I Read Stories: Black Flowers Blossom by Vina Jie-Min Prasad

Black Flowers Blossom by Vina Jie-Min Prasad in Uncanny Magazine

A detective in three lives and times encounters an eldritch being and also cultists. The first is an Edwardian occult detective modeled closely on William Hope Hodgson’s Carnaki, the second a noir detective, the Continental Op, a parallel to Dashiell Hammett’s unnamed protagonist, the last a cyberpunk investigator who is not unlike Molly Millions from William Gibson’s future Sprawl stories.

In each life the detective has problems with the cult of light and also has sex with Blackburn, the eldritch being.

This is a lot of fun what with the plot, such as it is, running through three different very specific genres I enjoy, and also the creature slowly coming to terms with the fact that the detective really is attracted to them, and more, that the more of their true nature they reveal, the more they’re attracted. In your face Lovecraft.

Read This: Cool occult detective romance in three time periods
Don’t Read This: Love affairs with eldritch beings never end well
This Is The Last Story I Read In 2020: Or at least the last I intend to review, thereby bringing my blogging of last year to an end a mere 139 days after it finished