The Devil's Looking-Glass, by Simon Rees

This book looked interesting. Two college associates secretly experiment with extra-sensory perception, and one encounters some old mirrors of obsidian of a type associated with Dr. Dee, Edward Kelly and ancient Aztec worship. But any interest is quickly ruined by the style. The book has three main characters, the conniving and mysterious Doctor Wiston, and the researcher Gwyn Thomas, who is doing some kind of sensory deprivation experiments on John Born, who then has visions and becomes obsessed with mirrors. The setting, per the blurb, is the University of Cambridge, but no location is specified in the novel. Within the first few pages we learn that Born is already dead, and the novel plays out as a kind of unnatural compendium of mixed perspectives that shift all too quickly between characters (and the dead Born's very descriptive letters he wrote to his mother). As a technique this might be made workable, but the real problem lies in the unfathomable motivations of the characters. Wiston, who is not directly involved in the experiments, happens to be a collector of antique mirrors (and a gourmand--all food is lovingly described at length), and manipulates the other two without the reader ever being let in on what he is up to--which on its own seems to change through the book. So it all comes across as a bunch of unfortunate and cryptic scenes without causal logic that add up to nothing other than boredom.

The Modern Fairies, by Clare Pollard

The idea of a novel set in and around the late 17th century Paris salon meetings of Madame d'Aulnoy, where modern fairy tales came to life, seems like a good idea. Or at least an interesting one. What Clare Pollard presents is more of a kaleidoscopic documentary than a novel. And it's filled with twenty-first century diction, and various contemporary "isms": feminism, sexism, lesbianism, etc., along with the author's sharp take on free speech and authoritarian rule,  and her poised comparisons of what are to us well known fairy tales with the people and activities of the era. The result is not bad, but far from satisfying, for the reader is never pulled into the novel or the numerous characters (some are so much alike as to be confusing--and I referred many times to the two-page cast of characters at the beginning of the book in an attempt to recall who was who), and occasionally the author breaks the fourth wall to comment on the evolving story. The endless descriptions of clothing and makeup are tedious. Angela Carter did stuff like this decades ago, and rather better.

The Wood at Midwinter, by Susanna Clarke

I liked Clarke's previous novel, Piranesi (I reviewed it here on Jan. 12, 2022), so the idea of a new book by her attracted my attention. Disappointment after disappointment followed. First, I learned the book is only sixty-three pages: so, a novella at best. But then I got a copy. Nineteen of those pages are publishing matter, or illustrations without text. Eleven pages have only a small amount of text, and in the rest of the book, the text is generously double-spaced. What remains is a mere short story, bloated by many illustrations, and further bloated by a nine page afterword by the author which is primarily a why-I-wrote-this-story-and-why-I-like-Kate-Bush confession. Yawn. The story was written as a Christmas 2022 radio broadcast. Though nowhere evident in the tale, Clarke claims in her afterword that it is set in the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. This means nothing. What's left is a short quasi-fairy-tale about a young nineteen year old girl who ventures into a wood at snowy midwinter with her talking animals (two dogs and a pig), and she has conversations with other animals and the wood itself. She tells them she wants a child of her own, and something mysterious happens. That's all. Shame on the publisher for putting out this money-grubbing contrivance.

Charnel Glamour, by Mark Samuels

A collection of nine stories by Mark Samuels, who passed away suddenly in December 2023, after this collection had been put together. Seven of the stories are arranged as "The Gallows Langley Sequence of Tales," as they are all set in and around fictional places in Hertfordshire, including the town Gallows Langley and the valley of Thool--a setting used previously by Samuels, most notably in the novel Witch-Cult Abbey (which I reviewed previously on this blog on February 14, 2021). Six of the seven of these stories are excellent--the final one "A Letter from Jack" is made somewhat lesser by the bringing in of Jack the Ripper, which was just too trite for me. The rest of the sequence develops an attractively bizarre and decadently otherworldly fictional setting. The two uncollected stories reprinted in the section "Other Tales" begin with some imminent or ongoing eschatological catastrophe, but disappointingly don't carry on with the repercussions of it, evolving into smaller and less interesting character studies. Overall this still a pretty good collection, beautifully produced, but it is bittersweet in that it is the last work of Samuels, whose voice will be missed.

Michigan Basement, by Thomas Ligotti and Brandon Trenz

Thomas Ligotti and Brandon Trenz have written two screenplays, both unproduced, and both now published by Chiroptera Press. The first was Crampton, a 2000 reworking of a 1998 proposed X-Files episode into an original full length feature. It appeared in print in 2002, and was reprinted by Chiroptera Press in early 2024. (I reviewed this edition in this blog on March 17, 2024.) The second, Michigan Basement, was written soon after Crampton, and it is now published for the first time. Its breezy introduction by Brandon Trenz notes that it was begun as an attempt to adapt Ligotti’s Lovecraftian short story “The Last Feast of Harlequin” into a film, and the filmscript retains the basic idea of an academic encountering a very weird town festival, but it adds much to it, and cannot in the end really be considered an adaptation of Ligotti’s story. Michigan Basement follows Jeffrey Haller, haunted as a boy by Nightwatchers, who becomes an anthropology student (and later instructor), mentored by one Dr. A. Rekalde. Some years after Haller has broken with Rekalde, Haller receives enigmatic communications that lead him to a bizarre winter carnival in the small decayed town of Skinner, Michigan, which includes clowns and which reunites Haller, Rekalde, and the Nightwatchers. It’s not a terrible read, but it over-utilizes filmic cliches while it under-utilizes the elements of Ligotti’s prose that makes his stories so interesting. Admittedly, those qualities would perhaps be impossible to translate into a visual medium. In the end, if produced, Michigan Basement would have ended up as a offtrail B-movie that promised more than it could ever have delivered.

Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story, by Richard Balls

This is the definitive book on the zany eccentric London record label Stiff Records, which was founded in 1976 and lasted through 1986, promoting punk, ska, jazzy rock, the new wave, and traditional rock. Acts that got their start at Stiff include The Damned, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Wreckless Eric, Rachel Sweet, Lene Lovich, Madness, and the Pogues, among many others. The narrative is typical of rock histories: the story comes from what got represented in the contemporary music press, bolstered by interviews with some of the people involved --at least, those who were still alive around 2014. If I knew that Stiff had released in the US, back in late 1980, a publicity stunt of an EP entitled "The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan" comprising 40 minutes of complete silence, then I had completely forgotten it. Those were the days! One wishes for some entity like Stiff Records to exist today.

Impossible Creatures, by Katherine Rundell

Katherine Rundell is not a stupid person. She is an Oxford-educated academic, and after holding similar fellowships, she is now a Quondam Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.  As a side-gig she has published some ten or so books, including novels and books actually aimed at children, and an award-winning  biography of John Donne, the subject of her thesis. So why, then, is Impossible Creatures such a bad book?  It has no literary quality beyond superficial imitation. It is a slapdash amalgam of tropes, characters, scenes, etc., lifted from other (better) fantasies, thrown together with minimal thought to make a plot-driven result that doesn't bother to make its causal progressions of scene-to-scene have necessary internal sense. Set in the Archipelago (a pale version of Le Guin's Earthsea), where a young girl obtains a casapasaran (e.g. like Pullman's alethiometer) and a Glamry Blade (like Pullman's Subtle Knife), it also adds various echoes of Tolkien--the Glimourie Tree, a singular version of his Two Trees; a riddle match with a Sphinx, far less interesting than that of Bilbo and Gollum--among other authors, and even from various movies (e.g., Indiana Jones), etcetera, etcetera. This is second-rate commercial product at best. Why would an intelligent person do something like this?  My only guess is the readership is aimed at the producers and directors of various streaming services, which is where the bigger money lies. Impossible Creatures would make a typical vapid mini-series (which may or may not be improved by insidious directors or screenwriters), with all the emotional wallop of a superhero movie aimed at pre-teens. (Of course the ending would need to be changed.) Even the lovely map by Tomiskav Tomic, reproduced in color on the endpapers, doesn't allow the reader to follow the travels of the main characters. And the prose is occasionally laughable. Witness these clunkers: "He looked like a crime scene on legs." ""She walked with the look of a moveable battleground."  "His heart was an iron spike."

Jackal, Jackal, by Tobi Ogundiran

Jackal, Jackal is a collection of some eighteen stories ("tales of the dark and fantastic" according to the book's subtitle) by Nigerian physician and writer Tobi Ogundiran, who wrote his first two stories (both collected herein) as recently as 2017. There is a welcome variety of types of stories in this collection, which mixes African cultural aspects with a wide range of Western literary tropes. Stephen King is evoked in a number of stories, while others play with fairy tales or fairy tale characters (e.g., Hansel and Gretel, or Baba Yaga). and one (the final story, "The Goatkeeper's Harvest") is Lovecraftian without mentioning silly Mythos names. All are well-written, and engaging. This is Ogundiran's first book (a fantasy novella is due out in July 2024), making for a strong debut. 

Triggered Literature, by John Sutherland

This is an odd book, covering some aspects of the cancellation and censorship that some would impose upon literature, of which trigger warnings (about potentially uncomfortable content) is amongst the worst. John Sutherland writes from the bemused position of an old literary man, taking various examples from the daily newspapers and recounting them, putting (needed) context around the texts, but never really taking a stand for denouncing the busybodies who want to erect barriers or put up prohibitions between people and the books they might want to read. Which is not to say this is a bad book per se. There is a lot of interesting context on various challenged books. But Sutherland's overall attitude seems like that of someone who doesn't want to stir the pot. Too bad.

The Imagination Chamber, by Philip Pullman

In addition to Philip Pullman's substantial fantasies, His Dark Materials (three volumes) and The Book of Dust (two volumes published, the third, at present, forthcoming), Pullman has published some short companion volumes to the series. These are small illustrated books--Lyra's Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North, Serpentine, and The Collectors-- basically short stories published on their own. Now comes The Imagination Chamber: Cosmic Rays from Lyra's Universe, which is pure commercial product. The publisher claims that "this is a book like no other"--that much is true--and "it contains untold riches"--the emphasis should be on "untold" for nothing told here contains any riches.  Furthermore, the publisher boasts: "Every page will give you an exciting glimpse into Lyra's world. Every page will give you an astonishing insight into the storytelling mind of Philip Pullman."  Well, the book is 87 pages, but (with one exception in the short foreword) all left-hand pages are completely blank, and the right-hand pages have usually one small paragraph of text (at most four paragraphs) that seem to be passages pulled out of Pullman's various drafts of the manuscripts of the books he has already published. The text is unburdened by illustrations. Very disappointing overall, and the only insight I found is to wonder why Pullman should have seen fit to publish such a blatant rip-off of his readers. Haven't his other books sold enough copies? Is he really in need of more money?

Crampton, by Thomas Ligotti and Brandon Trenz

In 1998 Thomas Ligotti and Brandon Trenz wrote a spec-script for an episode of The X-Files, but efforts to get it read by the television show's producers were unsuccessful. A few years later, they removed all references to the tv show and expanded the script into a feature-length screenplay. Both versions were titled Crampton, and the feature-length screenplay has just been reprinted in an elegant limited edition. Though some of Ligotti's surface-level obsessions (mannequins, degenerate small towns, etc.) appear in the screenplay, what's missing are the qualities of Ligotti's prose that make his fiction so good. Reduced to mere dialogue, there isn't much worth experiencing here, and less for any quality actors to grab onto. Sure, with special effects, this screenplay might have made a passable B-grade movie, but with the stock characters and a contrived, unsatisfying ending, one wonders if a B-grade film is the highest this work could aspire to be. I wanted to like this, but must sadly admit it simply isn't very good.

Possessions and Pursuits, by John Howard and Mark Valentine

This is the third and final collection of stories, written by John Howard and Mark Valentine (separately, not in collaboration), influenced by the supernatural themes in the metaphysical thrillers of Charles Williams published in the 1930s-40s. John Howard contributes a novella "Fallen Sun" about the competition for the recently re-discovered mirror of Byzantium, which takes one to an alternate reality. Mark Valentine contributes two short stories: "Masque and Anti-Masque" describes an unusual seasonal festival in a small university town; while "The Prospero Machine," set in a resort town, finds odd magic recurring through the work of a strange Mazzaroth Society. All three stories are finely conceived and executed, bringing this admirable series to a high point in conclusion. The three slim volumes, all published in limited editions, would make an excellent trade paperback omnibus for wider distribution and readership.

White Cat, Black Dog, by Kelly Link

Kelly Link's stories are often inspired, in some small or large way, by fairy tales, but they are modern stories and in no way emulations of the classic fairy tales. White Cat, Black Dog is her fifth collection, and it contains seven stories, the first concerns a white cat, and the last a black dog, thus giving rise to the book's title.  And it follows the flow of a typical story collection--the first few stories are high spots, and so is the end tale, while the lesser ones (lesser in the sense of being only slightly less good than the others) come in the middle.  The final story, "Skinder's Veil" (slightly associated with "Snow-White and Rose-Red), is the high point of the book.  It original appeared in an Ellen Datlow anthology a few years ago, When Things Get Dark: Stories inspired by Shirley Jackson. Though I highly recommend White Cat, Black Dog, if you read or sample only one of Link's stories, I'd suggest everyone try "Skinder's Veil."

Saturnalia, by Stephanie Feldman

Saturnalia is set in a near future Philadelphia in an America that has been much altered by climate change. The city is now host to various pagan clubs and secret societies, with social climbers and elites mixing together, some with aims of getting a very valuable ticket out to somewhere safe. They hope to accomplish this via occult means, involving the successful creation of a homunculus, and a frightening mandragora. The story involves a small number of friends and former-friends, all with murky motivations that seem to shift a bit too easily. The main narrative depends upon something which happened three years earlier, but which is only gradually revealed to the reader via flashbacks. The prose is solid, and the plotting compelling and hallucinatory, as the novel enfolds over a short span of time. A few loose ends remain, but overall I very much enjoyed this book, especially in its opening up of a new world of occultism at play in a ravaged future.

Event Factory, by Renee Gladman

Event Factory is a difficult book to describe. It is called a novel, but it is very short for one, and it is published in a small size with spacious margins and double-spaced lines. The content is harder to describe. An unnamed female narrator has come to a surreal city called Ravicka, and from there it gets weirder. She is a kind of linguistic traveler who operates in non-sequiturs and fantastical imagery. Thus the style of the writing is the bulk of the impetus for reading the book. Yet it is tough to get into, though eventually one becomes accustomed to the rhythms of the events, and it it does lead to a kind of oblique ending. Moreso it makes the reader question what they want in reading something like this. Does one really enjoy a mysterious puzzle held at a distance from the reader via language and perception? I didn't, but I soldiered on to the end primarily because the book is short, and I was curious enough to want to experience the whole of it, whatever that might be. This is the first of a series of small books set in Ravicka, but my curiosity is now more than sated, so the further aspects of Ravicka will remain unvisited by me.
 

The Twits, by Roald Dahl

I was inspired recently to look to some Roald Dahl children's books that I didn't read when I was younger, and I picked The Twits to read first. It's an odd tale, concerning a very unpleasant married couple, Mr. Twit and Mrs. Twit, who prank each other when they aren't tormenting monkeys or collecting birds to make up a weekly dish, Bird Pie. The only plot to the book concerns revenge, and how the monkeys and birds work together to end the terror of the Twits. A pleasant read, of its kind, but not one of Dahl's best. It's pretty short too, and many pages have characteristic Quentin Blake illustrations, which add to the charm of the book. I understand that Neflix has announced a new animated movie of The Twits coming out in 2025. It will need more plot to turn this book into a film.