Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Our Lady of Darkness
    Our Lady of Darkness
    Our Lady of Darkness
    Ebook222 pages4 hours

    Our Lady of Darkness

    By Fritz Leiber

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A horror author is drawn into a mysterious curse in this World Fantasy Award–winning novel from the author of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series.

    Fritz Leiber may be best known as a fantasy writer, but he published widely and successfully in the horror and science fiction fields. His fiction won the Hugo, Nebula, Derleth, Gandalf, Lovecraft, and World Fantasy Awards, and he was honored with the Life Achievement Lovecraft Award and the Grand Master Nebula Award. One of his best novels is the classic dark fantasy Our Lady of Darkness, winner of the 1978 World Fantasy Award.
     
    Our Lady of Darkness introduces San Francisco horror writer Franz Westen. While studying his beloved city through binoculars from his apartment window, he is astonished to see a mysterious figure waving at him from a hilltop two miles away. He walks to Corona Heights and looks back at his building to discover the figure waving at him from his apartment window—and to find himself caught in a century‑spanning curse that may have destroyed Clark Ashton Smith and Jack London. 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 1, 2014
    ISBN9781497616738
    Our Lady of Darkness
    Author

    Fritz Leiber

    Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) was the highly acclaimed author of numerous science fiction stories and novels, many of which were made into films. He is best known as creator of the classic Lankhmar fantasy series. Leiber has won many awards, including the coveted Hugo and Nebula, and was honored as a lifetime Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

    Read more from Fritz Leiber

    Related to Our Lady of Darkness

    Related ebooks

    Occult & Supernatural For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Thomas Ligotti’s Horror Doesn’t Give You an Easy Out

      Sep 26, 2018

      “It’s peculiar to me… that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying,” Gloria Beatty says in the third chapter of Horace McCoy’s 1935 novel They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? “Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Cosmology Of Monsters

      Jun 17, 2020

      RELEASED 30 JUNE 448 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Shaun Hamill Publisher Titan Books Shaun Hamill’s debut arrives with a fierce buzz and a glowing Stephen King cover quote. That feels apt. A Cosmology Of Monsters may riff heavily on HP Lovecraft’s

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Jester’s Tour

      Nov 29, 2019

      The Jester’s Tour
      20 min read

    • Article

      Joe Abercrombie

      Sep 11, 2019

      It’s one of the hallmarks of a certain kind of fantasy that it appears to take place in an unchanging world of foundling princes, wizards and dark lords. Joe Abercrombie, for one, isn’t too keen on this idea. “I was always a bit frustrated by the san

      3 min read

    • Article

      Find A New Home For Your Hauntings

      Oct 1, 2020

      Dark Moon Books editorial team promotes dark fiction by publishing multi-author anthologies and single author collections plus the occasional novel. They want ‘unusual and invigorating dark fiction’ which is ‘experimental, innovative, or progressive…

      1 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 9, 2017

      I tend to buy used books in bunches, which means the haul from some expeditions stays buried for weeks, months, years even. For this entry, I highlight three finds that, breaking custom, I bought and read almost immediately this year: Hugo Charteris’

      6 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • Article

      “Properties of Thirst”

      Jul 5, 2022

      “Properties of Thirst”
      11 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Year That Was

      Dec 23, 2020

      Best Of The Year That Was
      5 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2021

      The light from the full moon lent a silky, glacial sheen to the towering front of the cloud, which stretched off to the horizon in both directions. I stood transfixed as it made its way down the street toward me at a little over the town’s speed limi

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Trouble Gene

      Jul 1, 2020

      One clear thing about trouble—it can set you back to zero, a personal cone of silence. And reading, writing, listening allow entry into that troubled solitude; you disappear into it regardless t of the time or place you really are in, be it bed, kitc

      12 min read

    • Article

      What Ray Charles Says

      Mar 1, 2024

      The nighttime is the right time to be with the one you love, says Ray,but according to Hamlet, it’s when “churchyards yawn and hell itselfbreathes out contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,”says Hamlet, “and do such bitter business as

      2 min read

    • Article

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • Article

      Shelf Life

      Nov 2, 2023

      I’m not sure if I can truly pinpoint the moment my new novel Once A Monster was born – but I can trace the history of some of its most important ingredients. As a boy, looking through an old illustrated book of Greek myths, and being at once captiva

      5 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Power And The Passion

      Sep 19, 2021

      The Power And The Passion
      4 min read

    • Article

      Psalm 139

      May 13, 2022

      Are you content to engage in that most vile sin of this age—privileged disengagement—because the unprovoked atrocities being committed in Ukraine by Russians are too much to deal with? Then we are on different teams. The post Psalm 139 appeared first

      7 min read

    • Article

      Bard In The Woods

      Nov 30, 2020

      Bard In The Woods
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Our Lady of Darkness

    4/5

    15 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Mixed feelings. Loved the idea, the references, and the first few horror moments. Hated the dirty old men characters and the ludicrous ending. The first half, before the introduction of Byers, is the best, but it's a short read that doesn't out-stay its welcome.
    • 3/5
      "...to be a good story is to me the highest test of the truth of anything. I make no distinction whatever between reality and fantasy, or the objective and the subjective. All life and all awareness are ultimately one, including intensest pain and death itself. Not all the play need please us, and ends are never comforting. Some things fit together harmoniously and beautifully and startlingly with thrilling discords - those are true - and some do not, and those are merely bad art. Don't you see?" (p. 95)Fritz Leiber's Our Lady of Darkness follows the life of a horror author, Franz Westen. Franz is a recovering alcoholic who spent three years mourning the death of his wife in drink-induced oblivion and has only recently started to put his life back on track. He lives in an apartment in what was at one time an old hotel and is friends with several of the other residents - the young harpsichordist Calpurnia is his sometimes-lover, Saul is a nurse at a mental hospital and Gun is his possibly gay lover, to Franz's discomfort (although at the very end it is revealed that both Saul and Gun have girlfriends.) Anyway, Franz is interested in a weird old book called Megapolismancy an occult book on the magical energies of large cities, and the "paramental entities" that lurk there, written by a black magician named Thibaut de Castries. He also has a journal by a horror writer, Clark Ashton Smith, who knew de Castries. While investigating de Castries' mysterious life and work, Franz finds himself at the centre of the sorcerer's curse, haunted by a weird brown shape that he can see waving from his window while mountain climbing. Our Lady of Darkness is at its heart a loving celebration of the horror/fantasy genre, with numerous references to Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, and others. It's beautifully written and intriguing. "The Scholar's Mistress" a collection of books Franz lines up on his wife's side of the bed to keep him company, that eventually comes to life, is an interesting and surprising monster. I also loved the continual questioning of "what is reality" posed first by the nurse, Saul, who has to deal with people who see things that "aren't there" and experience a totally different version of "reality" than other people all the time, and later by Franz, who finds himself questioning his own sanity when he starts believing in the "paramental entities" he's been reading about in the occult book. Interesting read.
    • 4/5
      This is a difficult book to review, because it is so very much idea-centred, and your appreciation, or lack thereof, of it whill very much depend on whether you'll find this idea appealing or not. In short: it's a novel about the possiblity of the geography cities possesing a sort of inherent occult power, discussed through the inquries of a '70s horror auuthor into the life and work of a self-styled occultist living in San Francisco at the turn of the century. As a narrative it might be somewhat lacking, withj characters that, while not exaclt flat or bland, never really get the chance to expand, and events that might seem a bit random and inexplicable, but premise, and the "core" of the idea's presented is thoroughly fascinating, at least to me. Also, it's really creepy at places, which is always a plus.Objectively this might be a 2- or 3-star book, but to me it's worth more.
    • 2/5
      Harlan Ellison named this one of his favorite books in a supplement to "The Week" magazine a few years back, which I recently rediscovered while cleaning up my shelves. So, I decided to read it and picked it up at a used book store. I tried to put myself in the right frame of mind to be absorbed in a supernatural atmosphere, but despite the breathless blurbs on the covers (maybe I need to smoke or drink whatever those reviewers were having), I just couldn't get into the spirit of it. In tone, this is like one of those fun-to-read Jack Finney novels, but it lacks a substantive core. Leiber is having a good time, obviously, as he tries to create something in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft, who is frequently referred to, or Clark Ashton Smith, who is sort of a character in the book, and he even has the protagonist mention one of Leiber's own short stories. This is the sort of intrusion, along with way too many references to other apparent favorite authors or stories of Leiber, that severely detracts from a believable aura of the supernatural.At the heart of the story is an evil book - though not quite in the league with the Necronomicon - that the protagonist has picked up along with a hand-written journal, presumably written by Clark Ashton Smith. It deals with the evil influence of massive buildings (to oversimplify it a bit), but Leiber fails to make the horror universal or something that I could feel personally threatened by (unlike, for instance, the Exorcist, with its potential for a devil taking someone over at any minute). The story sort of plods along as the lead character puts together the pieces of the puzzle, aided by his sort-of-girlfriend, who is a harpsichordist, a mysterious occultist whose house he visits, and a few others. Along the way, we do get an evocative picture of San Francisco. I'm sure this book has been pretty good for tourism, but as horror it fails to gel. The conclusion is more ridiculous than horrific, especially the way the lead character is rescued.The opening quotation from Thomas De Quincy is much better and more frightening than Leiber's 183 pages that follow.
    • 5/5
      This novel features the culmination of Lieber's ideas about the supernatural, which he had previously explored in his short fiction since the 1940's. Here we find 1970's San Francisco vividly invoked. Leiber's logical yet absolutely unsettling theories about paramental entities and the strange geometries of "megapolisomancy" are a wonder. Especially memorable are the "writer's mistress", which makes for a most unique and scary monster, and the first appearance of thing on Corona Heights, which is simply chilling. One of the all-time great horror novels by a true master of the weird tale. Plausible and terrifying!

    Book preview

    Our Lady of Darkness - Fritz Leiber

    dbook_preview_excerpt.htmlu[ےGvBF`Fa{ *(q%kr = @]}83OU3v5u9˓_ؼk?/s3<R|yiӜ q}q|$ [}pG{i|K{`c85\7SRqx;5VQH76󮃴禃<r`OcasNZ7R2돟ͽ=&7y w)]=']'n:1$T71S׽ZqOcq:;7W=[._~C V]x{ncgv\X8~] W=3% g}udAfdK)>#Qiҏ =5nRŌOF0>lݎJK>]`m.Z?M1?[1hMcn.$~ 7'/xuq S,4s@D;pn$<8->>F2L*d:Y^A+>P[׷K0 砌ajfvMlv)џJr647(N0q#]9! pa0!̄96(΍Gm*8h0Av|ΏLˠ ~\i^\?ۋA5pwйP1^~Mpp/Y3YS%|Y{ûo^uC h8~xP#]wS!AUHCm*`W˧%x Q#ƣ7`T8Ux?%m)F]YZ̚q6z`[;G,m#>'u0JE[>Wt=\0'`X78 fLL]_S ! u M:&s .2 A4AsDl&G hSĺΤ2zwdXdoD* iQu#,#M϶>*EW걹2Gu} +H1{\$pZHz_q$ >0VRM%6ؾ@2`bΎ,<3Ȏ܇vy?4o_F4S !?2 "2-l WFpro7|Yks?(, d R1ɕa6 t:CŊ%52OaM i`bDO5X&s͈SE!y=^ 2ɟv;o\@xZ rJF^IϛcY|b)@9+&pLNf tOLM,#>e/ "Pt^&pܺ@z1䇤y {)Vt6yaK"5zQU%Rj d""7oB*Hỉ#,F@2I#I- yۇik6 SIJdq8D{Iix(5֦;87OT[e\)@ 95M)q _DLJ+1QV"g!ny!\,O %unxÚ"jwwP/~{њXjaDL.)}$_quv] 2b&j~]Xab@ ;V C;^uCM/ A %et juWQm%n,BYG E  m鲑qjiYRd_D-y-dc;b%D Ka &ܭRle*i^ zG*eXT5)t{1ޚms`M_@Ļʸ!UT]F [c1Wz[\ytj*aiqLb)O_TGpli`.[]2| j޻) @9OYPd1%΂YupxY+cʶV:åeށD+g N,јLbp0Y'f[?|* h*46&NJU(6dM0JVp^d~SeI`i=88 ;!d8ݒD#f7)!{JY &L$U#HH3 8k4qbL,@uY!⼒=R/˽v1JE ޯ=g1U"܅ٟ!*t5}Rg,L?Hſ~wdSBВH'}MY4*U)@Hn~-7;4AN ᝰiZ3 w ڐF~Jn0MGݬ:Q3_^!s g`n xODZia]ƊʮT Ľ?yTXLb n gb*əW&Ǩy5XF߉1XB^fe̅ƾ-e,rPΌed?8Ê [Re.G5,"r-?זP= Mj(i j4s6na5{ò4fe4b]"rݼ.-۪Eʕ`.:&NȪq ](1(sn˘i+w8΍*i)YT*P}VQGQnU2ֆRY Z5+.+dCZdj3#1b]Ijr*ԃ;v+j᧯F]+rDÿ$GLCr(#B.2$BO+l[}(RqoɖsC7R&cSW2.Y/FCrV1kVO] ]Txо'UeơYq[AѳEGz!^.L84 ^)I?$lcpVe5נPt.ېg3 d1AT8#͒R\|Ȩe^3҅M%=&?'*:] 1"DDD\*nޘ=*J0S)7Tx]@X_HzJOУš=`ĩJXq,g+8lh- RY|QiBMs>ͺT]FU}{7IR{X0c#9grblDrmM-Q'͡;O;0DkP S eW\U;nJ"~úvrͶ_rDf+yq}^<0X@V>?iRq3 is${:R(Gc:Pآ_V/+ZT[Ϭ\a06 0 @8^.w`$C%@n7"V[5eތVԈ}CC/5R|hƼXT6^zlo`p,+wt! Xz,6GQ^bCmy/4Typ}"(s#82w9>ŪBBkչHp W'ߗ4>Zpu-ms0=7k}0ۋ;ܩ6FK72_׌K!g`-CL)Kj[!Bt%) ĨI*݂6#6*?yΚZ+\tjԛHKrc}[4"뜅RHrW-=>90$`a=,XGĽSl.mvCfixKPM.AK|gȯs7j6Vo=)K_fkS[ј|HX$h| [m8mH|׼щa%j5u^$SˬGW2,g dmB`aVYn|Xe g}*%J}u"7YcvaIGK=5ʰ+7~.h9M.()8UC+9j,IfDQF kfeݢm?y 4^i16hx ɶ,5uݮ_BܱK6 ]<`92dY}ƒKoGѼe;k`jW(-#*A9ĥ]ξt!܃/]aM>o.)*]RQ (wpB@"m[A浣fo^va ҋ#ŋ.@"5յ$jŘXnYj2 f5[%ܗeCy=\MUMl\a[DXm)B6ZhSj5[m ~YAn+i:6%y)Qi/;EI}FM"8w9*ˆ4}/f'ޜ  zT%-3̎q xf4Ίk~AU`d2p~DܞO_Op*☎e9h/b2k->| |f^ {Qa-^[pxUVjBlk# &p& oX5- a$0~gSs2.o0K-ǓBl?,|4EUb8qZNQeMdahg|S&(J, ԃS̏P 1s)eݷoryٚ::,QF:V}nJW^n:7β#rC7M ?h*@խ\58|V,R5~DLIpOc\4ir~3L@=.E"| :Ќp`A3l$IEa; ĤV 8$P~ CW-K^AJBq,#q4g h`\뼽v_Y+Q>[jTPe qT 6l ٦\ CE#d ˇ_%Mهrɕqr&qQgvV i" \ M7gsuD1mDڣ͛h lMed]o7'֩zg]}9eHֹĚXPe$[4y)oɃjp\R+DB?:5 _E`C_6Z;u Eٳ%L}6;͎{_}['{ts>'RBFkMΤ;HVzWUe؂1F>?XaZ|.*+=;%[e5hkX}iUobJR|9Zaō6Vf;e|+S5gl=sC?jU8]u 6_?-ۧlA
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1