A review of my novel

So here is a full account of what blackpetals.net said about Siberian Hellhole by Michael Mulvihill as published in blackpetals.net 63rd Spring Edition April 2013 April 15

THE BP #63 SPRING 2013 EDITORIAL by A.M. Stickel:

BALANCING FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION WITH MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

Admit it. All writers have trouble with the above. For horror writers in particular, though, freedom of expression wins out over the question of moral responsibility. Do our monsters—be they human or alien or interdimensional, made of flesh or more rarified fabric, accepted by this world or vehemently denied by it—have consciences? (If they are ordinary, garden-variety zombies, well, they do not even have minds with which to make conscious decisions, right?) Do scary stories nowadays devolve into gore fests or the celebration of the appalling? Are they veritable orgies of no-holds-barred, four-letter-word-laden acts of senseless destruction? 

Raise your hand if you don’t dare show your published (or unpublished) writing to someone near and dear to you, let alone send more of it out there. Is that inner voice saying, “WHAT?! ARE YOU CRAZY?” even as you consider your next plot?

Most readers, faced with the hard and frightening facts of everyday life, do not want to read horror, or even science fiction, do they? They want feel-good literature that uplifts them and validates common societal values, despite their TV viewing habits (which may include violent sports, martial arts combat, gun and/or sword fights, crimes of every kind, bombs—and whole civilizations—falling, and space debris snuffing out the biosphere…). But our readers are not most readers, are they?

And this leads me to discuss my close encounter with some modern horror fiction by Mike Mulvihill, one of whose short stories springs out at us in this issue. His SIBERIAN HELLHOLE takes place after the collapse and restructuring of the U.S.S.R. His hero, named for the biblical Tobias who went in search of a cure for his father’s blindness, has been forced into his own journey of enlightenment. The outcome manages to move beyond the man’s survival to that of his community and nation into the world at large.

Mulvihill mixes a wild blend of psychology, psychic energy, and psychoses in shaping his hero and several other supporting characters, all memorable in their own right. Although some of the fallen are redeemed, the truly demonic, in their insatiable pride and rivalry, fall upon and consume one another. The voices of the damned arise from the pit opened by human greed and indifference. The icons of the saints who have fought and won the good fight throughout history are the symbols that lead the saved to victory.

Siberian Russia begins as a wasteland inhospitable to morality, but, thanks to Tobias and his eventual allies, fills its moral void with the hope of redemption. While this Dubliner’s quirky writing is far from perfect, his message is clear and the inner dialogue of Tobias makes him one of us. Below is a writing sample I have the author’s permission to cite, in which one of Tobias’ friends, the local innkeeper of Vodka Village, overcomes temptation after being forced into vampirism:

Affanasi was using the language of the light because he saw that, because this light was within him, he was not outside of it. He was sure that he would soon find peace. Affanasi left Mikhail’s family without falling into a hell that his conscience could not abide. He had the power to run like the wind, but walked slowly. Anytime unnatural desires to drain a human being assaulted him he blessed himself the way his own father Jan and his mother Helena had taught him to when he was a toddler. And, every time he blessed himself, he thanked God with far deeper sincerity than the depths of the most unfathomable ocean. The abnormal hunger grew quiet within him.

After reading many reviews of Mulvihill’s book, some of which actually misquoted the content they claimed to critique, I decided upon this more general approach to tie it in with my theme. I firmly believe that the best writing balances expressive freedom with moral responsibility. Think back to classical horror like Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN and Bram Stoker’s DRACULA. While SIBERIAN HELLHOLE may not become immortalized in literature like those classics, perhaps Mulvihill’s next book will. His work, published by Wheelman Press, is available on Amazon (ISBN 978-0-9887423-4-5) and earns him 3 BP Black Roses and a Rose Bud.