Julius LeVallon / The Bright Messenger

By Algernon Blackwood

JULIUS LEVALLON When John Mason first meets Julius LeVallon at school, he feels an immediate connection. They had known each other before-not in this lifetime, but many lifetimes before. LeVallon... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0974943878
• ISBN13: 9780974943879
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Stark House Press
• Length: 442 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Forgotten masterpieces

It's often said that Algernon Blackwood's novels are less successful than his shorter works, but you wouldn't know it from these two rare and (almost) forgotten masterpieces. "Julius LeVallon" and "The Bright Messenger" are both supernatural novels that show Blackwood at his most inspired, visionary, and audacious. Stark House Press is to be thanked profusely for putting these unique works into print once again. "Julius LeVallon" may well be Blackwood's best novel. It is visionary with a capital "V", presenting (via the title character) a cosmic panorama of reincarnation, karma, civilizations on other planets, nature elementals, magic - plus a little romance. I won't go into the details of the story - it must be read - except to say that it all builds to one of Blackwood's most potent and memorable climaxes. "The Bright Messenger" is a sequel to "Julius LeVallon" which takes place some 20 years later. It's a little less focussed than the earlier novel and not as powerful, but it is just as visionary, and even more intensely moving. Again, no brief description of the book can possibly do it justice - it simply has to be read. (And if anybody thinks that there's anything "new" about the New Age movement, they should read the hilarious chapters in the middle of the book - written in 1921! - about a group of people known as the "Prometheans"...) I can do no better than to quote Mike Ashley's fine introduction: "You will encounter nothing like [these two novels] anywhere else in the whole of fantastic literature." Amen to that. Essential reading for any fan of Blackwood, or of supernatural literature in general.