Songs of the Northern Seas, by Mark Beech (ed.)

 

9781838396039

Egaeus Press, 2021

203 pp

hardcover

"this ice entombed wilderness has been driving people to the edge of madness for hundreds of years."

       from "In Orbis Alius", by Colin Fisher

I happen to be a huge, huge fan of fiction set in the earth's polar regions, largely because I happen to be a huge, huge fan of nonfiction about polar exploration.  That's been the case since like fourth grade, and unlike other interests that have come and gone in the meantime, that one is still going strong.  Naturally,  once I saw that Egaeus was publishing this book of strange tales set in the Arctic, it was a no-brainer -- this book had my name on it.  Not only did I get my fill of  Arctic weirdness, but the drawings inside that illustrate this anthology are also awesome.   I am one of those strange people who will pore over a drawing like this one for a long time, trying to take in all of the detail. 

from page 202

Opening the book just past the table of contents there first thing you see is a brief note:

"Herein are thirteen tales cast up in northern latitudes, hooked on the cardinal points of traitorous compasses. They are dark, strange, uncategorisable pieces, diverse in tone and theme, though each uniquely shaped by similarly restless Arctic tides, cold winds, and ancient ice-flows,"

 and then it's on to the strangeness.

While everyone's mileage will of course vary, I did have more than a few favorites in this volume,  beginning with  "The Ghosts of the Great Northern Sea,"  by  Leena Likitalo.  As should happen in any anthology, this first story sets the tone for the rest of what's to come.  A young woman named Soila finds herself strangely drawn to a stranger who has just arrived in her small village having traveled some two hundred miles on skates across the ice.  She's not sure why until she learns about the provenance of the sweater he's wearing; wanting to settle certain questions in her mind, she decides she'll go back with him when he leaves.  As they make their way across the ice, what happens on their journey will later become a "tale, and then a tall tale repeated around the fires when the wind howled outside," involving ghosts, murder, and above all, an unearthly justice.  This story is so well done that I could completely picture it in my head.  The next story, which is just as creepy as the first, is relayed via two sets of  journal entries from 1926.  In "The Tupilaq," by Stephen J. Clark, missionaries have arrived at Coral Harbour in Nunavut to "save these people from their primitive ways," and more importantly, "to make every conceivable effort" to convert the shaman, which would help in convincing the local population to "abandon their superstitions and embrace Christ as their saviour."   However, the shaman, Iksivalaq,  has been warned by the spirits that his rival  Kulaserk knows of this plan, and that there are dire consequences in store should the missionaries succeed.  All I will say about this one is that perhaps the missionaries shouldn't have been so quick to write off "pagan superstition."   Number three is  "In Orbis Alius" by Colin Fisher, in which Robson, an archaeologist working Viking settlements in southern Greenland, hears of the incredible discovery of an intact Viking ship on the northwest coast.  By the time he actually arrives at Qaanaaaq station (formerly known as Thule) he discovers that two anthropologists Martin and Angela O'Brien,  had been investigating, making three trips to the ship before Angela, for some inexplicable reason, "destroyed the site and the ship with it."   Martin is nowhere to be found.  When Robson begins listening to Angela tell her story, he believes she's become "unbalanced," especially when she starts talking about "Orbius Alius," which can mean "other Earth," "different place" or in Celtic lore, "Otherworld."   While she won't really talk about what happened to her at the ship site, she has kept a record which Robson reads, a thoroughly fantastical but also thoroughly frightening account.  In the meantime, strange things have started happening at the station that can't be written off as simple "mass hallucinations;" nor is it the case of being there in "this ice entombed wilderness" which has been "driving people to the edge of madness for hundreds of years."  

another fine drawing  ... 
"

After the tension of the first eight stories,  it was great to read Rhys Hughes' "Ice Flows in Eden," which not only brought my  pulse down but also made me laugh out loud.  It all begins when an iceberg finds its way into the waters off Goa, and the two people who first spot it decide they need to take it back to the Arctic Circle where it belongs.  Too much more would spoil the story, but it's a delightfully good one, perfectly placed in this book, allowing for breathing room after what had come before. The last two tales on  my favorites list begin with Jonathan Wood's "The Salon in the Woods," a tale of the "meeting of literary and spiritual minds" of two people (later joined by a third), who have isolated themselves from the rest of humanity in Russia looking to "write and compose and to unveil the Mysteries," to "construct that which will emerge out of nature..."  I would absolutely love to read more by this author, whose prose is absolutely gorgeous.  And finally, there's  Alison Littlewood's "The Light You Can Hear,"  in which a couple arrive at the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, a  Sámi word for "meeting place by the river."  The couple are there "to escape, to be somewhere else, something else, if only for a time."    They are given room 215, the plaque outside of which reveals its name:  "The Light You Can Hear."  Inside there's a sort of "static crackle" as part of the ambience of "sounds from the Arctic landscape," which gives way to a 

"soft, whistling, not quite like music, and something else: an almost unnoticeable breathy undercurrent, reminiscent of a voice." 

It is the sound of the Northern Lights, according to the Sámi people, "the light you can hear;" they also believe that the Northern Lights are souls" that "bring the dead closer to us."  But it's a trip to the nearby river that changes everything for this couple.  This story may be short, but the writing is absolutely beautiful, capturing not only the place but also a keen and intense sense of loss. 

I absolutely love the way in which these authors and some of those I didn't mention due to time considerations have  incorporated local, indigenous lore and belief (real or imagined, I can't say for sure) into their work; as just two examples, Chris Kelso in his story "Blood-Sea"  and  the authors of "Oil," Sean and Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley,  do a great job in that regard.   On the collection as a whole, well,  you can't love all of them, but that doesn't mean that the stories I didn't mention weren't also worth reading.    The Arctic has always seemed to me a mystical, eerie place, and each and every author in this book in his, her, or their own way somehow managed to capture that sense of otherworldliness in their work, as well as the effects of this place on the human psyche.  

recommended.  

A Book of the Sea: Being a collection of weird new writings (ed.) Mark Beech

The sea transforms everything. Nothing that has been touched by it can ever be the same again." 

 --from "The Figurehead of the Cailleach," by Stephen J. Clark 

9780993527883
Egaeus Press, 2018
309 pp
hardcover


While my last post covered a book of "strange tales from the sea," they were all tales recovered from yesteryear.  A Book of the Sea is also a volume of strange tales, and while there is often more than just a bit of an aura of the traditional about and within these stories,  the authors who have contributed to this anthology are some of the best weird fiction writers of the present day.  This book is an excellent showcase of their  extraordinary talent, not simply as storytellers but also as the perceptive artists these people are.



The description of this book reveals that it is a

"A collection  of strange or uncategorizable pieces for which the sea provides the great mystery; stories and poems which explore its pull on the human heart, its alienness, its treachery, its unfathomable vastness, and more than anything, what it makes humans do, be, become." 

Given human nature, what humans "do, be, become" can cover a very wide range.

Ships on the Stormy Sea, by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovksy, as found on the endpapers of this volume

In his story "The Figurehead of the Cailleach"  Stephen J. Clark hits the nail on the head as to the heart and soul of this book when he writes that

"The sea transforms everything. Nothing that has touched by it can ever be the same again."

It is this phrase that kept repeating in my mind as I read -- in his or her own way, each author offers a story of  lives that have been transformed in some fashion through their respective connections to the sea. 

Divided into four parts, appropriately and respectively entitled "Lingan," "Flotsam," "Jetsam" and "Derelict," each section begins with an illustration and  poem that perfectly sets the tone for what's to come.  The cover of this book invites the reader to take a look through the keyhole at a ship sailing placidly on the ocean, but don't be fooled -- what lies ahead once you open the cover is anything but tranquility.

In "The Figurehead of the Calleach," for example,  a noted art restorer comes to an unmapped cove on the Isle of Scarba where he has been commissioned to restore an old figurehead known as "the Cailleach."  Also known as "the veiled one"  or the Hag of Winter, the myth of the Cailleach originates with the whirlpool just off the coast known as the Cauldron.   As he settles into his work, becomes aware of certain eccentricities of his employer, and discovers more about local legends, he finds himself drawn ever closer to the Cauldron, and not only in his dreams.  It is a beautifully-layered tale incorporating landscape, mythology, belief and history; here the ocean is much more than just a vast body of water but rather something that leaves us "yearning to return."

Karim Ghawagi's "The Sorrow of Satan's Book" is also a multi-layered tale set in 1932, which begins  as 35-year old film scholar Martin Nexsø who had lost his wife in a boating accident  makes his way to the town of Skagen on the northern coast of Jutland. He is there to talk to screenwriter Nikolai Brauer about a fifth, unknown chapter that been "excised" from Dreyer's 1920 film Leaves From Satan's Book, based loosely on Marie Corelli's The Sorrows of Satan, a novel which Nexsø knows all too well.  He arrives not only as preparations are being made on the beach for the Midsummer Solstice, but also as Brauer's home has been declared a crime scene because Brauer has been murdered in his own studio.  This is no simple murder mystery, however; things go beyond the weird and eerie beginning in the studio and then with a strange meeting with a group of Midsummer celebrants on the beach, becoming downright hallucinatory. 

"Breakwater Lodge" by Michael R. Colangelo is a somewhat cryptic story which follows a famous detective by the name of Cederno who cannot resist a challenging  puzzle and has been attracted by the lure of yet another that takes him to a village on the Spanish coast. There he meets a strange woman who becomes his companion in the last leg of his search for his elusive target.   It seems that Cederno is attracted by a lure that has been "set by the ocean, "  but what he doesn't realize is that all too often, the point of the lure is "To catch men instead of fish."   Here past and present mingle beautifully and hauntingly.

All of the stories in this book are unsettling, haunting and for the most part downright brilliant, but my top-tier favorites include the three mentioned above and a few more: Jonathan Wood's  "From whence we came," Colin Insole's "Dancing Boy"   Albert Power's dark gothic tale "The Final Flight of Fidelia" and "The Woman From Malta" by George Berguño round out my list.

 While there is more than a hint of the supernatural to be found here, as  Charles Schneider says in his "The Damnations of Captain M'Quhae,"

"If you hope for the appearance of klautermann, mermaids, aquatic goats, pirate-spirits, seaweed-clad sirens, conch-fairies or even brine-tigers, look elsewhere." 

Thank god for small presses like Egaeus who put out books like this one; it is absolutely gorgeous both inside and out and one I would recommend to any reader of weird/dark fiction.

two beautiful books from John Gale: Saraband of Sable; A Damask of the Dead

"For do not we all wait for something that we know nothing of, something that has not arrived, and possibly never will."  -- from "Vigil," A Damask of the Dead 

A few months ago for reasons I still can't put my finger on, I picked up a copy of his Saraband of Sable from Egaeus Press (the third book in the Egaeus Press Keynote Edition series), never having read anything by John Gale before that time.  Now I would read anything this man writes.

9780993527890

Egaeus Press, 2018

illustrated by Alfredo Guido

185 pp; hardcover

With absolutely no idea what to expect from this author on opening the book,  it didn't take me long at all to realize that I had something exquisite in my hands. By the time I'd finished it, I was telling everyone and anyone who reads dark/strange/weird fiction that they need to buy a copy of this short but sophisticated, highly-satisfying collection of tales, not just because the stories are so good, but also because of the unique quality of the writing.  I'm actually lost for words in trying to describe it, so perhaps I should refer to the description at Egaeus (from the link above) which says that

"Saraband of Sable presents eight of Gale's sumptuous strange tales; dreamlike at times, dense in their imagery yet delicate as dimming perfume."

It also noted there that the author's "previous collections" ... "garnered praise for their sophisticated and decadent prose styling," and I'd only add that I found a sort of ethereal quality to his work, but it really goes much deeper than any description that my non-writer's head can produce.  The most surprising quality of these stories, though, is that while basking in the sheer beauty of the writing, it's like the clouds lift and there at the heart of each story is the darkness that's been peeking through all along, finally emerging with gut-punching force. And while it seems that we're in the middle of long ago and far away, the essentially-human traits that are represented here are tragic, real and timeless. One more thing -- the incorporation of the natural world flows beautifully through each and every story, as in this description of a city's necropolis:

"... a few do venture here, to tarry for a while amidst the cypress and the ebony poplars, basking in the light which falls here like tarnished copper during the diurnal hours; they are the dreamers that revere the lank and elegant grasses that grow between the monuments of obsidian and chrysoberyl, the grasses that turn from jade to gold during autumn; and they love the jackdaws who inhabit the sable green of the elder yews and who often speak in the voices of the dead through eating the fruits of the trees that look like crimson pearls, the trees whose roots bind tight the ivory bones of the long departed."  (from "Lord of the Porphyry Nenuphar"). 

The truth is that even before finishing Saraband of Sable, I was so enchanted that I absolutely had to have more, so I tracked down a copy of the now out-of-print A Damask of the Dead published by Tartarus.

1872621635

Tartarus Press, 2002

100 pp, hardcover (#136)

The dustjacket blurb really tells you all you need to know about this book:

"The perfumes of the East suffuse these tales, of poets, lovers and kings who, despite the luxury and beauty of their surroundings, desire something beyond."

Immediately we find ourselves standing at the gates of  "Death's City", with "palaces with colonnades flooded with darkness, stretching away into infinity," moving later onto "a castle of many turrets that reared up from a cliff of dark rock," complete with "black tourmaline crypts," at some point reaching an "onyx-domed city."  The fourteen stories in this book transport the reader completely out of this world and into others where sorcery is a natural part of life, where poets can really fall in love with the moon, or where the ghost of a king appears one night to give advice to his son and heir, and more.

Fantastical these stories may be, but they are not breezy tales with rewards at the end; as with Saraband of Sable, there is only tragedy, unhappiness, and darkness to be found within.

On the dustjacket blurb of A Damask of the Dead, Mark Valentine has this to say:

"As Machen has observed, literature consists in the art of telling a wonderful story in a wonderful manner. Few writers today acknowledge the need for either element. John Gale is someone who has mastered both."

I couldn't agree more, and that goes for Saraband of Sable as well.  John Gale is a rare find indeed.

So highly recommended that no scale exists for how highly I recommend these books.