DavidWeisman's Full Review: James Blish - Black Easter: The Day After Judgemen...
An extremely successful arms dealer (In a modern day setting, or almost so, the book was written 1968) hires a black magician to loose as many demons as possible on Earth for a night to see what they do.
The Plot
At a Catholic monastery on Monte Albino, a few of the monks sometimes practice white magic. Father Domenico discovers portents that something evil of great importance may be about to occur. He is sent to investigate, and do what he can.
A wealthy man and his assistant meet with a black magician. The wealthy man doesn't seem to have a particular commission in mind, but inquires about the costs of killing his ex-wife or the governor of California. He's skeptical at first, but the magician Dr. Ware causes golden tears to fall from his eyes, advises him to wipe them off and bring them to a chemist, and dryly explains that the cost of the demonstration will appear on his bill.
It emerges that all this is only a test. What the wealthy arms dealer really wants is to pay him to summon as many demons as he can and free them to do whatever they want for a night. The motive is partly curiosity, but mostly because he's worked with others to start various wars (he says explicitly) but never been so closely and individually responsible for a particular event.
Father Domenico must be present to prevent the experiment from getting out of hand and destroying the world - and much against his will he must approach the line of collaborating with black magic in order to do so.
The Good
James Blish did some serious research on the European Medieval theories of black magic, and it shows. This is what you might call hard fantasy. Partly as a result, the character of Dr. Ware is almost believable, and always fascinating and memorable. Dr. Ware's existence and work in the modern world is well thought out - he's considered the legal ramifications of taking money for alleged magic. James Blish's research helps us understand Dr. Ware's motivation. Father Domenico is rather well done, though not excellent. The novel is light, well paced, and easy to read. It's original enough to interest someone interested in this sort of fantasy, but not so original as to require a lot from the reader. We become very interested in finding what the demons will do when they are freed at last - and what will happen after.
The Bad
The arms dealer, Dr. Bains, is a cliche refugee from the sixties. The author didn't do nearly as much research on munitions dealers as he did on black magicians. Most of the characters never really come to life for me, though James Blish did think about their motivation.
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