Blood and Beloved, India’s first Gothic horror poetry collection, includes abstract, horror, and Gothic themes such as darkness, psychological horrors, child-rape, death, etc. Each poem from the book showcases elements of melancholy, depression, mania, occult, a darker philosophy of life, and the like. With a vivid, dark imagery, the book aims at being a fusion of the horror and poetry genres.
How I felt about the book:The book has 45 poems all of which did full justice to the genre and theme. All the poems are short with few of them even served their purpose in 5 to 6 lines.
I think, writing horror is one of the most challenging task as there is a very thin line which makes it funny or scary. I must appreciate the sincere efforts of author for staying inside the lines.
There are some poems which really left me feeling shocked and thrilled with fear. May be because of the emotions it evokes in your heart, I could not read more than 3 to 4 poems in a go. Here are titles of some of the poems I like:
- The Last Judgement
- The worship – among the horror and darkness, I felt it showed a light and asks the reader to be the best version of yourself.
- In The Labyrinth of The Lost Self – This was again a poem which led to finding oneself
- The Doom of Eliana – This was scary
- The Legend Of The Black Tower – I kept on saying “Poor child”
- I Died Twice – This was probably the smallest but one of the best ones
- The Lullaby Of The Doll – The best one! Meant to be read two ways – top to bottom and bottom to top. It sent chills down my spine as I read it bottom to top!
There were more notes which I took off the post as I hate spoilers.
The writing style is very Gothic and extremely dark which suits the theme of the book. At the same time, I think it could have been a little simple. I kept on opening my dictionary very often which caused a distraction.
Apart from the difficult vocabulary and some repeated phrases/messages in a few of poems, I think the horror or Gothic lovers should like this book.
