Review: A dazzling novel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 25, 2013
Cemeteries are meditative places. There, even died-in-the-wool rational empiricists muse on the afterlife, transcendence and the mysteries of sentience. The words of Ralph Waldo Emerson might ring in their ears, become transformed, and speak of abstruse metaphysics and the spirit world. Perhaps Paula Cappa has had such an experience, and it motivated her to write "The Dazzling Darkness", which is a dark and dazzling re-interpretation of Emerson's work."What the hell is beneath that ivy?" asks one of the characters. It turns out to be a crystal skull, of the kind that necromancers use in rituals to raise the dead. What does this have to do with Emerson? Well, perhaps his extraordinarily prescient writings spoke of resurrection, and now, so many years later, his cryptic mysticism has manifested in the lives of the living.I recommend this book to fans of Umberto Eco; it is the classier kind of arcane mystery novel.