2023 fantasy/horror anthology. There are things out there thave have no
interest in humans, and other things that have too much.
Original publication dates range from 2015 to 2021, and there are
few connections between the stories, though there are some clear
thematic links.
-
"Below the Kirk, Below the Hill": a lighthouse keeper finds a dead
girl, but she hasn't stopped moving. This is pleasiing for me
largely in the unquestioning acceptance by everyone of the existence
ofa dead girl who can move and talk: it's a bit unusual, perhaps,
and the gods may have something to say in the matter, but nobody's
startled by it. (The gods do have something to say.)
-
"Instructions": inspired by the instructions to British troops going
into occupied France, this develops from obvious straightforward
information to very specific information on spotting disguised enemy
agents.
Use any means necessary to ensure a clean burn and to preserve the
element of surprise. Under no circumstances is any British
serviceman to enter the church before or afterwards in an attempt to
preserve paintings, statuary, or precious metals.
- "The Evaluator": a government agent, or at least a subcontractor,
goes into the back woods to look into reports of strangeness. But
some of the key themes of the anthology make their first appearances
here: the strangeness has already seen you coming and will
infiltrate you too, and while there were perfectly good old gods
there are also new gods displacing them.
We go around seeing whether people have been fucked up, pardon my
French, by what we'd call 'country living,' or by the industrial
chemicals, or by the furious dark ancient unknowable gods that have
always lived here.
-
"At the Hand of Every Beast": a massive cathedral ravages its way
across mediaeval France. Why that happened… is the point of the
story. Rather fine.
-
"The Adventurer's Wife": I'd read this before in She Walks in
Shadows and I think I stick with what I said in 2018: "starts off
promisingly but repeatedly takes the most predictable course to come
to an expected end".
-
"The General's Turn": a baroque and decadent state forces a prisoner
to play a twisted game. Beautifully elegant.
-
"Sixteen Minutes": the narrator dives into his nuclear bunker, and
gradually breaks.
-
"Fortunato": the evacuation mission to a non-viable colonial planet
meets unexpected difficulties, like the locals not being willing to
leave. Fell a bit flat for me, perhaps because there's a lot of
worldbuilding heavy lifting to do along with the actual story.
-
"The Honeymakers": it's the bees taking over! But by this point I'm
not reading the anthology for plot, I'm reading it for atmosphere,
and the atmosphere here is lovely.
-
"Four Hours of a Revolution": a personified death watches his target
as the last hours of their life drain away. My favourite of these
stories.
-
"For Each of These Miseries": a deep sea base finds itself facing
enemies that really ought to be impossible. This is something of an
homage to Lovecraft's "The Temple", and parts of it work well,
though I felt there were undercurrents of significance I was
missing.
-
"Everything as Part of Its Infinite Place": the world suddenly
changes, and only one boy can be the hero. But should he be?
-
"No One Will Come Back For Us": an entitled journalist goes into the
hot zone to get the story on the plague. Remarkably subtle.
-
"Willing": sometimes the gods demand a sacrifice. I'd like to read
more about the world, but it works well as it stands.
-
"Us and Ours": two children run away from the invasion of their
small town, only to come across a group who are trying to do
something about it. A sequel of sorts to "The Evaluator".
-
"The Redoubtables": there was an incident at a weapons development
lab that left a permanent scar on the planet. A reporter interviews
one of the last of the organisers to get an answer to a key
question. To me this isn't as effective as it really wants to be,
perhaps because I don't find the question something to obsess over.
-
"Quietus": a soldier fights and dies forever as experiments progress
to try to build troops who can do without sleep. Is there any
escape? Blink and you'll miss the curves of this one.
Many of the stories here cut off short by my lights: they get as far
as the protagonist having worked out the natiure of the problem
they're facing, but don't go on to trying to do anything about it. I
find this frustrating.
But overall I very much enjoyed this collection that lies in the murky
borders between fantasy and horror, not far from where the fairy tales
live.