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In his first story, Glass Magic, Suzuki does a twisted take on the classic Cinderella tale. An ugly corpse-like servant girl wishes to fall in love with a prince and become a beautiful princess. A sinister old witch offers her a magic potion that can grant her heart’s desires, but in order for the magic to work she must abandon her soul. She gets rid of her memories, her face, and her master to become a cruelly beautiful glass princess.  

The Feeling of Pain features a young boy’s excruciating attempts to escape the devilishly impregnable prison he is trapped in. His cries of pain call forth a wickedly malicious devil, who jeers at his futile attempts to escape. 

Lastly, in The Pair, the shop keeper of an enchanted barbershop attends to his beautiful victim under the moonlight. He snips away at her body, only keeping the “pretty parts”  to add to his collection of parts he needs to resurrect his dead wife. 

Prepare to be mesmerized by Yasushi Suzuki’s spine-chillingly dark stories of love and entrancement in this splendid collection of spellbinding illustrations and twisted tales.” 

That is what Dr Master tells us and when I opened the package from them I found a shrink-wrapped,hardcover book which looked stylish in its own right.  However,it was the small size of the pages that worried me.  I think Suzuki needs a big format book to do his work justice.  But did the page size spoil my enjoyment? 

Like Hell!

There were times when looking at the work that I was reminded of former working pal Ben Dilworth.  It was the way the art was set up –at times almost minimalist but still eye-catching.  Writing “minimalist” might almost seem to say that there was nothing there but it doesn’t:Suzuki knows just how his work will be laid out and how it will blend in style-wise over those pages.

Each tale almost has a Brothers Grimm feel to them –not the watered down versions you see today but the original “nasty” versions. In fact,one of the scariest childrens books I ever read as a child was Heinrich Hoffman’s “Struwelpeter”.  That book is a classic now and I’ve a feeling Goths Cage could achieve the same status. You go through it once and put the book down,but almost immediately you pick it up again because something has just registered in your mind that you didn’t take note of before.

The feeling you get is that all the tales are in some way interlinked. The Servant girl who became the beautiful Princess in “Glass Magic” I somehow linked in with the female character in “Resurrection” for some reason..?

It is far too easy to spoil this book for people by telling you what goes on within that hardcover.  But I’m not going to.  If you know someone into Manga,horror or who has taste then I doubt very much that they would complain about getting Goths Cage as a gift.

This is a classic that you will want to read over and over –or just drool over the art. Don’t miss out.  Buy this one.