Been busy doing nothing the last few weeks. In order to keep the little grey cells circulating, here’s a few reviews of some short stories I read recently.
The first is “The Toads of Grimmerdale” by Andre Norton. I wanted a palate cleanser after my ambivalent read of Quag Keep. This story came through in spades. It is set in her iconic Witch World, after a war that swept through the main continent after an invasion. The main character is a woman who was raped (bitterly, by one of her own countrymen rather than an invader) and turned out by her lordling brother as she refused to have the resulting pregnancy terminated. She has no skills to survive in the decimated land, but her drive is indomitable as she tries to chart a path for her unborn child, and take revenge on her unknown ravisher. She gets the opportunity for revenge through some malignant elder beings, and the story has tones of both Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith in addition to Norton’s own detailed voice. I won’t spoil anymore, as you should absolutely track it down and read it. The story was evidently written for Flashing Swords! #2, though it may have been in an earlier magazine. (Flashing Swords! was Lin Carter’s Swords & Sorcery anthology series from the early to mid 1970s). My copy of the story is in The Book of Andre Norton, published by DAW in 1975. It was also contained in The Many Worlds of Andre Norton, and also (I believe) The Lore of the Witch World.
The next two stories were from Weird Tales’ May 1951 issue, which I downloaded from the Internet Archive. As I’ve mentioned before, I am not a fan of reading off the computer screen…but I seem to do a lot of it, anyway. The first is “Notebook Found in a Deserted House” by Robert Bloch. It is part of the Cthulhu Mythos. It is in the classic Mythos “found documentation” paradigm, where the story is told in something like a diary from a character who is now gone. The Blair Witch Project used this to great effect. Anyway: this story is ostensibly written by a 12-year-old boy who was sent to live with his aunt and uncle after his grandmother died (who had been taking care of him after his parents disappeared/died). They live in an extremely remote location, and certain entities take exception to their presence. The simplistic prose of the young narrator is very effective in invoking the Lovecraftian atmosphere of incalculable horror. A very good story, only slightly marred by the last sentence (which trails off as if being spoken rather than written).
The next story comes right after that one in the issue. “The Last Grave of Lill Warran” is by Manly Wade Wellman, and is one of his John Thunstone stories. This is, sadly, the only one I have read; but I will be correcting that very soon! This was great. The character, I believe, is variously called Silver John or John the Balladeer. He is a wanderer through Appalachian horror tales, gathering stories of the people. The language is simply evocative, which I am of course a fan of. In this story, he tracks down the facts of a tale whispered in a town about a witch that was recently killed. Quite a bit of folklore is invoked, from backwoods to European. I am not sure all of it gels, but the tale is told so well that it doesn’t matter. Interestingly, John is writing a letter to a Mr. Le Grandin at one point, which can only be Jules De Grandin who had starred in so many Weird Tales stories in previous decades from the pen of Seabury Quinn. It is implied that they are at least acquaintances, if not colleagues. I had no idea there was this connection between the two iconic characters; it will be interesting to see if there is more about it in other John stories.
I have also been doing some reading on Arctic explorers recently, a subject that has had my imagination for over 30 years, when I first read Weird and Tragic Shores, a biography of Charles Hall who had been an early searcher of the Franklin Expedition. The two books I am working on now are set in the Russian Arctic. In the Land of White Death, which I have finished, is by Valerian Albanov, one of two survivors of the Saint Anna expedition in 1912. His incredible tale of survival is simply but powerfully told. His trek over the broken ice and surviving plunges into icy water and attacks from walrus and bear is absolutely riveting. I am currently Reading Four Against the Arctic by David Roberts, likewise set in the Russian Arctic. It concerns the almost impossible survival tale of four Pomori sailors stranded on an island in the Svalbard Archipelago from 1743 to 1749. Roberts tells the tale of tracking down the legendary tale through the insidious Russian bureaucracy to the primary sources, and people who are familiar with the Pomari people. He follows this up with a similar sojourn with three comrades – but only for a week or two, not 7 years! A very strong book I had read a few years ago, but am devouring again with snow outside the warm house here in Virginia.
There are some projects I am working on relating to Sword & Sorcery, as well! More on this later.
Hope you are all well…and warm!
Bret