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The Divinity Student Michael Cisco Harry O Morris 9780965220019 Books

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The Divinity Student Michael Cisco Harry O Morris 9780965220019 Books

I knew nothing about this book or the author before picking it up. The writing is intense. Cisco has a talent for crafting very detailed and ornate prose which are a pleasure to read. I was not exactly captivated by the overall story, but the writing style matched with its short length made for an enjoyable read.


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The Divinity Student Michael Cisco Harry O Morris 9780965220019 Books Reviews

I read a fair amount of horror, but it's not my favorite genre, so I'm probably not the best reviewer for this. I will say that those who like this sort of thing (nightmarish, surrealistic, full of mysteries) will like it a LOT; it delivers. I read it along with the even darker <i>The Golem</i> in <i>The San Veneficio Canon</i> and got an overdose of gloom, but it was worth the reading. It reminds me of David Lindsay's <i>A Voyage to Arcturus</i> with its dreamlike transformations and new ways to sense the world.
If you don't like it, <i>do not</i> read his later novella <i>The Traitor</i>, lest you throw yourself into a river.
Incidentally, I don't think the Divinity Student was stuffed with pages from sacred books at the start; the important thing was just stuffing him with writing of any sort.
If Michael Cisco's _The Divinity Student_ is remembered for one thing it will be for the magnificent way that Cisco strings his words together. As a previous reviewer has already noted, this book is a feast for devotees of the written word.
I cannot claim to have fully understood every page of this novel. It is not an easy read. It forces you to read each and every paragraph carefully and even then you need to apply yourself to understand the words on the page.
The Divinity Student is thrown out of the seminary after he is apparently struck dead by lightning. He is brought back to life by a mysterious group of people who gut his corpse and stuff him full of pages from a mysterious book. He is put to work as a word-finder. He soon learns that there is a book full of lost and possibly forbidden words; 'the Catalog'. He is approached by a representative of an underground organization who tells him that he, The Divinity Student, has been chosen to do something or other with the Catalog.
The Divinity Student soon finds that the Catalog has been destroyed. He learns of 12 deceased word-finders who were the authors of the Catalog. He, along with his butcher, finds the corpses, drains them of their essence and begins recreating the Catalog.
_The Divinity Student_ is a dense story, but it is very, very fascinating. Cisco changes scenes often which makes it difficult to follow the story. His writing style is gorgeous. It makes this story worth reading for the subtle nuances of the English language alone. As I said, I did not fully understand this story. I suspect it will benefit from a re-reading or two. I do not understand the significance of the cats in the street. I am perplexed by the apparently sentient cars. Many passages in the book are made up of dream sequences, which makes it difficult to determine what is real and what is not.
I would love to read a definitive description of this book, to know what it's all about. Until I find one, I will remember this book as a masterpiece of literary wordplay. Most of this book appears to be written in the present tense, which is strikingly different from the norm. I look forward to finding more of Michael Cisco's writings. Check this book out. It's different. It's neat. It's good. Recommended.
Michael Cisco, The Divinity Student (Buzzcity Press, 1999)

I had somehow gotten it in my head that The Divinity Student was a horror novel. I have no idea how that happened, for it is anything but. This is a fantasy, almost a steampunk novel, that put me in mind more than anything of K. J. Bishop or Ekaterina Sedia, but with the obsession with language more commonly found in Catherynne Valente or China Mieville. (And if you're a fan of any of the above and haven't discovered Michael Cisco yet, do so at your earliest opportunity.) It is beautiful, fascinating, thought-provoking.

As we open, the nameless Divinity Student of the title is struck by lightning and killed, but we soon see that this is some sort of common (or at least understood) ritual in this world; the body is returned to the seminary, eviscerated, filled with pages ripped from sacred books, and plunged into water. (I now want to be buried like this.) He then returns to consciousness and is given an assignment by Fasvergil, the head of the seminary; he is to go to San Veneficio, a nearby city, and get work as a word-finder while he waits for further instructions. When he gets them, that's truly amazing (and it's there the plot really kicks off), but just think about the idea of a world where you can go to a city and find work as a word-finder.

There are so many wonderful things to say about this book that I'm not even sure where to begin. There are some I can't talk about, because we'd be getting far into spoiler territory, but the writing is just phenomenal; Michael Cisco has a love affair with the language, and it shows. The downside to that is that typographical and proofreading errors made by the press tend to come through more in books like this (and it didn't help that this was the second book in a week that used the odd, but somehow appropriate, phrase "door jam"; as it is spelled right in other places in the book, I'm giving Cisco the benefit of the doubt and blaming the press), but that's not something for which I can blame the author. And the plot here is one of the most original, and pleasurable, I've come across in years.

The book is not perfect, though if you're going to err, better to do it this way than the other; if anything, it's shorter than it should be. There are a few chapters that begged to be further fleshed out ("The Final Interview", especially, could have been twice as long as it is). Still, there's so much about this book to love that you can't go wrong. This is by far one of the best books I've read this year, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Find it and read it as soon as you possibly can. **** ½
Cisco's book takes the reader into the recesses of a dark imagination that few authors dare to foster. What words can do justice to this story--disorienting, frightening, strange?
Great descriptive but rather confusing. Looking forward to my next book. Maybe you will understand and can let me know what this book is about.
Brilliant and dark, just how I love it. This book strung together words in ways that I have never laid eyes on before or since. Interesting story and GREAT imagery. I love the structure and combination of words just as much as the tale they are weaving.
It was really weird, which was exactly why I bought it. It didn't disappoint, recommended read.
I knew nothing about this book or the author before picking it up. The writing is intense. Cisco has a talent for crafting very detailed and ornate prose which are a pleasure to read. I was not exactly captivated by the overall story, but the writing style matched with its short length made for an enjoyable read.