A Crown of Dusk and Sorrow

A Crown of Dusk and Sorrow by Benjamin Tweddell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A grey world dipped in impure, tarnished gold: this is the spiritual milieu for Benjamin Tweddell's melancholy novella A Crown of Dusk and Sorrow, in which a struggling bookseller whose soul is still weighed down by the death of his wife is invited by one of his customers, an enthusiastic amateur scholar, to investigate an isolated spot in the hills mentioned in an obscure reference to an ancient Celtic miracle worker who sat atop a barrow mound communing with the dead. Daniel, the bookseller, and Jacob, the scholar, set out and discover the place, only to fall asleep there and experience a gloaming vision of the dead and their dark masters, where Odin/Wotan, God of the Hanged, the Grim Mask (or hood), who entered these realms by his apotheotizing self-sacrifices, looms larger than life or death, in the spaces in-between.

Good fortune follows the two in the wake of this shared vision (of which they never speak), but these blessings of wealth and good luck come with adverse effects, not the least of which is a series of further visions driving both Daniel and Jacob further into the darkness. It is a slow-burning journey saturated with sorrow, but a sort of hollowing sorrow, rather than anything cathartic. In their own ways, the pair begin become one with the dark visions, being tempted to embrace them further and learn of the mysteries that lie at edges of perception, faint hints and shadows of what lies in store for the dead.

Less sardonic and hopeless than sad with acceptance, A Crown of Dusk And Sorrow is precisely what the title indicates, a grim journey to kingship . . . of a sort.

One of the most haunting books I have read in recent years. Another powerful work from Mount Abraxas Press, beautifully presented, a work of art in its own right. Strongly recommended for a few grey, windy days' reading.

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