Book Review: The Satanic Bridegroom, by Joe Gola

 

So many book reviews...

 

The Satanic Bridegroom (TSB), by Joe Gola, was a very, very well crafted book.  I am a big H.P. Lovecraft fan (in fact, I just finished reading his complete works earlier this year), and I was impressed with how well this novel fit into the weird fiction canon.  It really does have all the trappings of a traditional weird story: ancient civilizations, mysterious artifacts, old gods, etc.  Gola even manages to throw in the word “cyclopean,” which I’m pretty sure is some kind of requirement.  Clocking in at around 270 pages, and combined with mystery, action, and adventure, this was a very fast read.  270 pages would normally seem short to me, but the story had good pacing, and the shortness was very much in line with the old weird short stories and novellas of the past, so it worked.



The book starts off with a forward, which explains the history of the cult classic novella, “The Satanic Bridegroom” and the discovery of a diary that suspiciously corresponds with the supposedly fictional tale.  The remaining bulk of the novel itself is a combination of these two narratives, which both follow the adventures of a young woman named Helen, who is trying to find her newly deranged fiancé, Mordecai.  Mordecai was recently on a scientific expedition to underwater cave, which left his three companions missing (presumed dead) and himself variously catatonic and murderous.  The story was interesting, and the characters were well-developed (I was a little worried that Gola would fall into the pretty friend-bitchy bitter friend trope, but he avoided it deftly).

H.P. Lovecraft, creepin'

I believe that this book was self-published, which surprised me.  I am not against self-publishing, but I have found that many such novels seem unpolished, as though the author missed a couple editing sessions in the excitement of getting the book out.  TSB, however, was extremely polished and incredibly well-written.  In my opinion, one of the hallmarks of good writing is that the reader doesn’t actually notice the writing.  Instead of marking a particularly beautiful or (more likely) a particularly awkward turn of phrase, the reader can simply see the characters, scenes, and action without being pulled out of the story.  This book accomplishes that kind of narrative transparency.  Honestly, I can think of a couple of traditionally-published novels that I have read this year that are not even close to being in the same league as TSB.

 

My one minor quibble with this book is the more explicitly sexual passages (mostly fantasies) in the second half of the book.  Up until that point, I really felt like I was reading from a lost, early twentieth century weird fiction story, so these descriptions were a little jarring.  Lovecraft, shockingly, was not known for his erotica, a fact for which I believe we can all be grateful.  Now, I don’t want to penalize Gola for taking a different approach than other writers from other time periods, but the beginning of the novel was true to form that these passages did seem out of place to me.

However, as I said before, that is a very small complaint, and I really did enjoy this novel very much.  Weird fiction is a perennially underappreciated genre, especially now with the fall of many of the genre literary magazines.  After I finished reading Lovecraft, I wanted more, and I sincerely hope that Joe Gola will continue to provide it.