Book: The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

I decided to read this book after reading Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6). This book was mentioned because the “Red Death” was described there too, so I was curious to read the original story.

It’s all about a prince defying the disease by locking his people inside their castle walls with enough supplies and goodies. They do “masked parties inside. In one of them, someone shows up dressed as a “Red death” victim, using a mask that resembles a dead man. When the mask is removed to see “Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery?”, they found no form under the mask. The “Red death” shows up themselves.

It’s a small story full of details. I listened to this in audio, but took some time to read it afterwards to get the details and think about it a bit more. There’s a good deal of symbolism with different colored rooms and how the Red Death goes through each of them.

To me, it felt like a message about death not being something we can avoid, no matter what we do or have.

It’s worth mentioning that reading this while the Coronavirus Pandemic is still strong (at least in Brazil) is 😬.