The Wanderer in
Unknown Realms (2013) by John Connolly is a horror novella, concerning a
book collector, Lionel Maulding.
Set
just after World War I, an injured former soldier, Mr. Soter, is hired by
Maulding’s lawyer to find the usually reclusive but now entirely missing book
collector. Soter gradually discovers that Maulding was searching for a
particularly rare and expensive occult volume often referred to as the
Atlas of Unknown Realms.
As Soter delves into the world of eclectic
book dealers and even seedier book scouts, he finds his own perception of
reality coming apart, an apparent effect of the book he is searching for. An
interesting and diverting tale, even though it doesn’t cohere entirely
well.
Oxford Days: An Inclination (2002) by Paul West
is a kaleidoscopic memoir of West’s time studying at Oxford University.
I’ve had a copy and intended to read it for some years. After West’s recent
passing provoked eulogies in the press, I pulled it off the shelves at long
last. Most reviewers always comment on West’s exquisite or elegant prose, but I
confess that I find his prose highly allusive, and while smoothly readable, it is
rather aloof, and puts a barrier of artifice between the writer and the reader.
Thus there is a distance purposefully placed to dull the edges of meaning, and
in a memoir already short on facts and details, it leaves the reader
frustrated. For example, if one doesn’t already understand the differing and
idiosyncratic Oxford or Cambridge educational set-ups, West’s
explanations won’t help much. And even West’s time at Oxford is hard to pin
down—apparently he arrived in 1950, and departed two years later in 1952 for
Columbia University in New York, where he completed his M.A. in comparative
literature. Yet there are times when West lets the reader see into his evolving
feelings about literature and Oxford
itself, and these are the most interesting parts of the book. In the sixth
section, however, he tries to capture the various voices of “souls” around him—a
rector, a college scout, a custodian, a dining hall scout, a groundsman, etc.
This section is the low point of the book.
These vignettes feel merely like exercises in cleverness—empty,
intrusive, and distracting. A better structure and focus could have made this a
much better book.
The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Seven (2015), edited by Ellen Datlow, continues her long
tradition of editing an annual selection of the best-of-the-year in
horror. I offer a review here of only
the first half of the book, and hope to persevere and finish it, commenting on
the rest of the stories in the future. The problem has been that none of the
stories I have read have grabbed me, and a large number are real duds,
including a tediously dull story about a sin-eater (“A Dweller in Amenty” by
Genevieve Valentine); a somnolent trick story of a recurring awakening that
plays out with some variations but reads like a script for a bad television
show (“Allochton” by Livia Llewellyn); and the appropriately-titled “This Is
Not for You” by Gemma Files. Caitlyn R.
Kiernan’s “Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)” is a yawn-worthy tale of
twin female serial killers; the news that Kiernan is expanding this story into
her next novel is even more unexciting. Some
of the other stories are merely readable while remaining completely
forgettable. Was 2014 really such a bad year for horror fiction? By the first half of this annual
retrospective I’d think it was. But I
will read the rest of Datlow’s best, hoping for some better stories.
The Third Magic
(1988) by Welwyn Wilton Katz is a young adult fantasy by a Canadian author that
re-imagines and redirects the familiar Arthurian story. It begins on the world
of Nwm, where the First Magic of water and circles is worked by the women
Sisters, and the Second Magic of fire and iron worked by the men of the Line.
Morrigan (Rigan) and her twin brother Arddu live in Nwm, but they are separated
when Rigan is missioned to Earth’s past to take part in the struggle with
M’rlendd (Merlin) to raise Arthur.
Meanwhile in the twentieth century, young Morgan Lefevre, who is
visiting Tintagel with her Canadian television-producer father, and who has
some visions from the past, is spirited away to Nwm, where she is befriended by
Arddu. Gradually they learn the complex plot which the Sisters are attempting
to bring about, and make their own plans to alter its fulfillment. The main
plot is fairly straightforward, but the implications of their actions get
complicated, and as a whole the story is an ambitious one that is not entirely
effectively realized. Yet it is
nonetheless an intriguing and worthwhile book. 
Embracing the Dark
(1991), edited by Eric Garber, is a collection of eleven tales of horror and
alternative sexuality. In the introduction, Garber notes that with few
exceptions most horror writers “seem overwhelmingly misogynous, antisex, and
homo-hostile.” This collection is intended to provide stories counter that
trend, and in that aim it succeeds.
However, one wishes that the results made for better stories. The best ones are among the five reprints:
“Cheriton” by Peter Robins, from his 1977 collection Undo Your Raincoats and Laugh!; and a new
translation from the German of an 1885 story “Manor” by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs,
an early proponent of the gay movement.
A few original stories (those by Nina Kiriki Hoffman and Jewelle Gomez)
are reasonably well-done, if unambitious, but some of the others are
disappointing—“Blood Relations” by Jeffrey N. McMahan is simply-written and clichéd; “The Strawberry Man” by Jon
Peyton Cooke is simply stupid. A mixed collection overall.
