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I might be getting a bit tired with all these short story collections exploring the same themes again and again (good thing that this book did not contain the Machen pastiche of the white people) by the usual authors from the usual publishers. I have to admit though that "An emporium of automata" is among the best collections of the genre and Mr Watt one of the best writers of the weird.
You sit in the darkened theater waiting for the show to begin, at a table close to the stage. The glass of absinthe sweats in your hand, and you can't recall if it is your third or your fourth. Come to think of it, you can't recall how you came to be here. Quiet murmurs and muted laughter blend together into an incoherent background noise. As you glance around you have trouble making out any of your neighbor's features in the dim, murky light yet you are sure that a man in a top hat two tables t...
This is my first encounter with D. P. Watt, a writer I've heard about for years. I love Watt's writing style, his ability to create atmosphere and interesting plots. I think meaning in some stories is purposefully lost in obscurity. I usually like this brand of weird fiction, but it has its good and bad points.Even when these stories leave me wondering and feeling a bit unresolved, they're somehow more satisfying than most stories of this type I've encountered. Obsession is a theme that runs thr...
A feast of strangeness from a writer of great originality and growing ambition. Very varied tales but with recurrent ingredients such as puppets and automata. Sometimes a little reminiscent of Ligotti but a number of stories have an Eastern Europe setting and outlook that is very different from him. Extra star for the afterword which is credited to Peter Holman. I don't know if Watt is Peter Holman too, but the story acts like a kind of critical review while being good in its own right, funny an...
This was a wonderful collection of the bizarre, supernatural, uncanny, and flat-out weird. The collection is separated into three parts: Phantasmagorical Instruments, Geneological Devices, Ex Nihilo.I think a far more insightful and discerning reader can make better sense than I as to how each story was placed in one of those three sections... unfortunately, I can only surmise a few key themes in each section. In fact, when I thought I started to comprehend, one of the stories in Ex Nihilo (Arch...
A stunning collection, suffused with mystery, wonder and dread. Ranging in tone from M.R James esque supernatural chillers like the brilliant 'Room 89', to cryptic Liggottian puzzle pieces such as the incredible 'The Subjugation of Eros', there is not a single filler in this book. My personal favourite was the disturbing 'Of Those Who Follow Emile Bilonche'. Highly recommended, the book has already become something of a classic, and deservedly so.
This book, by retrocausality of night’s fidgeting words, now takes on a new vantage point, where aeon swallows moment, and vice versa. Its gestalt is ‘being’ in everything I found above blended together. It is in the slowly emerging flavour I found in the book while I hope you, the review-reader, find a similar or, even, different flavour during the course of reading my own personal findings of Wattian leitmotif in the book. Leitmotif and Elgarian Variation, each a potential comrade or tyrant, e...
"The Emporium of Automata" is an excellent introduction to D.P. Watt's writing. An amazing collection of "weird" stories that were so good that the collection has to be savored and not read too quickly. Eibonvale Press has produced a beautiful edition of this book.The First Edition was Published September 2010 by Ex Occidente Press and was a much sought after book, now highly collectable, However Eibonvale has done an admirable job.Highly recommended.The contents of this collection are:The Imper...
I'm still trying to sort out how I feel about D.P. Watt's particular style of telling strange tales (I'm also reading The Phantasmagorical Imperative and Other Fabrications from Egaeus Press), but I feel comfortable stating 'The Condition' is one of the most conceptually terrifying tales to which I have ever subjected myself.I am not (currently) fortunate enough to have access to the limited Ex Occidente edition, but I am grateful to Eibonvale Press for this paperback re-publication and to the D...
Originally published at Risingshadow.Note! This review is based upon the Eibonvale Press edition of An Emporium of Automata (2013).Eibonvale Press has done a very big favour for all readers, who enjoy imaginative and beautifully written speculative fiction, by re-publishing D. P. Watt's An Emporium of Automata. If I'm not mistaken, this collection was originally published by Ex Occidente Press in September 2010 and hasn't been available since then, until now. This new edition contains two new st...
