The mating ritual of the angler fish reminds me of the Ferali in Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy and I think that's truly terrifying

I finished reading these books. Decent, but by far the best part was Mr. Weeks'
monster creation. His monsters made me keep turning each page looking for more.

Here in Utah, there are lots of black widow spiders. I've never liked them much, and I know they're name is synonymous for women who marry and then kill their mates. However, last night I was doing my usual bored surfing of the web, and I came across a YouTube video called "Facts about the Angler Fish," which really made me feel for the poor male angler fish. His fate seems worse than what happens to the male black widow spider. I mean...the male just gets killed and eaten by the female spider. Horrific, right?

I read this and thought, "some people are such douchebags." 

But what the female angler fish does to the poor male angler fish is like an aquatic version of the nightmarish movie, "The Human Centipede." For those of you who are unfamiliar with this "masterwork" of gorn (that's an amalgamation of the words "porn" and "gore"), in the "Human Centipede" two unsuspecting ladies who are driving alone in the wilderness of Germany are kidnapped by an evil doctor who is famous for his work with conjoined twins. Needless to say, he's moved onto "other" experiments of combining animals to create new lifeforms and decides that these ladies shall become unwilling participants in his fantasy to create a centipede (only one made from humans). That's where I'm going to stop with the description of this plot and let you google it yourself if you're curious as to how the grotesque digestive system is supposed to work. Now, back to my angler fish story.

So what is it that the female angler fish does that is worse than a black widow spider killing and eating her mate? Well, I suppose it's a matter of perspective, but from my point of view it sounds bad. The female angler fish attaches him to her body and digestive juices basically dissolve his face and all of his internal organs over time, thereby incorporating his body as a permanent sperm dispensing gonad that she can use whenever she feels the need to reproduce. He literally becomes a lump on the outside of her flesh. Imagine doing that as a human...seeing a boy you like...and reducing him to a sperm dispensing gonad that's permanently attached to your body as an extra flap of skin so that you can go about your business and produce children whenever the need arises.

What a horror story. And this isn't made up, it's real. I wonder if Brent Weeks (who's the author of the Night Angel trilogy) heard about this and based his monster, the Ferali, off of it. I just finished reading this trilogy a little while ago, and I thought the best part of his story went into the monster creation. The Ferali in the book was created by these dark magicians called Vurdmeisters that would grab a hold of one person and torture them until there was nothing left inside of that person except pure hatred. Once they accomplished this, they embedded diamonds into the man's flesh and channeled their dark magic into the diamonds that mutated the victim's flesh and bone structure to be able to absorb other humans.

An illustration by artist Chris Rahn for Wizards of the Coast. I think it
might be for the Magic: The Gathering game but don't quote me on that.
Anyway, it's exactly what I picture a Ferali looking like before it shapeshifts.
The whole "grab onto a body and absorb it" thing is reminiscent of
how the female angler fish treats the male. Click to EMBIGGEN.

Then they'd go to their stockades and cells, grab prisoners, and throw them at the Ferali who would latch onto them (all the while these poor prisoners are screaming) and then meld with them and eventually absorb them entirely. The result was that the bones of the person being absorbed added to the strength of the Ferali's own skeleton. The flesh went to toughen the hide and so on and so forth. A Ferali with hundreds of bodies inside it, could break its own bones and take any form it desired, creating huge limbs to grasp people who thought they were a safe distance away, or to transform into gargantuan animals. They were built for one purpose only: war. Because of their invulnerability, the Vurdmeisters would sick a Ferali on an army of men and the thing would just tear through the ranks, grabbing soldiers and sticking them to its skin, all the while growing bigger and bigger and bigger.

Anyway, the mating ritual of the angler fish really reminds me of the Ferali in Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy, and I think that's terrifying. I suppose inspiration for monsters is all around us if we just bother to look for it.

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Monsters in fiction need to make sense. Wisdom from author L. Blankenship

I am pleased to welcome author L. Blankenship to my blog. I discovered Ms. Blankenship a few months ago. She's a fantastic speculative fiction author, and I have to say that I've been zooming through this offering of hers like a kid through cotton candy. Perhaps next week, I'll have a review for you. Until then, please read what she has to say :).

*****

FROM THE BACK COVER:

The saints favor her, else-wise a peasant girl like Kate Carpenter would never be apprenticed to the kingdom’s master healer. But her patron saint also marks her ready for the duty of tending to a mission that must cross the ice-bound mountains.
Their little kingdom faces invasion by a vast empire and desperately needs allies; across the snow-filled pass, through the deathly thin air, is a country that’s held off the empire and may be willing to lend an army.

Kate knows about frostbite and the everyday injuries of wilderness travel. She can heal those.

She’s not ready for the attentions of a ne’er-do-well knight and the kingdom’s only prince, though.

And she isn’t ready for the monsters that harry them night and day, picking off their archers first, wearing the party to exhaustion, pushing Kate beyond the limits her healing abilities.

She must keep them alive, or her blood will be on the snow too.

SOME THOUGHTS ON MONSTERS:

The monsters that Kate and her companions face are unsettlingly smart and organized. The cover story to keep their mission secret is that they're on a hunting trip to thin these monsters' numbers. Who's thinning whose numbers becomes a going question once the travelers are worn to exhaustion.

They call the monsters lamia. The lamia are wolves who've grown up drinking the magic-laced waters of a fount -- it changes them into something more dangerous. But lamia are still part of the local ecology and however intelligent they are, they still need to "make sense."

Any fantasy world that includes monsters, whether it's dragons or unicorns or invented creatures like my wolf-lamia, ought to take basic ecology into consideration. Even monsters need to eat and raise their young. They need places to sleep and everyday lives to go about.

It's a personal peeve of mine that in so many movies, our hero goes into a forest/jungle/desert and immediately trips over a large predator who has nothing better to do today than chase a random human around. This is usually fatal for the predator, too. It's a senseless and annoying trope IMO.

Author photo of L. Blankenship

I asked myself some basic questions, when I was creating my lamia:

• What do they normally eat? Why are humans on the menu? My answer: they eat deer and elk, normally. But most humans are easy to kill, especially children. It's the ones with bows you have to look out for. 
• What ordinary animal are they filling in for? My answer: wolves, bears, and cougars all at once. An area can only support a limited number of predators, and my lamia fill all those niches.
• What are their motivations for approaching humans? My answer: they are defending their territory, especially the magical fount. They know humans are competition for both the fount and for prey in the stretch of forest the lamia claim.  

What questions would you add to my list?

Find L. Blankenship at the following places:

She keeps a book blog at DISCIPLE OF THE FOUNT

Her writing blog called NOTES FROM THE JOVIAN FRONTIER can be found HERE.

Disciple on AMAZON KINDLE is located HERE.

Disciple on KOBO is located HERE

And you can find her on GOODREADS located HERE.

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