something special going on.

[Meg · Rating 1 out of 5]

Despite his good intentions and occasional good prose, Michael Cisco fails to make much sense of his scenarios, rendering the book almost unreadable.

[Jonathan Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

LOVED The Divinity Student to bits. Utterly weird. Utterly compelling. Didn't make it through The Golem. Not entirely sure why.