Book Review: Tortured Souls - The Legend of Primordium
Primordium is a city that is said to have existed before all
other cities. It is a place of corruption and decadence, a place where the rich
and powerful indulge in all manners of sins. An assassin named Kreiger kills a
Senator on behalf of the criminal Duraf Cascarellian. However, Kreiger ends up
running into the dead Senator’s daughter, Lucidique, who persuades him to try
to strike back at the Empire that made his life so miserable. To do this, she
leads him to the enigmatic Agonistes, an entity rumored to have been created by
God on the seventh day of Creation. Agonistes promises power by remaking those
seeking his help into living nightmares, and Kreiger soon finds himself
subjected to agonizing surgery that will make him into a monster.
Barker does an amazing job in creating an entire world with
so few worlds. The descriptions are very visceral, as expected from the man who
gave the world stories like "The Hellbound Heart", "Rawhead Rex," and "The Midnight Meat Train." Lovely details such as a man with an artificial
womb filled with life, a giant with nails crudely hammered into his limbs and
blood still spilling from the wounds, and a creature resembling a human with a
many-fanged mouth in its distended stomach, are both horrific and fascinating.
The characters, while sometimes seeming just a bit shallow due to the shortness
of the chapters, still feel solid and are fascinating to read about. Agonistes,
in particular, does a wonderful job stimulating the imagination of readers as
they read about how he remakes others into nightmares.
The biggest issue with this book is that there are a lot of
things that are simply told to readers. The book tells us that Primordium has
become a place of sin and debauchery under the rule of Emperor Perfetto XI, but
we do not actually get to see how he ran the city to the ground with his vices.
The descriptions of the people changed by Agonistes are also a bit lacking, but
that has a good reason: the stories shipped with action figures, and the action
figures’ appearances gave the audience a very good look at the horrors
Agonistes crafted. In fact, one could say that most of this story’s drawback
comes from the fact that it is a short story meant to complement toys, and
those who only buy the book may not know what the toys look like. Thankfully, one
can still find images of the action figures on the Internet.
This is a book that I would definitely recommend. While
short, it tells a solid story of a fallen city and how several people endured
great pain in exchange for becoming living weapons to strike down their foes.
Despite only seeing a part of Primordium and a bit of the desert outside of it,
the setting is still a fascinating one that I want to know more about. The
gruesome details in this story are not just for macabre fascination, but also
helps shape the story and strengthens the theme of ‘flesh as canvas.’
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