Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews: 2015 Premios Nocte

The past week-end, during the Madrid Gothic Week (Semana Gótica de Madrid), in a ceremony held at the National Museum of Romanticism in Madrid, the Spanish Horror Writers Association (Asociación Española de Autores de Narrativa de Terror) has announced the winners of 2015 Premios Nocte:

BEST NATIONAL NOVEL

“Extraños eons” (Strange Eons) by Emilio Bueso (Valdemar)

“Strange Eons is the most intelligent and original input of the lovecraftian mythology of the past decades: a remarkable combination of Pasolini, Mahfuz, Lynch and Cthulhu Mythos, for the new and dark millennium.” Jesús Palacios

Cairo’s the City of the Dead is not an ordinary district, but the largest cemetery of the planet, a monumental ocean of bones where five abandoned children live and where an emissary of some of the most ancient forces, older than humans, the sand of the desert and the capricious orbits tracing the stars in their cycles of madness settle.

This is the story of a plan to obliterate the world, of a silver key hidden in a tomb in Barcelona, of a car trip to the limits of sanity… and of five wretches who intend to frustrate the designs of chaos’ first motor, the antithesis of creation, the foolish sultan of demons, that groans, gnaws and drools in the center of the final emptiness.

Strange Eons is an audacious twist of the core of Cthulhu Mythos. With a severe language and a vibrant pulse with which he used us already, Emilio Bueso is exceeding a perverse story that proves why he has converted into the writer to called to revolutionize the Spanish horror literature.

BEST NATIONAL SHORT STORY

“Los peces” (The Fish) by David Jasso (Donde reside el horror, Edge Entertainment)

BEST NATIONAL ANTHOLOGY

‘‘El manjar inmundo” (The Unclean Dish) by Javier Quevedo Puchal (Punto en boca)

Urban hunters after the most coveted prey. A strange tower without doors. Old obsessions over lost beauty. Familiar demons locked in the attic. The heart of a witch buried under a rosebush. Nights of black veils like crepes… Javier Quevedo Puchal, winner of the Nocte Award, presents with The Unclean Dish a fascinating anthology of gothic short stories inspired by tales of classic fairies, from the Grimm Brothers to Andersen and Perrault. Thirteen amazing deconstructions of the stories with which everybody grew up. Thirteen disturbing narrations that reflect on our darker side, but also on those weaknesses making us more human. The Unclean Dish is, in the end, the perfect feast for tasting, like an excellent red wine. With spaced sips. Without hurry. The same as those stories of our childhood that we read each night before sleeping at the lamp’s light.

“Javier Quevedo Puchal reshapes the classic fairy tales archetype extracting from his predecessors the most corrupt sap, hidden in the deepest layers. Starting with the essence of perversion, reshapes the proposed for adorning his stories with a grotesque beauty, packs them with evocative images that end imprinted in the reader’s subconscious.” Darío Vilas

“In The Unclean Dish, Javier Quevedo Puchal serves us a menu that we believe is familiar and appearing now darkly dressed in exotic touches. Like a sumptuous literary feast, it is best to read these stories slowly, savoring them; basking in their flavor together with a glass of good wine. One more thing, future diners: go without the coffee at the end. The splendid stories that form The Unclean Dish keep us up the great part of the night without further stimulants. It’s a friendly advice. You’ll thank me.” Toni Hill