Lord Kilmarnock
Nodens Books

Published by Nodens Books. “This much-needed first reprint offers connoisseurs of the dark fantastic a rare minor masterpiece, too long overlooked. Ferelith should now take its place as one of the strange great visions in the library of the Gothic.” —From the “Introduction” by Mark Valentine.

'Ferelith' was the only book written by Victor Alexander Sereld Hay, son of the 20th Earl of Erroll - a title he would later assume - and diplomat of some apparent repute.  His small novel, published in 1903, tells a story of an affair between an unhappy and maligned trophy wife, Ferelith, and her ghostly lover, and, of the resulting child.

Set, for the most part, in a wild and lonely Scottish castle where the wife and our narrator - her sister-in-law, Anne - are victim to the whims of the boarish and brutish husband.  Cut off from both London society and from their more common neighbours by his manner and behaviour they live a solitary life, especially when he's called abroad.  During this time Anne finds solace in books while Ferelith finds hers in the spectral embrace of the former, dissolute, lord of the castle and it's the issue of this dalliance that's the focus of the book's latter half.

It's a strange and engrossing read that takes it's gothic trappings and gives them a welcome twist.  Written in a measured, almost staid, style that perfectly suits it's narrator and one which keeps the more potentally prurient aspects of the story under well-mannered wraps.   I can't help but feel that along the way the author envisioned a longer novel with a wider cast - one of the more interesting characters appears for two brief moments across the book and another, with a fairly major role, has no back story whatsoever - the end product however is a taut little supernatural gothic thriller that is deserving of wider recognition.

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Pat Mills
Kevin O'Neill 
Bryan Talbot 
2000AD / Rebellion

The Definitive series of the Nemesis the Warlock saga continues as Torquemada’s crusade to destroy all alien life reaches the planet of the Goths, a species of alien which has modelled their culture on early twentieth-century Britain. Nemesis must team up with the Goth leader, the Ion Duke, to stop them being eradicated by Torquemada's army of Terminators.
Collecting the entire series in order, with the colour centre-spread pages reproduced in their original form, the Definitive collection of Nemesis the Warlock is the ultimate way to read one of the most important sci-fi sagas published in the pages of 2000 AD.
Written by Pat Mills (Marshal Law) and drawn by Kevin O'Neill (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Bryan Talbot (Sandman, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright), this definitive series is a collection of the complete storyline in order.

 As I said in my write-up of Volume 1, I was never a Nemesis reader as a young lad.  Being an irregular reader of 2000AD meant I rarely got to maintain a rhythm on any strips, so I always preferred the one-off stories.  These definitive editions are allowing me the opportunity to rectify that and finally get to appreciate a cornerstone 2000AD series.

Young me was always far more interested in story than art, which was always a distant second, but the one major thing I've noticed on my journey back into these older series is that while the stories have often aged poorly the artwork remains sublime.

Mills, as I wished for in my earlier review, has here got a firmer grip on his strip, and the stories are tighter with a more deeply developed lore and are far more entertaining.  They don't all work as well as they could, the final arc of the Torquemada story was a jarring shift that also contains a 'joke' that I would have thought well below Mills' personal standards.

The art is wonderful,  two of my favourites at the top of their games and complementing each other perfectly.  Talbot was made to draw the goth empire storyline and his art, and the setting brought me right back to the worlds of 'Luther Awkright' and of the anthropomorphic steampunk series, 'Grandville'.

O'Neill was simply born to draw.  I adore his work and pour over every panel at every twistedly beautiful line.

Previously, I'd hoped that Volume 2 was going to be a more cohesive and developed read, and it absolutely was, and so I'm genuinely excited to pull Volume 3 off the shelf.

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R.B. Russell
Tartarus Press

The follow up to Ray's 'Fifty Forgotten Books' from a few years back is a musical memoir of a life spent immersed in music.  Through it's pages Ray takes us on a journey of discovery that takes in his early finds amongst his parent's record collections - sappy love songs (Ricky Valance) and stirring military epics (The Dam Busters soundtrack) - through the incidental music of TV faves - the BBC Radiophonic Workshop wibbling of 'The Tomorrow People' and the suave soundtracking of the James Bond movies.  He wanders through teenage obsessions - The Fall, The Television Personalities, Kate Bush, and a host of wonderfully obscure Peel show 7 inchers - and eventually into an adulthood of continuous musical exploration - Stars of the Lid, Labradford, Current 93, Antony (now ANOHNI) and the Johnsons - as well as his own musical endeavours.

Personally, growing up I was never much of an indie rock lover - it was music or the posh kids - but like Ray my tastes were ever for the obscure and I chuckled several times as he gently discounted some of my favourite bands and albums and cringed occasionally as he praised those that I, in turn, have discounted.  A number of his choices were distinctly personal and those were the most interesting to me, but in combination with his reflections the entire book made for an affectionate read that revealed the crucial role that music has played in his life and the ways in which it has interwoven with his work with Tartarus Press, and one that both introduced me to some new artists and gave me pause to reconsider some others.

Addendum: in the interest of full disclosure I should note that I - in my musical guise - am mentioned twice in the book, and Ray is entirely correct on both occasions.

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Andrew Michael Hurley
John Murray

Tom Shift and Oliver Keele are pen-pals. They were introduced through their respective cancer clinics. From reading Oliver's letters, To.m has deduced that Oliver is lonely and somewhat nomadic. He appears to live hand to mouth at a series of cheap B&Bs.When Oliver suggests they meet up, Tom agrees. Neither of them have long left. And, while Saltwash seems an unlikely kind of place for a holiday, he goes with it. The Castle Hotel is one of the few places still open in an off-season seaside town that has definitely seen better days but it's surprisingly busy. It becomes clear that the guests are all there for some kind of reunion, and that they know Oliver.

This was an odd little read, and I can't decide if it worked for me or not.

Essentially, this is a book length riff on Shirley Jackson's brilliant short story, 'The Lottery' but in Hurley's version 'Tom Swift', a regretful man coming to the end of his life thanks to a tumor deep in his brain, is invited  to a meet up at a dilapadated hotel in the northern seaside town of the title.  One there,instead of 'Oliver',the enigmatic penpal he expected, he finds himself amidst a strange assortment of individuals all inexplicably excited for thhe nigt ahead.

Hurley's a delightful writer, the story is populated with real, flawed, interesting people and the tale unfolds gently and with compassion, but in it's conclusion it all, for me at least, fell a little flat.  It's an ending that makes sense but was less of one than I hoped for.

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Mark Valentine
Tartarus Press

Mark Valentine’s book-collecting began with classic supernatural and fantastic fiction and decadent poetry but soon included antiquities, folklore and the Arthurian legends. The first of these enthusiasms is reflected here in essays on Walter de la Mare, M.R. James, Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson and David Lindsay and on lesser-known modern ghost stories. There are also several essays on slim volumes of rare and strange verse.

He also explores the origins of the Red Lion inn sign, the enjoyable wanderings of 1930s antiquarians and ramblers, and the keen weather-watchers behind the irresistible title British Thunderstorms, Continuing Summer Thunderstorms. The author speculates on the secrets behind an interwar listing of obscure periodicals and on the odd finds at a village hall flea market. Readers will find in all these essays a delight in the obscurer byways and an engaging interest in the unlikeliest places

I'm a bit of a whim reader of non-fiction these days, I used to read lots but now, with very few exceptions,  I rarely find myself picking up anything other than fiction.  Those exceptions tend to be an occasional music study, a random curio and any and all of Mark Valentine's explorations of forgotten books and underappreciated authors, with intermittent digressions into the likes of pub signs and barometric observations.

'The Thunderstorm Collectors' is not the latest of Mark's collections from Tartarus Press, I still have that one waiting on my shelf.  This one came out a year or so ago and got lost amidst my long-COVID malaise but is still available from the publisher as one of their lovely paperback editions.

I love these books although my bank balance is less keen as Mark guides us through a tantalising and often irresitable array of goodies interlaced with fascinating and typcally erudite examinations of those authors of more lasting reputations such as Walter de la Mare, Arthur Machen & William Hope Hodgson.

There's much to entice here and several things have, inevitably, been added to the wants list. Additionally, some of the most interesting pieces here are the ones dealing with Mark's love of ephemera and of the edges of his main focus as he takes us into various Earth mysteries, landscape records and the vagaries of collecting.

As ever, with Mark's books - both fiction and non - we heartily recommend this and suggest that those wishing to try out his work would be well advised to grab one of these fabulous collections and to check out his Wormwoodiana blog.

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Susan L Aberth
Lund Humphries

I first encountered the work of Leonora Carrington a couple of years ago in Desmond Morris' book 'The British Surrealists' and I was both blown away by what I saw and stunned that I hadn't heard of her before so I needed to rectify that asap, but circumstances conspired to keep this book on my shelf for the next while, unread beyond a few thumbs through to admire the pretties.

Carrington was born on 6th April 1917 in Clayton Green nr Chorley, South Lancashire, to a rich industrial family and raised, mostly, in a country manor in Cockerham nr Lancaster.  Dyslexic, ambidextrous and fiercely independent she was expelled from a number of schools until, against her parent's wishes, she enrolled in a London Art school where, following the June 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, Carrington became besotted with, first the art of and then the person of, Max Ernst, soon relocating with him to Paris and being disowned by her parents in the process.

In Paris she was immersed at the very heart of the Surrealist Movement where her artistic prowess was celebrated.  Seperated from Ernst during the war she left France for Spain where she was hospitalised with mental health issues before fleeing war-torn Europe from New York and then, in 1943, to Mexico where she was to spend the rest of her life.

It was in Mexico that Carrington's art was to find it's true focus.  Inspired by the indigenous peoples grip on their magical traditions and it's interweaving with Catholicism which, combined with her own long established occult interests fostered by a mother and grandmother steeped in Irish mythology and a long standing love of James Stephens' folkloric novel 'The Crock of Gold', allowed her imagination to flourish. She took these influences, her love of the culinary - a love often expressed in a uniquely surrealist manner - and her feminist ideals and melded them to express her own darkly romantic, often whimsical and always visionary artistry.

In her monograph Susan Aberth provides a wealth of fascinating biograpical information and much insightful commentary on the work highlighting how Carrington's personal friendships and her obsessions were expressed.  The text does come to a rather jarring close when the artist arries in her later years, which was a shame as advancing age was a celebrated feature of Carrington's later work, most notably in her novel, 'The Hearing Trumpet' of which we hear not a peep.  The monograph's true focus though is where it should be and the book is crammed throughout with beautifully reproduced and often full page images that allow one to to lose hours in it's pages and provides a suitable testimonial to an artist who followed her own idiosyncratic path.

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David Keenan
White Rabbit

For a decade or two from the end of the 90s through the 2010s I was an avid subscriber to The Wire magazine, eagerly pouring each month over descriptions of beautifully obtuse and brilliantly obscure music.  That magazine - which I became besotted with after spotting Lydia Lunch staring at me from the cover of issue 173 on the shelves of a small provincial newsagent - cost me a fortune in CDs but my god I got to hear some tunes and one of their writers most responsible for syphoning my bank acount was David Keenan.

'Volcanic Tongue', named after the record shop he ran with his partner, pedal steel guitarist and sound artist Heather Leigh, in Glasgow from 2005-2015, is a collection of articles, interviews, primers and portraits mostly taken from The Wire, that provide an extended snapshot of outsider music of the '90s, '00s & '10s and of it's heritage.  Through it's pages we catch Coil in '98 at the release of 'Time Machines', Einstürzende Neubauten in '04 in the wake of 'Perpetuum Mobile', the Klangbad Faust contingent in '03, Shirley Collins on the release of 'Lodestar' in 16, Carter-Tutti in '15 with a new name and with Cosey about to find a whole new audience with her autobiography and there are two very funny interviews with The Dead C on tour in Europe in '13 and with Marshall Allen waxing about the cosmic centrality of Sun Ra in '15.  These are paired with a trio of 'Invisible Jukebox' sessions - always my favourite section in the magazine - where songs are played, sight unseen, to a musician, in these instances to Eugene Chadbourne, Glenn Jones and Kevin Shields along with some 'Primers' on Noise Music, Sonic Youth, John Fahey, and Kosmische Musik.

I've been dipping in and out of this book for a few months now and truthfully there are still some chapters I've yet to read - there's even more in there that I haven't mentioned - but I'm at the point where I needed to share this with you all.  Keenan was always a very personable and engaging writer that seemed to get the best out of his interviewees and could cut to the core of his subjects and as such anyone with even a vague interest in the outer fringes of music will find much of interest here and an interesting companion piece to his essential exploration of the post industrial underground, 'England's Hidden Reverse'.

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Ramsey Campbell
Flame Tree Press

Fellstones takes its name from seven objects on the village green. It’s where Paul Dunstan was adopted by the Staveleys after his parents died in an accident, for which he blames himself. The way the Staveleys tried to control him made him move away and change his name. Why were they obsessed with a strange song he seemed to have made up as a child?
Now, their daughter Adele has found him. By the time he discovers the cosmic truth about the stones, he may be trapped. There are other dark secrets he’ll discover and memories to confront. The Fellstones dream, but they’re about to waken.

Beyond a couple of short stories, Ramsey Campbell has been notably absent from my bookshelves for far too long.  Strangely for someone who writes the type of blog I do I'm not much of a reader of modern horror and the ones I do read tend to be those channelling the early 20th century heyday like, Mark Valentine or John Howard but, when I saw this on the shelf at the day job a little while back I fancied giving it a go as it seemed rooted in the more rural strangeness that I favour. 

Paul Dunstan has escaped the clutches and the plans of his adopted family in the village of Fellstones, so named after the stone circle that sits on the village green.  Unfortunately, he's too important to their schemes to be left alone for long, and the villagers are soon going all out to pull him back.  I have to say here that Paul is a very different type of person to me as faced with people as controlling and manipulative as his adopted family I'd have categorically told them where to go but he seems to almost want to be manipulated which I found rather frustrating.  

The story unfolds nicely to reveal not the 'folk horror' that the prominence of the stones had led me to expect but an entirely more cosmic scheme and the story builds to a transcendent but ultimately downbeat ending that leaves our protagonist in a very different place from where he began.  My love of the gothic meant that I would have dearly loved for much more of the back story to have been featured, but we get tantalising glimpses.  

As a first - book length - visit to one of Campbell's worlds it was an enjoyable one.  Beyond my little obsessions I'm very much a whim reader and I'm looking forward to reading the next one of his that catches my eye.

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Stephen Volk
Tartarus Press

In this new collection of eleven stories, Stephen Volk explores the wide span of possibilities of the ghost story in its various manifestations — from hauntings set in the quotidian modern world, to ones that hark back to traditional, but no less chilling, tales of the past.
When battle-scarred army veterans are recruited for an archaeological dig in Wiltshire, more than bones are unearthed, in ‘Unrecovered’. A pleasure park becomes anything but pleasurable in ‘Three Fingers, One Thumb’. In ‘31/10’ a notorious, fateful BBC TV studio is revisited, while in ‘The Waiting Room’ a supernatural encounter makes Charles Dickens himself come to question both his creative inspiration and his fundamental beliefs.
Three brand new stories are included here: ‘The Crossing’, ‘Baby on Board’, and ‘Lost Loved Ones’ — the latter novella being a sequel to Volk’s television series Afterlife and a welcome return for him to the much-loved character of Alison Mundy, the troubled psychic medium, in a world post-Covid.

Novelist and screenwriter Stephen Volk has an impressive pedigree of dark delights to his name but is perhaps best remembered for scripting the BBC 'documentary', 'Ghostwatch', although in the pages of Wyrd Britain he's praised for penning the very excellent 'I'll Be Watching You' for the BBC anthology series 'Ghosts'.

One can always rely on the good folks at Tartarus to provide an unusual and entertaining read and this definitely proved to be so. Going into this I only knew Volk for his TV work and so was hoping for good things but not really knowing whether his screenwriting skills would translate into prose, but I shouldn't have worried as he has a striking imagination and a prepossessing style and as I've since discovered he has a number of books to his name, I'm retroactively unsurprised at how much I enjoyed this collection. ..........................................................................................

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R.B. Russell
Tartarus Press 

R.B. Russell has written the first definitive biography of Rampa (also known as Cyril Henry Hoskin). The identity of Rampa may have been conclusively debunked by anybody who knew anything about Tibet, Buddhism, or basic scientific principles, but he would always claim that everything he wrote was true, and until his death in 1980 he doesn’t ever seem to have come out of character.

Russell’s biography of Rampa is accompanied in this volume by three further studies of alternative belief systems that have fascinated him over the years.

In the big, wide, wonderful, wacky world of books few things bring me as much joy as the cover art to one of those entertainingly ridiculous pseudoscience / occult / UFO paperbacks of the 60s and 70s and I cannot resist a book adorned with the likes of a drawing of a UFO hovering over a stone circle or an astronaut teleporting onto a pyramid.  Amongst the stacks I've acquired for the Wyrd Britain bookshop over the years there are two names that stand out, king of the ancient astronauts, Erich von Däniken and reincarnated Tibetan Lama, T. Lobsang Rampa.

In his newest book, R.B. (Ray) Russell presents four essays on various "Characters of Questionable Faith" that includes the aforementioned Lama; the immortal (but now deceased) leader the Nigerian millenarian church, the 'Brotherhood of the Cross and Star'; the pulp sci-fi hokum peddlers of the Scientology cult and the - initially - ironic, pseudo-cult of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.

The bulk of the book is taken up by Ray's biography of Rampa, born Cyril Henry Hoskin, a former surgical fitter from Plympton in Devon, who, in a 1956  "autobiography"called, 'The Third Eye', claimed to be, or perhaps to be home to, a reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist Lama named Tuesday Lobsang Rampa.  Despite being outed as  fraudulent pretty much immediately 'The Third Eye' proved to be a sensation and over the next quarter decade, until his death in 1981, Rampa would go on to write and have published another 19 books detailing the increasingly unlikely adventures of the Lama as he travelled in UFOs and explored the hollow Earth, met Yetis and fulfilled his cat's literary ambitions.

Focussing primarily on the publication of 'The Third Eye' and it's subsequent controversies, Ray takes an enjoyably frivolous but never judgemental tone and provides an engaging and fascinating overview of the life of a cultural enigma.

Ray's investigation of the 'Brotherhood of the Cross and Star' is an altogether more personal affair prompted by a friends involvement with the group and the outlandish claims of immortality, divinity and devastation made by it's founder 'Olumba Olumba Obu'.  The story Ray relates of the 'Brotherhood' and of it's leader's failed prophecies will be depressingly familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the sociology of millenarian movements but for me what was more interesting was the sudden realisation that Ray had previously used his friends conversion as the catalyst for his novel, 'Waiting for the End of the World'.

Again, the impetus for Ray's short chapter on Scientology is based in personal experience, this time of being caught up in one of their bogus personality tests as a young man.  Here he takes the opportunity to discuss the personality cult behind Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard and his willingness to take, or be assigned, credit for everything, which brings us nicely around to Genesis P-Orridge.

Formed from the ashes of pioneering industrial group, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV was, initially a multimedia project for P-Orridge, fellow ex-TG and future Coil member Peter Christopherson and Alex Fergusson formerly of Alternative TV from which grew the associated fanclub / magickal self-help network / pseudo-cult, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY).  

Originally aping the trappings of a religious cult, as various founding members began to move away and distance themselves from the PTV / TOPY, P-Orridge's egomaniacal tendencies and fascination with the likes of Charles Manson and Jim Jones became ever more prominent as (s)he moulded it into a cult of personality based around themself that came to an acrimonious end in the early 90s.

Ray is careful throughout this fascinating book to try, whenever possible, not to belittle the experiences of the various adherents, but he is less kind to those wielding the adhesive; with the exception of Rampa who appears no more than an imaginative eccentric who, beyond his books, seemed to have had little interest in profiting from or manipulating any followers.

The three chapters on the Brotherhood, the Scientologists and TOPY offer compelling glimpses into the lives of both the manipulators and the manipulated, exploring some of the ways some folks allow themselves to be subsumed inside another's ego, but, it's the Rampa biography that is the gem here.  Ray avoids any attempt at psychoanalysing his subject or forming any definitive conclusions on whether he was devious or deluded instead providing a superbly readable glimpse into the life of a man who must surely be considered alongside the greatest of British eccentrics.

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P.J. Harvey
Picador Poetry

Nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles lives on Hook Farm in the village of UNDERWHELEM. Next to the farm is Gore Woods, Ira’s sanctuary, overseen by Orlam, the all-seeing lamb’s eyeball who is Ira-Abel’s guardian and protector. Here, drawing on the rituals, children’s songs, chants and superstitions of the rural West Country of England, Ira-Abel creates the twin realm through which she can make sense of an increasingly confusing and frightening world.

Orlam tells of a year in the life of Ira-Abel Rawles and her home of Hook Farm in the village of Underwhelem.  In the nearby Gore Woods Ira meets her own personal deity, the bleeding ghost of a soldier callled Wyman-Elvis, and finds sanctuary in her own ritual world.

Written in Harvey's native Dorset dialect - crucially with each poem also presented alongside it's modern English translation - this is a bold and bedevilling journey through a deliciously dark melange of the magical logic of chidhood and its associated rituals along with the often dark realities of growing up, of life on the cusp of adulthood, all fed through the filter of an early post-modern  1970s rural childhood where the familiar, the exotic, the profane and the perverse all come together into a dark and delirious masterpiece of rural horror.

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Jackie Morris (words)
Tamsin Abbott (images)
Unbound

Wild Folk comprises seven richly illustrated fables of transformation and power, summoned from the ancient stones beneath our feet and transformed by word and image into portals between past and future.

Jackie  Morris has produced a series of beautiful books over the years, many of which grace the bookshelves here at Wyrd Manor but beyond sharing a few of her paintings on the Wyrd Britain facebook page she's been conspicuously absent from the blog.  We're rectifying that right now with this lovely new book written in collaboration with stained glass artist Tamsin Abbott.

'Wild Folk' contains seven folklorish tales inspired by such diverse influences as classic folktales, the label of a cider bottle, a castle, W.B. Yeats and an island but what they have in common is their themes of a deep abiding love of the natural world and the mysteries it holds and a need to protect both.  Here she tells stories of hares, foxes, selkies, owls, trouts, swans, and ravens in a poetic prose, words often tumbling down the page in an almost race to present themselves.

Like all the best illustrators Abbott's art reflects these themes, encapsulating and reinterpreting the stories using her chosen medium to bring an additional vibrancy to the  stories, an expressiveness gained in no small part to the literal illumination that animates the art.

Not all the stories work as well as one would wish, 'The Owl's Tale' has a jarring shift mid story and 'The White Hare's Tale' is a tad heavy handed but generally this is a delicately wistful and rather beautiful book that I devoured over the course of an evening.

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Rebecca Gransden
The Tangerine Press

A pilgrimage. An England in delirium.

In the midst of an apocalyptic event of unknown provenance – a mass of red spreading north from the southern counties – a young girl sets out on a journey. Along the way she encounters a series of eccentric characters, the few left behind in the wake of a widespread evacuation. Some of these individuals are ravaged and on the edge of death, while others are immersed in their own hermetic practices, be they solipsistic, nihilistic, or otherwise. None wish to engage for more than the brief time necessary to offer their meagre assistance

Rebecca contacted me recently with regard to her book and a read of the synopsis alongside a glowing review from Iain Sinclair -  ‘Linguistically inventive, alert in every sense, and propelled with such narrative force that hairs burn on the unsuspecting reader's neck.'  - was all I needed to avail myself of a copy.

A post-apocalyptic novella that accompanies 'Flo' on her journey across an emptied land, its inhabitants having fled the unknown apocalypse spreading from the south.  It's effects on those who've remained are as profound as they are bizarre but it's most obvious impact is the altering of the written word, reducing it to single syllables, a deconstruction of language that gives the book the deeply lyrical character of Beat or Jazz poetry as the words fracture and tangle, tumbling over each other to create a delerious, occasionally nightmarish, vision of a land stripped of cohesion, slowly degenerating, reducing itself to a primordial state.

At first look, this broken narrative felt daunting, an obstacle placed directly in the reader's path, but by the third page, it became the novellas' strongest feature, one that immerses rather than repels, giving Flo's journey the character of her name.  There were moments that didn't necessarily work for me  - the chapter titled 'Public Information Dreams' seemed purposeless - and the enigma of the ending will,  I suspect, frustrate as many people as it enthralls but, and I say this unreservedly, I adored this book to the point that I'm certain I'll revisit this decaying world again soon.

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Adam S Leslie
Dead Ink Books

Heather, Rachel and Antonia are going to Almanby. Heather needs to find her boyfriend who, like so many, went and never came back. Rachel has a mysterious package to deliver, and her life depends on it. And Antonia - poor, lovestruck Antonia just wants the chance to spend the day with Heather. So off they set through the idyllic yet perilous English countryside, in which nature thrives in abundance and summer lasts forever. And as they travel through ever-shifting geography and encounter strange voices in the fizz of shortwave radio, the harder it becomes to tell friend from foe. Creepy, dreamlike, unsettling and unforgettable - you are about to join the privileged few who come to understand exactly why we don't go to Almanby.

If you'd have asked me at any point during the first half of this book what I thought of it, actually if you'd even stood near me for long enough, I'd have raved at you about how good it is. Unfortunately, if you'd asked the same question during the second half, I'd have repled with a wistful, "Hmmm."

Initially, this is a strange and vaguely cosmic road trip overflowing with fun dialogue and inventive narrative.  Leslie's writing is witty, his world-building is captivating, his characters are engaging and his pacing is perfect.  As the three girls travel to the forbidden town of Almanby we are treated  to a slightly surreal road trip until they arrive at their destination and from that point I couldn't shake the feeling that Leslie was in dire need of an editor.

Once in Almanby the purposeful drive becomes an indulgent meander that soon overstays it's welcome.  At no point did I stop enjoying Leslie's prose but he lost all momentum and the book became bogged down in a succession of fairly uninteresting surreal set pieces, most of which could have been ejected and replaced with a single stronger final act.

Regular Wyrd Britain readers will know how much I dislike writing negative reviews and I want to stress that this isn't one.  There is so very much to love here and I've spoken to people who felt the exact opposite about the book and that it found it's feet in that second half but for me, it wasn't what it could have been or perhaps what I wanted it to be.  What it absolutely was though was a bold and intriguing debut and I'm very interested to see what Leslie does next.

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Katy Soar (ed)
British Library Tales of the Weird

From the sun-seared shores of the Aegean to the misty bogs of ancient England, the dark tendrils of mythological gods and monsters have remained embedded in the minds of those who once believed, and throughout the past two centuries have inspired a haunting sub-genre of uncanny fiction.  

Collecting up strange tales of legendary Greco-Roman figures, pagan deities of Old Britain and godlings and abominations from the world’s pantheons returning to wreak havoc on modern civilization, this new anthology presents a thrilling array of weird fiction touched by the otherworldly and eternal mystique of myth, lore and legends. 

It's been a long while since I've dived into one of these British Library Tales of the Weird anthologies and even longer since I've enjoyed one as much.  There is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a real pulp fiction character to the stories although I will note not as much as I was suspecting as the title had me anticipating various Lovecrafty 'Old Ones' rising from assorted 'deeps'.  Here though things are of a more historical bent, with a couple of exceptions.  

I'm certain I'm not the ony one who often finds anthologies to be a bit of  pick and mix in terms of quality but rather wonderfully there was nothing here that made me want to skip past although I did wonder if opening story, 'Dionea' by Vernon Lee, would get the better of me as I've struggled with her writing in the past, but this time perseverence paid off and the story unfolded nicely, if slowly.

Thomas Graham Jackson's 'The Ring' bears an acknowledged debt to M.R. James whilst R. Ellis Roberts' 'The Great Mother' has a Machenean feel, although one stripped of the Masters' more folkloric or evangelical characteristics.  

John Buchan, no stranger to a strange story, begins a run of pulp romps with tale filled with wind and fire, whilst F.A.M. Webster conjures Aztec magic in 'The Owl', Flavia Richardson evokes ancient cats in 'Pussy' and Eugene de Rezske tells a story of hidden cults and ancient relics in 'The Veil of Tanit'. 

'The Face in the Wind' by Carl Jacobi has the distinction of being one of the most popular stories ever published in the venerable 'Weird Tales' and I can see why, its a fun tale of ancient creatures and a big old wall.  Edmond Hamilton's 'Serpent Princess' treads into Lovecraftian territory with the re-awakening of an ancient goddess whereas John Wyndham plays for laughs in 'More Spinned Against'.

Evangeline Walton, who some will know from her retellings of Welsh mythology - most notably published as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series - here focusses her attention towards France and the legend of Y's in 'Above Ker-Is'.  Ken Alden tells a tale of paganism and politics in Justice Tresillian in the Tower' before the book ends strongly with two fairly modern tales from Stephen Baxter, with a story of obligations in 'Family History', and John Cooling's Carnacki-esque viking wolf tale 'The House of Fenris'.

Soar has assembled a thoroughly enjoyable selection that dipped into a pleasingly varied selection of mythologies avoiding over-familiar choices and my reintroduction to this fun series proved to be one of the stronger and more cohesive entrants.

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Joel Lane
Influx Press

Episodes from the casebook of a police officer in the West Midlands.
Blurring the occult detective story with urban noir fiction, Where Furnaces Burn offers a glimpse of the myths and terrors buried within the industrial landscape.
First published in 2012, Joel Lane’s World Fantasy Award-winning collection is a true modern classic of weird fiction that cemented his place as one of the most important and distinctive British writers of the weird.

I read my first Joel Lane book - 'The Earth Wire and Other Stories' - in 2022 and have picked up a couple of these nice new Influx Press editions since but this is the first I've had the opportunity to get stuck into and being a occult detective collection it was always going to be somewhere near the top of the tbr pile.

The 26 stories here follow the trials and travails of a copper in what's known as 'The Black Country' - the post-industrial, urban sprawl around the city of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands - as he navigates an unfortunate affinity for cases of a distinctinctly weird and supernatural nature.

Lane was a fabulously gifted writer and the stories here are wonderfully strange.  As you progress through the 26 tales you can feel the strain our hero is under pulling at the threads of his life and sanity.  He's dragged deeper and deeper into, sometimes literal, underworlds, navigating cases of abduction, of dismemberment, of loss, of neglect, of ghosts and of gods.

The only problem I had is that these stories - many of which appeared in various journals and anthologies - are very short and follow a distinct pattern so when read together they do start to feel a little samey but spread out and peppered in amongst other writers / stories they made for a great read.

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Andrew Michael Hurley
John Murray

For centuries, the inhabitants of Barrowbeck, a remote valley on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border, have lived uneasily with forces beyond their reckoning. They raise their families, work the land, and do their best to welcome those who come seeking respite. But there is a darkness that runs through the village as persistently as the river.
As one generation gives way to the next and ancient land is carved up in the name of progress, darkness gathers. The people of Barrowbeck have forgotten that they are but guests in the valley.
Now there is a price to pay. Two thousand years of history is coming to an end.

Originally created as a series of short plays for Radio 4 as 'Voices in the Valley', this reworking of the stories tells, via a series of vignettes, the story of the isolated town of Barrowbeck from pre-history to the near future.

More overtly magical than his previous work but retaining the acute sense of place that characterises his writings, these folk horror miniatures often feel a little thin on the page.  Hurley has made some changes and additions from the scripts but I wish he'd gone deeper as for me they worked better in their original format and needed a deeper, more complex focus to fully satisfy as a book.  That said,  I'm writing from the perspective of someone who thorougly enjoyed the audio plays so perhaps these stories will prove more effective with those who are coming in cold.

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Liz Hyder
Tom de Freston (illustrator)
Pushkin Press

"We are the echo in the cave, the footsteps that follow you in the dark, the shadows in the trees.
We are fur and feather, bark and bone. We are light and dark. Earth and sky. Sun and moon. We are as one…"

When Kit's younger sister disappears from the world on the winter solstice with only Kit and a young boy named Story remembering that she ever existed the two kids team up to work out what happened and find theselves pawns in a game played by cosmic entities that could end the world.

Hyder has produced a lively romp across time and Tenby with it's feet firmly set in folkloric fantasy territory with one little toe - probably the left one - stretching into Nigel Kneale territory with echoes of 'The Stone Tape'. There's also a real commonality here with Susan Cooper's, 'The Dark is Rising' series, more in the nebulous realms of 'feel' than in the more tangible realms of narrative or concept and that's no bad thing because that's what got me to pick the book up in the first place, along with de Freston's stunning cover art.

Hyder has a quick and lively style that made it a quick and thrilling read but there were a couple of instances where I felt the story could have been tightened up a little but that's a small quibble as what we have is a fun, slightly old fashioned, adventure filled with ancient magics  and if, like me, you're a fan of the aforementioned Susan Cooper's venerable series then this will definitely be right up your megalith lined alley.

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Paul Robichaud
Reaktion Books

Part-goat, part-man, Pan bridges the divide between the human and animal worlds. In exquisite prose, Paul Robichaud explores how Pan has been imagined in mythology, art, literature, music, spirituality, and popular culture through the centuries. At times, Pan is a dangerous, destabilizing force; at others, a source of fertility and renewal. His portrayals reveal shifting anxieties about our own animal impulses and our relationship to nature. Always the outsider, he has been the god of choice for gay writers, occult practitioners, and New Age mystics. Though ancient sources announced his death, he has lived on through the work of Arthur Machen, Gustav Mahler, Kenneth Grahame, D. H. Lawrence and countless others. Pan: The Great God’s Modern Return traces his intoxicating dance.

I've long had a quiet obsession with all things Pan, fed, over the years, by occasionally stumbling over another Pan based story or fleeting reference hidden in the pages of a supernatural anthology.  Of late though I've been spoiled by a couple of exemplary books focussed on the goat-footed God, Michael Wheatley's excellent collection for the British Library's Tales of the Weird imprint, 'The Horned God: Weird Tales of the Great God Pan' and now this fascinating study of the history and the many reinventions of Pan in art, literature, music and magic.

It's hugely recommended for anyone with even a passing interest and while I have to admit to skimming through a couple of parts that I wasn't particularly interested in - the section on Depth Psychology for instance - I poured over others filling several pages in my notebook with new treasures to seek out.  

Here, Robichaud explores Pan's origins and development, his place in history, and, of most interest to me, his roles in the literary works of Lord Dunsany, D.H. Lawrence, Kenneth Grahame, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Arthur Machen, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, and many others.  Robichaud has produced a wonderfully readable overview of the many masks worn by this most mutable of gods as his very nature has been reinterpreted to suit various ends, be he devil or benefactor,  avenging nature spirit or welcoming protector of the wild, coded expression of hidden sexualities or lusty old nymph chaser careening across the Arcadian landscape.  

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Peter Forshaw
Thames & Hudson

Searching for the philosophers’ stone in the pursuit of transmutation and immortality; harnessing the properties of the natural world to cast magic spells; seeking visionary experiences to connect with the spiritual world; conjuring demons to enact our desires; using the tarot and astrology to divine the future – the quest to understand the mysteries of the universe and to tap into its powers has fuelled manifold occult philosophies from the early esoteric traditions of the ancient Egyptians to the practices of modern occultists.

The latest in a line of fascinating books from T&H this books is a deep dive into the visual language of the occult as represented in art and mysticism.  Here we take a whistlestop tour through time from Ancient Egypt to modern video games and across nine aspects of the various incarnations of occult lore with chapters on Astrology, Alchemy, Kabbalah, Natural Magic, Astral magic, Ritual Magic, Occultism, Tarot and New Age & Occulture.

For folks like me who look terrible in a robe or a black polo neck, who cannot rock a mystical medallion and who could, at best, be considered a tourist in this sort of stuff with no interest in the practicalities of a magical life but with a love of it as a narrative or artisitic tool this makes for excellent eye candy and an engrossing read that'll sit happilly on my shelves proving itself a handy resource for a long time to come

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