"What the Giants Were Saying is a powerful and at times disturbing book. At one point I thought to myself 'This is a lot like J.G. Ballard's wackier New Wave material' [. . .] What we have here, as in Ballard's Crash, The Atrocity Exhibition and The Unlimited Dream Company, is a vision of transcendence through violence - [...] perhaps a yearning after some kind of personal fulfilment that has nothing to do with society, sanity or even life itself.
Let me add that thanks to the author¹s skill in the visual arts this is a beautifully produced book. But not, perhaps, one to give to a Presbyterian auntie for Christmas. While nothing is explicitly described, the mutilation level is almost enough to put Clive Barker off his Horlicks."
David Longhorn - Supernatural Tales website. http://www.chico.nildram.co.uk/SupernaturalTales.html
Rix weaves a wonderful tale that takes us along a man’s slide from a conventional life into something different, weaving copper into skin in an act that alters and defines the new life, leaving everything once known behind in the pursuit of art and the creation of Art. . . . Final comment is that Rix has contributed something solid and uncompromising that deserves a good outing.
Albedo 1, Issue 34
What the Giants Are Saying is an unnerving, edgy work. It asks the inevitable question, what is art? And then explores the issue in a supremely visceral and unflinching manner. Yes, it has become acceptable (though controversial still) to manipulate inanimate tissue, such as Damian Hurst’s sharks and sheep, or Dr. Gunther von Hagens’ corpse sculptures, but to carve and stitch your art onto living flesh, to mutilate the breathing, that is another matter, or is it? After all, who owns our flesh? We accept the tattoo, the piercing, gender change (whether medically necessary or simply a need), even genital mutilation—weren’t the Castratos of a bygone age mutilated in the name of musical art—so who is to say where it ends, what is acceptable and what is extreme, if not even criminal?
What the Giants Are Saying is a bold work, it eschews story-telling conventions, it is readable, but difficult. It gives no easy answers or comfortable conclusions. It asks more questions than it answers. It is horror, and then it isn’t, not in the conventional sense anyway, it is that rare and wonderful thing, an unclassifiable work. Even the beautiful, striking and disturbing cover is ostensibly horror, but then, on closer examination probably not.
Terry Grimwood - The Future Fire
I enjoyed the spare, dynamic style and Rix is good at dealing with emotions at fever pitch. He explores the artistic impulse more thoroughly than much supernatural fiction . . . Perhaps the best thing about this book is the imagery, with seemingly disparate visuals and ideas pulled together to create weird pictures that sear the mental retina like a flare in the dark.
Most importantly, no-one can fail to be touched by Rix's bounding enthusiasm, and many artists may even be a bit inspired by the way Rix is willing to "take it to the wire", like his characters Don and Feather.
Joy Silence - Darkling Tales |