Review: Link Arms With Toads! by Rhys Hughes

Rhys Hughes is a prolific writer, but his matching unfettered imagination is an even more impressive quality. His latest collection from Chomu Press, Link Arms With Toads!, reveals the limitless probing by Hughes into spheres few other authors would venture into. You can never quite know what to expect after the title of each tale washes over you. Hughes’ stories are a diverse stage, where whimsy, horror, and rich fantasy take the center in equal measure.

The Unimagined and the Re-Imagined

In his dedication, Rhys Hughes describes his latest collection as “a showcase of Romanti-Cynical stories.” Such a label isn’t far off the mark, but it entails so much more than mere Romanticism and Cynicism, perhaps hidden in the deceptive, hyphenated voids between these genres. Many of these yarns twist otherwise mundane settings into otherworldly vistas vaguely reminiscent of sci-fi and fantasy landscapes.

“The Taste of the Moon” is a perfect example. For Hughes, sending his dimension crossing explorers to chart the mysteries of time and space is too simple, and perhaps overdone. These Khormanauts explore the recesses of Indian restaurants, bent on unraveling the inexplicable business expansionism of these curry houses, equipped with yogurt-filled tanks for survival.

In “Lunarhampton,” Hughes explores the absurdity of Birmingham city establishing a lunar colony, with woefully outmoded technologies and bureaucratic dreams. Readers inevitably find equal measures of comedy and bleakness mixed together. Link Arms With Toads! routinely showcases maddening, humorous paradoxes, without becoming ridiculous. The same theme of meaningful absurdism established in “Lunarhampton” continues in tales like “333 and a Third,” where a man hops across various planes of existence, always ending up in living quarters that are too cramped. The more things change, the more they stay the same. However, in Hughes worlds, even these damning similarities are stunning to observe.

Top Tier Horror Parodies, Re-Spun

Though it’s not a pure collection of the macabre, Link Arms With Toads! serves generous pools of uncanny blackness unlikely to disappoint weird horror fans. Rhys Hughes is a master of parodying some of the greatest names in literary horror. His pastiches are serious, but they carry an equally sardonic tone, alongside inimitably Hughesian ideas that sweep familiar terrors into stranger territory.

“Pity and Pendulum” harkens back to Edgar Allan Poe’s famous ode to psychological and physical torture. Hughes arguably illuminates greater horrors lurking in the dungeons than Poe did, and then he establishes an effective sequel to this classic tale, revealing the unlikely fate of the infamous pit. In “Number 13 ½,” readers receive a convincingly written ghost story in the tradition of M.R. James. Worldly spooks and mysticism about unlikely numbers are brought into a parallel universe, where the slight, but significant differences unveil a horrific conclusion on an authentically Jamesian scale. As if that’s not enough, Hughes introduces a universe tipping reversal in “Oh Ho!” Here, it’s the specter who becomes haunted, rather than his victims.

At the end of the day, consider Rhys Hughes one of the more effective serial killers of traditional genres. The dead bodies of science fiction, fantasy, and melancholy horror will never be found on his property because they are melted down and resurrected as the most magnificent Frankenstein like monsters. Link Arms With Toads! demands a certain level of open mindedness to achieve its maximum effect, and those who give it what it deserves will be richly rewarded with a savory course of wholly original fiction.

 -Grim Blogger