Review: Historical Lovecraft

 

By any measure, H.P. Lovecraft functioned well as an amateur historian, or at least as a great admirer of the past. Innsmouth Free Press' new anthology, Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time, does a superb job of reviving the Lovecraftian appreciation for bygone epochs. Unlike alternate anthologies based around a specific time, place, or theme, Historical Lovecraft places original horrors all across the map.

Horrors New and Old

Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles have used their editorial talents to great effect with this volume. The book is a balanced collection of tales from all eras: ancient, medieval, and modern. Rather than centering around HPL's own colonial New England or familiar European locales, we are introduced to the antiquated natives of cultures all across the world, and experience fear through their unique perspectives.

The impressive and diverse lineup of Historical Lovecraft begins in the paleolithic era with Andrew G. Dombalagian's tale, “The God Lurking in Stone.” A mentally retarded man haunts his sister as he communes with gods far older than mankind. More familiar ancient places come alive in the succeeding millenia.

In “If Only to Taste Her Again,” E. Catherine Tobler brings a horror from the Nile to the court of Egyptian ruler Hatshepsut, while Daniel Mills' “Silently, Without Cease” pulls back the curtains on a portrait of dying Byzantine Emperor Justinian as he bargains with a personification of the ravaging plague. Both authors excel at authentically duplicating the historic scenery and infamous personages that have ascended into the ranks of legend. Toler and Mills effectively twist the already nightmarish mysteries of the past into contorted abominations reflected back through a decidedly Lovecraftian prism.

Moving on, a Spanish Inquisitor attempts to interrogate a blasphemous horror from the New World in William Meikle's brilliant tale, “Inquisitor.” This story nicely illustrates the cross cultural potency concealed in many of these tales, which inject real terror into history's crucial transforming times and places. Inquisitors are certainly interesting on their own, but the hapless churchman who encounters something worse than a demon in this story also experiences a fate a hundred times more entertaining than a re-hash about the evils of extreme Catholicism with a Lovecraftian edge.

Strange, Far Places

The major driver behind the success of the stories in Historical Lovecraft is the editors' commitment to bringing together a truly global sampling of Lovecraftian horrors. For instance, Sarah Hans' “Shadows of the Darkest Jade” follows two Buddhist monks who encounter a far away village seething with evil. Hans shoves us into ancient madness without turning back.

“An Uninterrupted Sacrifice” brings forth the unusual offerings inspired by religious practices in ancient South America. H.P. Lovecraft would probably find it difficult to imagine a story based on his work without a Westerner in sight. This story proves that good Lovecraftiana can arise from authentically alien sources, and places like ancient Peru actually serve to enhance the exotic feeling.

Travis Heermann's “An Idol for Emiko” returns us to Asia, this time during the rise of Japan's Tokugawa Shogunate. More than mere samurai and oriental wonders are on display here. Lovecraft's infamous deep ones make an appearance, filling a small coastal village with predictable horrors, but getting to the gruesome end has never been stranger through early modern Japanese eyes.

In more modern times, “Red Star, Yellow Sign” by Leigh Kimmel infuses Lovecraftian themes into a relatively obscure historical event: the murder of Leningrad Mayor Kirov during the Stalinist era. The incredible mystery and myriad conspiracies surrounding Kirov's demise are made stranger still by introducing R'lyeh into the equation. Kimmel thoroughly captures the paranoia and totalitarian horror intrinsic in Soviet society, and her firm historical knowledge and knack for horror makes this a candidate for best story in the book, amid strong competition.

It seems that history and Lovecraftian horror will always walk hand in hand, since it has been that way from the beginning of the Cthulhu Mythos. Fortunately, the historic backdrops only grow richer and curiouser as time passes. Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time furthers that evolution along its natural track, and for this reason, it's not to be missed.

-Grim Blogger

Review: Historical Lovecraft

Read more...

Review: Revenants by Daniel Mills

 
There is something nightmarish in the past. Since its inception, weird fiction has harvested the ghosts of history for its own literary ends. Into this elegant tradition steps Daniel Mills, with a debut novel titled Revenants, published by the energetic Chomu Press. Mills' book is an appetizing buffet of earlier traditions in American literature, colonial history, and subtle supernatural elements. These diverse foundations of the novel are not flung together, but carefully streamlined to bolster Mills' deeper explorations of nature, unrelenting guilt, and unexpected ghosts.

Cold Marsh, where the story takes place, is an isolated New England village conceived as a seventeenth century Anytown. Unlike other nameless townships one imagines from early American history, Cold Marsh is home to an exceptionally tormented crew. Like a body run ragged by disease, the town and its denizens mechanically pass through their lives under a heavy atmosphere of Puritan paranoia and blackened memories. Mills is careful to strike an intricate balance, always shackling the little disasters of his characters to Cold Marsh's larger roving demons. Just when the secretive suffering of the half-dead village is known, it receives a new shock, when three young girls disappear in close succession, the last prompting the shuttered inhabitants to leave their dark nest and venture into the unknown wild.

Daniel Mills realizes that Revenants' success lays in ballooning it with rich prose that evokes a bygone age and the unexplored wilderness. Like Nathaniel Hawthorne, who he acknowledges his debt to, Mills' book comes across as a convincing account of life and attitudes in colonial America. The author seems to share a real passion for old New England, much like H.P. Lovecraft, as passages describing the fall harvest or the wolf haunted forests act as tributes, as well as vigorous backdrops. Similarly, old forces that seem difficult to imagine in a comfortable, modern context are given terrifying strength. God, the Devil, and Nature are equally ferocious, mysterious, and terrible powers in Mills' world. Cold Marsh's residents suffer beneath their combined weights, and the overwhelming hold each has in their twisted psyches.

Those inner worlds bewitched by the omnipotent are as key to the novel as its outer scenery built from a passionately resurrected history. Memories and spectral emotions escape his character's heads, invading one's own skull. Mills introduces us to James and Constance, an unhappy couple strung together by a single "sin" and imprisoned by the social norms of the era. William, meanwhile, broods from beginning to end about his own warrior past, gradually revealing what really happened during Cold Marsh's role in King Philip's War, when a neighboring American Indian tribe was exterminated. Edwin, his son, lives impressed by youthful inexperience and visions of a vengeful God. The trials experienced in Revenants are possibly most damaging to this young man. In the background there's Isaiah, an elderly Minister who conceals his bitter past and manipulation of the town folk in religious fervor - particularly with warnings about witchcraft and deviltry. This is a village drowning in its collective guilt, and by the end, even the untouched are corrupted.

Although Cold Marsh's dreams and perceptions are more responsible for weaving a strange atmosphere than anything else, Mills adds a subtle supernatural element that's enough to make Revenants weird as well as historical fiction. The mysterious disappearances and certain grotesque encounters in the wilderness make it apparent that more than mere paranoia and guilt is responsible for Cold Marsh's horrors. Mills never fully reveals or explains the town's dark curse, wisely leaving it up to the imagination. This choice echoes the best mysterious weird horror, and also the puzzling strangeness emerging from psychic fear and outside malevolence experienced in venues like Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone.

Revenants does not merely operate on the frightfully wondrous as a work of horror, though. Daniel Mills casts some particularly visceral scenes. A mutilated Indian and a blood drenched crime scene late in the novel are just a few instances where Mills chooses to aim his punches at the face rather than inside the mind. Regrettably, these tense scenes are responsible for moving the narrative forward, while the weird and mysterious element is more atmospheric than influential to plot. It seems Mills has not yet discovered ways in which the truly curious and chilling can leave impressions as powerful as violent horror can. However, he is a newer writer, and such talents may come with time.

Revenants is an excellent debut by an author who has obviously learned well from masters in the weird and beyond. The book is sure to appeal to nostalgic zealots who adore vanished times and places. Yet, it should also enrich so many others. Mills' horrors, blatant and quiet, are unsettling, as are his repressed and sometimes unhinged characters. The gray mood dominating Cold Marsh is not easily forgotten after reading, nor is the name Daniel Mills.

-Grim Blogger

Review: Revenants by Daniel Mills

Read more...