"The Voice of the Fire" by Alan Moore

"Voice of the Fire" is Alan Moore's first novel and those who are familiar with his scenaristic universe will hear in this work some echoes of his famous "From Hell".

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories, all liknked together through shared geographical locations, common themes and chracters all doomed to know fire one way or another. Moore offers us a fantasmatic but well documented history of his native town Northampton.

Magic, sorcery, pagan beliefs and rituals flash across these short stories, from the shmans of the neolithic period, passing through medieval witches, and up to the writer himself, as he invlkes nowadays dark and ironical forces...

The reading itself is rather dense, quite slow in its pace, with many points of view explored with precision, a literary gimmic that immerses you deeply in the heavy and dream-like ambiance of these tragedies of times bygone.

It's powerful, violent, and pregnant with an anxious mood that pervades teh whole text and makes the true history facts (Fawkes, John Clare, Crusaders...) like extensions of a sub-terranean world, dark and steamy, of which Alan Moore presents the barely emerging traces.
I recommend, guys and guysettes !