Beautiful blue cover depicting a station, enveloped in fog, all strictly tone sur tone; 794 pages, roughly ~1000g, only 10 chapters... a big challenge looms before your eyes: how to resist the glove that slaps your cheek? You throw the glove as well, which is of resounding cash, and hope to come out on top in the end!
Even the paper feels old and rough to the touch, the tightly-packed text hypnotizes you, and you begin reading, immersed in the fog of a fantasy London: the temporal setting is exclusively tied to the meticulous description of the clothing and the presence of horse-drawn carriages.
The story increasingly resembles...reminds you of...but what? But yes, there it is: it reminds you of the TV shows (or soap operas) of the '60s-'70s, the ones later called by an Anglo-Saxon term Fiction; everything is set up in the story for the next episode: you can't miss it, or you won't understand anything (you don't understand much anyway!), and the curiosity to know everything immediately takes over... and at that point, you start devouring one page after another, as you say, but the last one always moves a bit further, another bit further, even a bit further...
The Blue Book Cult is set in the Victorian era; it is a fantasy-science fiction novel, to be placed in the steampunk genre with some splatter aspects (stop with Anglo-Saxon definitions: I know nobody is perfect, and even I, sometimes, succumb to temptations!).
The plot is apparently simple: a gentle maiden, wealthy and from a good family, Miss Temple, is inexplicably "dumped" by her Roger Bascombe, a promising diplomat interested in quite different matters!!! The Miss, rather enterprising and I'd say charmingly pesky, decides to follow him (like a modern Sherlock Holmes) and plunges, literally, into a huge mess: departure from Stropping Station, journey accompanied by masked characters, arrival in a dreadful palace as grand as it is dangerous, lost in the English countryside in a darkness Terrible!
In the villa, she will meet, by chance, the other two characters who will accompany her for the rest of the story: a notorious killer Cardinal Chang (so-called because of his red coat) and Doctor Svenson, an officer-gentleman tasked with overseeing and protecting a prince, as debauched as he is idiotic, heir to the throne of a small Central European kingdom!
In the estate, complete with an amphitheater, Frankenstein-like laboratories, cellars, rooms with interrogation mirrors, a large number of London nobles and beautiful damsels, practically nude, gather: I'd say... a hint of sexy-porn, used as a persuasive rather than a blackmailing tool. The participants in the demonstrations are convinced that the magical, shocking, beautiful Blue Glass Books will be their salvation and their door to the Paradise.
In reality, a sect of well-selected and power-hungry individuals is conspiring to gain control of others' desires using books made of a blue glass unknown to common mortals, capable of absorbing everything that populates the minds of human beings and fixing their content on the pages of the book! By doing so, individuals who touch them will be emptied and become absolutely maneuverable empty shells, with no more will: an absolutely loyal army!!!
Here's a small taste of the novel...to relive another's experience, as well as to enter a mind wandering freely, perhaps even in someone's dreams>...
... swimming was so enveloping that physicality, so concrete the images. She saw herself -herself- in the Bascombe's living room... she understood it was Roger's mental experience...>...
The narrative unfolds through the perspective of the three characters, with a clear reversal of roles: the sweet damsel is actually strong and determined, the killer reveals a noble soul, the doctor-officer will step out of line and betray his unworthy prince.
The explanations and understanding of the plot will only come in the last, tumultuous chapter, where everything takes shape and at the same time intertwines in a difficult and confusing way: the finale, which is not really a finale, follows classic and, I would say, hoped-for conventions.
You reach the conclusion, a few pages less wouldn't have been unwelcome, but you took on a challenge and you won the bet, and you're already waiting for the sequel (published in the original language in 2009, the title is The Dark Volume): you either love this book or you hate it!
P.S. the translator, Carlo Prosperi, had his work cut out for him!
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