Book Review: The Black Tattoo

Book Review: The Black Tattoo

Author: Sam Enthoven
Publisher: Random House Books
Genre: Fantasy

The Black Tattoo is an adventure novel of anti-theology, excising all the white hats in favor of a panoply of demonic dictators and gladiators which will appeal to fans of grotesquerie and fight scenes. Now, don't get me wrong. Even if you are not a fan of such gruesome scenes, The Black Tattoo is not just a mindless hack-slash type of book. Instead, it also focuses on the everyday aspect of life, in reality.

The protagonists are handsome, adroit Charlie and his scrawny, risk-adverse friend, Jack. The duo is perpetually disappointed with the life they have. Following a angry visit to Charlie's dad, who abandoned him and his mother, the story takes a turn when a enigmatic black-clad stranger helps them then offers to give them a test.

Soon, the black clad character is dead, but not before the story unfolds as they learn about the Scourge, a demon race. They meet a teen fighting phenomenon, Esme and her dad, and Charlie unknowingly gets possessed by a demon, giving him supernatural powers. Esme and her dad, Raymond are the last remaining members of an ancient order believed to guard the world from the Scourge.

Thus Charlie is thrown into a realm of utter madness and with his first encounter with a demon, he displays unimaginable poweress, but to a cost of a human life. Soon, he becomes obsessed with his powers and gains himself entry to Hell.

In this book, Hell is another place, not a status. On the back of a sleeping cosmic dragon, it’s no afterlife, but an alternate dimension. People, or the many bizarre species of planetary beings that pass for people, do die here and often. In that vein, God turns out to be just another resident, a tatty and doddering old irrelevance named Godfrey. The quality of one’s character is much less important here than one’s image management and kung fu skills. In this context, Charlie becomes intoxicated with his commanding new capacities and the resulting adoration of the mob, and lurches toward what puny earthlings, at least, would consider a bad decision. Meanwhile Esme and Jack, in divergent ways, will try to stop him with the occasional help and hindrance of a different secret human sect, the numbered Sons of the Scorpion Flail, more suited to being Keystone Cops than inter-dimensional operatives.

Weakening the plot’s movement, after scrapping traditional underpinnings of good and evil and dismantling the rationales for virtue in favor of pure cunning and force, there’s a dearth of legitimate motivations for the protagonists to pursue the “right” story goals as we’re still intended to understand them, such as saving Charlie from himself.

Esme has a warrior’s strength, but she never explains herself as following any code of honor that might substitute for the herein pointless notion of virtue. No matter what happens, she doesn’t doubt, she executes, literally. Out for revenge, she’s positively hollow except for her grim, inexplicable resolve. Self-sacrifice is demonstrated on her behalf, sort of, but the bones of the many dead are quickly forgotten and ground to powder beneath everyone’s heels.

Eventually, and it could’ve come quicker for me, this book makes the ticking-clock apocalyptic climax about the destruction of all existence. That’s probably wise, although why, you'd have to read the book for yourself.

In relation to the book, you might want to say away from it if you are unfamillar with grostequerie and the like. If you are one with a strong stomach and do not get queasy at the scene of cannibalism, then approach this book with caution. It is a great book, but without doubt, it is one of the most gruesome book I have ever read so far, along with the destruction of the universe.

Rating: 6.5/10
Not bad, but not good either