Zelá Brambillé

Interesting quickie 40 minute read by a Mexican author who died a few years ago. I believe this novelette was published postmortem by the author's brother in a small indie press.

I felt a lot of familiar recurring storytelling themes that readers will frequently encounter in Latin American dark fantasy (particularly pertaining to the metaphors surrounding torture and unwilling sexual intercourse).

I liked the beginning a lot where an angel named Abdión is the true mastermind behind creating humans. By offending god with such a creation, he is being tortured in a cell, his wings ripped off and cast into hell. And as expected, he feels quite at home in hell and wants revenge. So what does he do? Well, considering he is obsessed staring at a peasant woman wandering around a village, it is quite obvious...

Angel & demon stories combined with horrific posession of female victims is quite a common theme in plenty of Latin American books, but I still quite liked the vivid prose that prefers to get to the point without being too flowery. What I never understood is why the story only mentions Lucifer is Abdión best buddy, but never appears in the story as such. By only sticking to a 1 on 1 posession theme, I felt the book fell short during the final arc of the story.

Still, this was an interesting read by a talented author that left us far too soon.… (altro)