W. Kobold Knight
Auteur de The Doctor of Souls
Œuvres de W. Kobold Knight
The Doctor of Souls 1 exemplaire
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- Œuvre
- 1
- Membre
- 1
- Popularité
- #2,962,640
- Évaluation
- 4.0
- Critiques
- 1
Sun was intoning now. His voice fell queerly on my ears, the voice, not of a man, but of some occult, uncanny being from outside the bounds of the natural. In spite of his faultless European clothing he looked now, in the flickering light of the lantern in that bare desolate room, like some weird Celestial practitioner of the black arts.
Involuntarily i shrank back into my chair.
“I am the Doctor of Souls!” the voice persisted.
That was great! Honestly i'd have given it 5-stars of personal enjoyment. Writing wise though its just a serial mystery, no better written than a Sherlock Holmes or Fu-Manchu. I mean its fine.
The plot involves Doctor Sun a half caucassian-halfasian super genius, seeming super-villian with amazing inventions and of course a master of hypnotism.
HOWEVER, whats amazing is that Sun is not in fact a villain, or at least not a typical one rather he’s a very early example of the anti-hero (i mean we did have Captain Nemo, but he was a mass murderer... so..) .
Sun goes around ‘healing’ people usually by inflicting ironic punishments on them. He’s like the Ghosts of Christmas crossed with Jigsaw (Saw movies) i mean he is one scary dude at times.
The author does a great job using his audiences prejudices and knowledge of Yellow Peril characters like Fu Manchu, against them. Despite the fact that Sun’s intentions are always benevolent (by his own standards) he manages to avoid becoming a good guy for most of the tale.
This is also, almost a satire on the flaws of western civilization as Sun never targets real criminals but people who’s behaviour or actions tend to acceptable.
I’ll only spoil the very first thing we hear about Sun’s actions. Which is that a man left a puppy tied up outside on a cold winters night, so Sun drags the man out of his house naked and ties him up all night in the yard where the dog was.
Our POV character is a journalist who often represents the fears and narrow mindedness of the audience. He’s not the brightest and tends to become more and more racist the more scared he gets. Or if Sun brings any english women into his experiments. The relationship between the two is quite abusive in a way i think is probably more interesting today than when it was written.
Also i have to mention Suns inventions which go far beyond mere weapons or vehicles like his jet. There’s a couple of really great items which i wouldn’t have expected to see in a book written before the 60’s quite frankly. The spider... that’s all i’lll say :P amazing.
I was constantly surprised at this one. HIGHLY recommend for anyone interested in mystery serials, early anti-hero’s, the Yellow Peril genre etc.
Oh yeah... its treatment of its female characters is not good :lol , but entertainingly terrible ;) . I didn’t mind it because neither Sun nor the POV character seem like particularly nice people anyway.
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