From Ancient Ravens

From Ancient Ravens is the third and final collection of three novellas by three authors, Mark Valentine, John Howard, and Ron Weighell, published as a series by Sarob Press.  I've reviewed the first two volumes previously, Romances of the White Day, and Pagan Triptych.  Here the common inspiration is a quote from Shakespeare's "The Rape of Lucretia":

To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings . . .And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel.

The first story is "The Fifth Moon" by Mark Valentine.  It is also the most Shakespearean in tone and content, and it concerns the legends of the supposed treasure lost by King John in the early thirteenth-century. It is also the standout story in the book.  Ron Weighell's "The Asmodeus Fellowship" is second, and rather disappointing.  Weighell often plays with esoteric and occult lore, but this story contains way too much of such imagined stories and volumes, so much so that the result gets boring. The tone is also rather rococo too. Parts of the story are fascinating and brilliant, but as a whole it doesn't work well.  John Howard's closing tale, "Between Me and the Sun," begins as a deceptively simple tale of the sexually-charged friendship of three teenage boys, turning into the meditation of middle-aged men on their lost friendship. I'm not sure Howard tied up all the loose ends (a re-read might make this clearer), but it still makes for a worthy and readable story.

Atlantis!

The Lost Continent by C.J. Cutliffe Hyne is reputed to be the best rendering of the Atlantis myth into novel form. It was originally serialized in Pearson's Magazine in 1899, and appeared in book form the following year.  It tells the story of Deucalion, the priestly leader of the Atlantian colony in Yucatan, returning home after twenty years, where he is courted by the upstart empress Phorenice, herself guilty of many sins against the old codes of Atlantis, including self-deification. The story has several unfortunate tropes of popular adventure fiction of its time, including the quick love from the lifelong bachelor Deucalion for a rebel woman he encounters only briefly, which provides (supposed) motivation for several of his subsequent actions. Still, the book remains a good example of its type and era. Basically The Lost Continent belongs on the shelf next to the novels of H. Rider Haggard.  While it was directly inspired by the Victorian pseudoscience Atlantis: The Antidiluvian World (1882) by Ignatius Donnelly, it in turn inspired some of the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.