Songs of a Dead Dreamer, by Thomas Ligotti: ***1/4

Ligotti is a master at creating eerie atmospheres. This, his first collection of weird, horror-ish stories, is the perfect kind of read for me. It's consistent in quality, but the stories differ substantially from one another in terms of style and approach, so the book doesn't become stale. Nonetheless, a palpable mood permeates the collection, despite the variable storytelling. Some tales are creepy, some thrillers, others intellectual. Some stories have a straightforward narrative, while others are more experimental. Ligotti even manages to write two successful self-referential stories about the process of writing stories, which I would never expect to like. He places a colorful, painterly prose on varied canvases, sometimes in vivid fashion, other times with subtle, darker hues. The first tale may be my favorite, but I could point to 7-8 others that work at a similar level. As a group, these stories have a unique atmosphere, one that settled about me the moment I started the first tale and didn't dissipate until I finished the last page.

Ligotti is the second biggest discovery for me in 2006 thus far, behind Lucius Shepard but slightly ahead of M. John Harrison and Jeff VanderMeer. All of them are fantastic wordsmiths, but Shepard and Ligotti have proven the most interesting in terms of ideas. Unfortunately, Ligotti isn't so prolific, and all that remains of his writing for me to uncover is his collection Grimscribe, a newer novella, and maybe another random story or two. As such, I'll probably wait a while before embarking on Grimscribe, just so I can put off finishing the stuff of his that's out there. But it's saying something substantial about my opinion of an author when I have to start moderating my intake, even if in this case it's partially a result of the relative dearth of Ligotti's work.
(Fall 2006)

Close this window