The Dark Splendor

By Stefan Isaksson

The Dark Splendor
Les Visible
Mandrake of Oxford
288 pages
ISBN: 1869928695

There is a saying about how one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and so I guess shouldn’t judge a book by its interior design, either. However, this is unfortunately what I must do when it comes to The Dark Splendor. But more on that later.

Lev Visible, who according to the back of the book “lives somewhere in Europe with his wife Susanne and his memories”, has written a book that is part crime novel and part occult thriller about higher powers, black magicians, astral journeys, reincarnation, drugs, sex, serial killers, and true friendship. I usually hate crime novels with a passion – I have nor the time nor the interest in reading about a hardboiled cop who never rests until the villains are behind bars or six feet under – but The Dark Splendor really did fascinate me, and I really, REALLY, like reading it.

Not only is Les Visible a very skilled author, who masters the art of creating interesting characters, he also knows how to make a supernatural story sound very convincing, and even though it takes quite a while before you have a clue of what’s really going on it still never feels like a dull and uninteresting read. It might not be very exciting all the time, but it still never becomes boring, and the frustration you might feel from not understanding it works strangely enough as a spark of inspiration for you to keep reading. Les Visible knows his occultism, and there’s no shortage of religious/occult discussions and theories throughout the 288 pages of the book.

But, there is a MAJOR flaw with The Dark Splendor, and this flaw is so great that what could have been an amazing experience now becomes a somewhat dull and everyday event. Yes, it’s very true that a book shouldn’t be judged by its cover, but the interior design is a different matter al together. And The Dark Splendor could use some serious editing… The type-face is microscopically small, and to some that might not sound very troublesome, but fact remains that the book becomes incredibly difficult to read, and I cannot even begin to imagine what the publisher thought of when the book was designed this way. It’s truly awful, and even though I don’t regret reading it- it is, after all, a very good story – it makes me mad to think that I could have had a much better time doing it if only the design had been different.