Revenants & Maledictions

Revenants & Maledictions by Peter Bell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Last month, my wife and I took a holiday to Europe – England, Wales, Germany, and Austria. We had a fabulous trip, and I hope, someday, to make it back again. As with any vacation, choices had to be made, and potential destinations had to be dropped. If we go back again, Scotland, Ireland, and more of Germany are on the list. Alas, I had to take my trips to Scotland and Ireland via Bell’s book. Or maybe “alas” isn’t quite the right word. And maybe it’s best to leave well-enough alone, to specifically not travel to the areas that he’s written about so as to preserve my imaginary view of these ancient, strange places. Bell paints an evocative series of pictures of the British Isles (and one of Iceland). Let’s explore:

Our first stop is "Apotheosis,” a somber, moody piece about a visit to a Hebridean isle. The narrator finds that he is or was an unknowing stranger visiting strange shores. I can't say it was "heavy handed", but the fingers fell just a touch too bluntly on the "X" of the plot map, and I like more subtlety in my reading material. Still, a four-star story and well worth the read.

"The House" is clever, with the perfect amount of creepy. Much is left to the imagination in this self-referential mobius-strip of a meta-story, pulled off to perfection! The story is a trap for the characters, but not one the reader can anticipate. Five stars to this excellent tale, a primer on how to creep your reader out! Fantastic!

Having been lost, alone, on an unfamiliar mountain at night, I had a strong reaction to "The Executioner". While not everything correlated internally, I know the sense of fear that comes with that situation. California or the Outer Hebrides, that fear is the same! This story is a horror of nature, along the lines of some of William Hope Hodgson's work. Respect nature, because it won't respect you, haunted or not! Four stars.

"Many Shades of Red" is a prettily written story set across a stretch of sea, in Iceland, but it was not very effective at pulling an emotional reaction from me. Three stars.

"The Virgin Mary Well" gave me shivers. Stories don't often do that to me. Reality maps on phantom reality in spite of efforts to contain or banish malevolent spirits. Not precisely the ending I expected, but a nice (that is, nasty) bit of a surprise. Bell caught me off-guard with this one. I shall not look at wells in quite the same way now, especially when young ladies are present. Five twisted stars.

"The Island" was well-written, but standard fair for an English-isles ghost story. Bell did well, James did it better. Three stars.

"Wild Wales," with an introductory quote by Aickman, is on the border of what I might call "Aikman-esque," but not quite up to the same standard. Still, what struck me is the strength of the voice in the story. The narration itself heralded the predilections and preferences of the narrator himself: His likes, his comforts, his dislikes, his fears. It was a view into the soul, through a glass, darkly. For this, and a story well-told, four stars.

Maybe "Sithean" wasn't the right story for me to read on the same day I had browsed travel information on the Isle of Skye and just returned from holiday in the UK AND the same night my wife is flying home from having visited her mother. Now I'm spooked. Five annoying stars. Thanks a lot, Bell. (P.S. She made it back here safe and sound. Still . . .)

Anyone who fell deeply in love in the summers of their youth will feel the sweet tugging of old joy and the profound sadness of loss upon reading "Blackberry Time". I can't tell if the ending was too abrupt or exactly terse enough. I'm leaning far enough toward the latter to call this a five-star story. Uncanny and melancholy, this story might set its hooks (in the form of blackberry thorns) into you, too.

Here, in "The Robing of the Bride," all my expectations for what I was anticipating when I bought this book are met - gothic atmosphere, a revelation of hidden things that ought not to be, an unholy masquerade un-veiled. Or, rather, veiled. To quote the sound advice of one character "it is best you do not see". Also, the history here correlates closely with what I am currently reading in Robert Grave's The White Goddess, which has added some verisimilitude for this particular reader/ing. This story, previously unpublished, shows that often in collections, the new works are the best. Five stars

Not a bad trip at all. Outside of a couple of flat spots that seemed all-too familiar, the scenery here is (darkly) beautiful. Stamp your passport and take the trip!

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Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies

Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies - Second Edition by Andy Paciorek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This (second edition) of Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies . . . wanders. But, not all who wander are lost.

I recently returned from a trip to the Cotswolds (after a 32-year absence from the UK) where wandering was a good part of our purpose there. We, my wife and I, were “all over the place,” as they say. Our itinerary was packed, but packed in such a way as to not overload us in any particular area or town, outside of a long hike through the country from Moreton-in-Marsh, past Blockley, down to Longborough, then back up to Moreton. 12 miles of magic, with several cases of becoming utterly lost and having to discover our way again, whether by pure serendipity or with the help of strangers. We trod across forbidden areas (because we did not know any better and wished to “pick up the trail” again – a strange turn of phrase, that: “pick up the trail”. From behind you? Or ahead of you?) and broke the boundaries many times (apologies to the many farmers whose land we innocently crossed).

Funny, then, that I should have finished this book right before our journey. This was perfect timing, both thematically, and because this is a huge book and I needed room in my luggage for other books I was hoping to find and bring back from the UK, especially because we were going to the famous booktown, Hay-On-Wye, for a day. And, yes, I did bring several books back, but that is a different story.

This book, also, wanders. It becomes lost. It finds the track again. Then loses it. Ad infinitum.

My readerly advice: become lost with it. Keep it by your side, but don’t worry about your next destination. Just go along for the ride. Yes, there will be moments when you will want to tune out and complain that your feet hurt and you are thirsty, with little water left. There are a few essays that you will skim or skip, I know I did, though I was surprised at how few there were, to be honest. The vast bulk of the book was at the very least enjoyable and sometimes a burning revelation, like the sun in your eyes when you wake up from having slept outdoors. Whether your interest is literary, cinematic, musical, historical, religious, or philosophical or, like mine, a combination of all of these, anyone with interests in the ever-widening circle of Folk Horror will find something amazing here.

Please allow me to share some of the highlights of my wandering . . .

In my travels, there are a few souls who I’d like to meet. Yes, there is an excellent Thomas Ligotti interview herein, and I am a big fan of his work, to say the least. But I don’t know that I’d much like to sit down and have tea with the man.

Gary Lachman (ex-bassist for Blondie), however, is a sort of kindred soul. So much of what he said in his interview resonates with me on the level of “spirituality” (a term he spurns, but principles he lives), a fondness for much of the same art, and shared experience regarding the evolution of taste in music. I would love to spend a few hours with him.

Nick Brown's essay "Ghost, Landscape and Science" hews very closely to my most speculative and wild thoughts regarding quantum mechanics and the spirit world. I don't plan on writing about this, as it's all rather speculative and very, very personal. But I'm glad to see that someone else is thinking in the same general direction as I am, even if we aren't diving down to the specifics. I'd love to chat with Brown.

There are others I should like to meet, not because of them as people, per se, though I’m sure they are fascinating people, but because of the subject matter of their essays and their fantastic treatment of such.

First among these would be John Harrigan, whose essay "The Sacred Theatre of Summerisle" is a profound look into ritual itself based upon the Wicker Man celebration. It is an incredibly insightful piece and lends some reassurance to those of us who do believe that ritual itself carries power to infuse life with meaning. Fabulous essay!

Cobweb Mehers' "One Small Step for Man: Hunting the Nephilim" is a remarkable dive into the archaeology of knowledge: the origins of giants, the evolution of myth, and the contemporary social relevance of stories far older than the Bible from which we know them. This was fascinating and has my philosophical wheels spinning so quickly that my brain is shooting sparks. I could read volumes of this type of work.

One of the more intriguing essay titles comes from Aaron Jolly in his essay “Kill Lists: The occult, paganism and sacrifice in cinema as an analogy for political upheaval in the 1970s and 2010s”. I was a bit wary going into this, as historical recusivity can sometimes be imposed upon evidence, rather than being arising from it. There are some connections here, I think, with Mark Fisher’s ruminations on the slow cancellation of the future, though I would need time to ferret out and clearly identify the threads and how they tie together. In any case, “Folk Horror Historiography” is now a thing, thanks in part to this essay.

It took some research to understand that Jim Peter’s essay “The Wanderings of Melmoth” is a sort of multi-media piece about music, but without the music. You’ll have to go find it online. Here is a sample. Listening to this whilst reading this most excellent and playful essay might take you to realms heretofore unknown or might drive you mad. Perhaps both, at once.

And speaking of music, there are several excellent essays about music, the best of which is Clare Button’s “’See Not Ye That Bonny Road?’ Places, Haunts and Haunted Places in British Traditional Song”. This is an incredibly well-researched and carefully documented essay that thoroughly and critically examines the subject matter without becoming academically stodgy. This is the only essay in the book for which I used the term “amazeballs” in my notes. This should speak volumes.

Another well-documented essay is Phil Legard’s “The Hunted Fields of England: Diabolical Landscapes and the Genii Locorum,” in which he provides the psychogeographical connective tissue between pagan tradition and post-Christian diablerie. I must add here, also, that Legard and his partner, Layla, perform as the band “Hawthonn”. Their album Red Goddess: of this men shall know nothing is one of my absolute favorite pieces of Folk Horror music. I cannot recommend it strongly enough!

One final essay that caught my attention featured Chris Lambert quoting Tony Redman in his treatise on M.R. James: "Wherever you've got a margin between two types of culture and two types of landscape you often get a deeper awareness of the supernatural and the spiritual". This rings true to me, who lived overseas most of my childhood and loved (and still love) to wander the "spaces between". This is especially true given our recent trip (back) to Europe (my wife lived in Austria for a year and a half in her early-twenties), where we stepped across several liminal boundaries, cultural, geographical, and psychogeographical. I could go on, but should probably do a blog post about this some time.

Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies is a wild and wooly volume like A Year in the Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields, which is to say that it’s not easily defined or corralled. And I like that: variety is good. I may re-read A Year in the Country alongside Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies, as the volumes complement each other quite nicely. Both of these volumes have given me a thousand threads to chase regarding the subject of Folk Horror. That makes me a very happy reader!


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T-Minus 4 days

In an earlier post, I had mentioned my upcoming trip to Europe. That time is almost upon me, and I've made general announcements that I will be off social media for a couple of weeks, so I thought I'd make the same announcement here. I hope to be off social media, including the blogosphere, for two weeks. Technically we don't fly to England until July 18th, but I may turn things off sooner than that, even, so I can concentrate on getting ready and enjoying our once-in-what's-left-of-a-lifetime trip.

What exactly will we be doing and when? Glad you asked!

We will start our trip flying from Chicago to London. We're going to try to stay up all night and through the next day to get our body clocks adjusted. We'll see what these old bodies can do. If I was in my twenties again, I'd say "no problem". But I'm turning 50 while we're in Europe, so . . . 

Next day is our trip up to our AirBnB, with a stop in Oxford. I love Oxford. When I lived in England, I made a few trips there with friends (it was about two hours away by bus) and fell in love with that city. But we won't have a ton of time there. I'm hoping to see the Bodleian Library and The Eagle and Child, the pub made famous by it's patrons J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and, I think, Mervyn Peake (I could be wrong on that last one). Then we will wander a bit and then head to the little cottage we're staying at on the north end of the Cotswolds.

Saturday, we road trip to the famous Welsh "booktown" Hay-on-Wye. I'm not bringing any books with me except these:

I am really hoping to focus on my writing while we are away and plan on taking extensive notes on oddities, story ideas, experiences, etc. So I am not taking anything to read. But I am saving some space in my luggage for books that I will surely buy in Hay-on-Wye. I hear from people whose opinions I value that Hay Cinema Bookshop is not to be missed!

Sunday, we go off to Bedford, near where I used to live as a teenager. We'll go to church with my old congregation. Here's to hoping that I'll see some (very) old friends there! Then we will tour The Priory at RAF Chicksands, the haunted priory that my friends and I used to . . . visit . . . late at night . . . through a window . . . often.

Monday will be our actual "tourist" day in the Cotswolds. We have booked the day through Kooky Cotswold Tours and are very excited to tour with them! We shall be seeing Cirencester, Bath, and Bibury as part of that itinerary. Tuesday we will take a self-guided walking tour, also courtesy of Kooky Cotswold Tours. We are very much looking forward to some long walks through the English countryside! Of course, we will take pictures!

Wednesday we have the morning before we need to get to London to catch our next flight. I am hoping we can quickly visit one of the many ancient monuments in the area (barrow mounds, roundhills, standing stones, etc). I've got some advisement on must-see locations, now I just have to pick one or maybe two.

We fly from London to Munich Wednesday afternoon. We will pick up our rental car, a Mercedes convertible (yes, I am very excited about this!), spend the night in Munich, then test the Autobahn the next day. We will need to make our way down to Vienna by that night, but I am hoping to hit some unlimited stretches of the Autobahn on the way down and see just how fast this car can go! I'll have to start out slow, though, as I will have been driving on the wrong side of the road for a week and will need to get my frame of reference back.

Alright, I need to cut this short - things to do. Short story: 1 week in Austria (Vienna and Salzburg): Kunsthistorisches Museum, National Marionette Theater performance of The Magic Flute, The Eagle's Nest, then a day in Munich. See ya!

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Songs from the Black Moon

Songs from the Black Moon by Rasu-Yong Tugen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm an existentialist, at heart, but not an earnest nihilist. While I do enjoy staring into the abyss from time to time, I don't dangle my feet over the edge for too long.

When I bought Songs from the Black Moon, I expected something dark and brooding. But I should have known from Ligotti's endorsement ("A book of beautiful and strangely tranquil outbursts of disaffection and dissolution. I wish everyone on earth lived by the sentiments expressed within it." (note the absence of exclamation points)) that this work is just a little too hopeless for me.

That's not to say there isn't beauty in this book. Ligotti is correct on that point. Whether it is in longer stretches of prose poetry:

I remain open to all the songs of abrogation that seem to course through my brain in the tear-laden sleep of cognition. You remain open and remain more open, infinitely open - even, and especially, open to what I most fear. You remain open to the seraphic and invertebrate dusk, to what could be or should have been, to our hermetic and deep mauve moonstone sleep. In myriad dimensions tarnished chromatic pieces of bark and branch and lichen fall upon your slender fingers and wrists and your reverberant and tranquil black hair.

Or in some of the "outbursts":

Across your tranquil, tenebrous forehead pass apparitions retrieved from the dimly-lit dusts of oblivion.

the Baroness de Tristeombre's words are resplendent.

And, yet, they are often too self-aware, in the way that poetry shouldn't be. I'll with-hold examples here, but there are many times when the works are full of blatant gothic posturing, odes to depression for the sake of depression, devoid even of a sense of rebellious energy. Just a big bag of giving up.

And I'm not about that. Here we have some diamond flakes among just too much coal. I would have liked things, if not shinier, at least a tiny bit less enthusiastic about an utter lack of enthusiasm.

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The Star of Gnosia

The Star of Gnosia by Damian Murphy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

To reduce each piece of fictional art in this book to a "story" does it a profound disservice. This is a gathering of esoteric art and thought, a journey, if you will, into the hidden orders of the heart and mind. Each piece is unique, yet of a kind, in the same milieu, but with specific differences from one another. However, I will not dwell on the specifics of character, setting, and plot, as I feel that each reader must discover these touchpoints for himself or herself, as the reader's own experience will inform their interpretation of these elements. So I speak of each section only in the vaguest of terms, because I think they are so important and so subject to personal interpretation that I can only speak of them obliquely. It would be an injustice for me to interpose my own lens of experience here; in fact, it would be an injustice to me, since my interpretation is so very personal that I consider it a sacred thing. That said, this is not an overt religious text, though it may be interpreted as such by a few. It is a book full of symbols where the interpretation of these symbols and the events surrounding them are subject to the pre-existent experience of the interpreter. Your experience will not be mine, nor should it be. I cannot proscribe or even describe to you what you will feel as you read this work. Nevertheless, I can offer the following:

"The Imperishable Sacraments" is itself a ritual journey, but not without heart and light. i caught myself wanting to rush forward, but trained myself to stop and examine the details in this tale, soon becoming unaware of time, lost in the sacrifice of my sense of urgency to the rewards of attention (even if fought for against the weariness of the preceding day).

"The Apostatical Ascetic" is a foray into the frustrations of reaching out to the beyond, wrestling with the banal and with our lackadaisical acceptance of the everyday grind. Enlightenment comes on its own time, of its own accord. Our attempts at reaching are really only concentrated attempts at waiting for the ineffable to work itself into us. This is as much an occultic primer of yearning as it is a "story".

"A Perilous Ordeal" is not so much a story as it is an initiation or the ripples of an initiation through the surface fiction. This piece should be read and read again and again, as there is and will be something to gain, something to learn, with every repetition, as with every effective ritual.

Reading "The Hour of the Minotaur" was a truly transcendent experience. The prose initiates the reader into deep mysteries, the story strips the veil between reader and narrator, between subject and object. One becomes the mystic journey. Astounding.

"The Star of Gnosia" is three rituals in one: an act of rebellion, a recounting of strictest discipline, and the winsome gambol of a trickster goddess. It is a vision of possibilities tailored to the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the practitioner, their particular foibles, needs, and desires. it is yet another labyrinth where one stumbles from the banal to the sublime. A sort of awkward meditation that does not quite resolve fully - nor should it. As with all practice, one must return again and again to "sort it out". Experience will change the emphasis upon re-reading.

Overall, The Star of Gnosia is a deep well from which one can gather fresh water for, I am guessing, a very long time. For those who are scared away by the mystical references - there is nothing to fear here, outside of the fear of your own self-discovery. Am I a practitioner of "the arcane arts"? No. Do they interest me? They always have. Do I feel like I've compromised my integrity by delving into such a work? Not at all. I feel that I've read some amazing writing that has caused me deep reflection and given me some new avenues of meaning and world-viewing. I don't feel imposed upon and I don't have to impose my views or interpretations on the work itself or others to read it. To do that would not only rob the work of the "breathing room" it deserves, but would be to rob others the joy of discovering this remarkable work for themselves and rob me of the "widening of the gaze" that it has afforded me. And I am no thief, unless I am guilty of stealing insight!

One thing I see a lot of in my future is reading the works of Damian Murphy. His writing is truly unique. I can think of no other work quite like his, though Borges' most mystical writings approach the tenor of his work. There's a hint of Calvino's playfulness and the occasional snap of the literary trickster's fingers reminiscent of Robert Aickman. Now that I've used the names of three of my favorite authors ever in trying to describe Murphy's work, you can bet that I hold this man's writing in very, very high esteem.

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Analog Europe

I am approaching a once-in-a-lifetime trip (once in a lifetime for me because I doubt I'll be able to afford to make one like this again) for Europe: One week in England (mainly in the Cotswolds) and one week in Austria. One of my goals on this trip is to go mostly analog. Yes, I will have my phone with me, but outside of emergencies, I am hoping to use my phone only as a camera, GPS, and maybe for a little musical interlude here and there (but not often). In fact, I've been getting calls to upgrade my smart phone for a couple of weeks now. I'll pass for the moment. My reasoning is that when I lived in England as a teenager, there was no such thing as a smart phone, there was no internet, and, outside of a few dumb choices that I made that led to grim consequences, I really miss the feeling I felt there - often - of being fully engaged in life: hearing the trees and grass, smelling rain on the air, feeling heat and cold and wind wet and dry, talking to humans, walking in the landscape and feeling the Earth under my feet, all as a participant, rather than an observer. I want to be fully in this trip!

Today, the day before the release of Stranger Things 3 (which I intend to watch, digitally, on my Fire TV - which, incidentally, I won at a drawing at work: I didn't buy it), out comes another episode of my favorite podcast, Weird Studies, this one using a fabulous series of essays by J.F. Martel entitled Reality is Analog.

I originally read this essay several months ago, around the time that I posted a blog entry entitled Analog Kid (yes, after the song by Rush). In that post, I tentatively posited my thoughts on how I desired to return to a more analog existence. That notion hasn't diminished and has, in fact, grown stronger. I have begun the Snail Mail RPG I referred to, have written more letters since then than I did in the previous twenty years combined, and am spending a lot less time on social media. Yes, I'm still there, but in a passing way. I can "unhook" from social media much more easily now than in the past. I am also writing more, again, just having finished another short story.

Now, I am a believer that when one writes something down and presents it to the world, one is more committed to it. That's why we sign written contracts, n'es-ce pas? There is something like a covenant with oneself that one makes when one seriously puts a commitment down "on paper". In this case, I want to put a commitment on my blog, so it's publicly known, so I'm accountable.

While in Europe, I will not use my phone for social media. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Mewe, no nothing. Two weeks. Even though I've been leaning this direction for some time, this is a painful thing to type. Really, this is extremely difficult to commit to, and it makes me downright nervous. But I want to do it. Take a "fast," if you will, from social media. I reserve the right to contact my children through Email and text, but I am not going to post anything for the last two weeks of July.

One thing that I am hoping will help: When I'm travelling, I usually do the social media thing at night, when I'm getting ready for bed. Instead, I have purchased a pair of beautiful Rhodia Landscape Webnotebooks (yes, I am aware of the irony here), within which I will take notes, jot down thoughts, maybe even do some sketches (thought I am not a visual artist, by any means). I'm not even taking something to read, which is near-blasphemy to me. Now, I am very likely to pick up a book or two, especially when we visit the booktown, Hay-on-Wye, in fact, I have a list of authors for whom I will be a-hunting. But I am really hoping to fill my time and brain with writing; creating, not consuming.

 Two weeks.

Who's with me?

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Deadhouse Gates

Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As I stated in my review of the previous book in this series, I am typically not a series reader. I very much dislike series, especially series composed of thick novels. The fact that I read the second book in this series says plenty about how good this pair of sword and sorcery novels are.

I shall not even attempt to write a summation of this excellent novel. There are all sorts of summations out there. Go and read.

But I cannot just leave it at that. Because, while my actions might be a good indicator of my like for this book, I’d like to tell you why it is so darned good. I am liable to repeat myself from my review of Gardens of the Moon, for which I apologize in advance. There are just not enough superlatives.
Steven Erikson has a gift for packing complexity in his characters and revealing it with the subtleties of dialogue. As a writer who struggles with dialogue (I really have to work at it and edit it like crazy), I admire that. He's pretty amazing at it. The dialogue here opens a window into the character’s internal thoughts and shows their feelings about each other without pedantry towards the reader. That’s a tough thing to pull off, and Erikson does it with panache.

That’s not to say that I like all of the characters – far from it. Yes, I love the assassin Kalam, who kills more people than you think he will in any given chapter (though you know it’s going to be a high number), and High Fist Coltaine is the greatest military strategist in Sword and Sorcery literature. But Felisin, I hated. This noble brought low (who is eventually exalted again, sort of, but not in the way you might expect) was every bit as whiney as Holden Caulfield, whom I hate with a flying passion. Now, Felisin, unlike Caulfield, had reasons for her whininess, but still, I just wanted to throttle her. And I have no doubt that Erikson wrote her that way. So, well-played, Mr. Erikson, well-played. You jerk.

My favorite character, though, was the ex-soldier, now-Historian (yes, capitalized, as in this is his title) Duiker. And it’s not just his personality that I like. I like how Erikson used him in the novel. Erikson's clever use of Historians such as Duiker is a shrewd maneuver. The Historian has to be at the crux of every important event or recitation, thus the reader gets to see much that a non-Historian observer would not have access to. In fact, the Historian is not only invited, but often required to see events personally, to facilitate the proper recording of such events. Erikson baked the storyteller right into the story, dodging the fourth while and breaking it at the same time. Duiker’s perspective as an ex-soldier, now Historian, often in the thick of combat, makes me remember that I would not have liked to have been a sword-wielding warrior, if I could have avoided it. I'll take the desk job, thank you.

There is plenty of fighting to be had in this novel. It is a military sword and sorcery novel, unapologetic in both its vividness and scope. Still, Erikson wields his weapons subtly, at times, portraying large, important sections of the combat and tactics off-screen, particularly when presenting the early engagements involving Malazan forces led by High Fist Coltaine. By presenting them from “around a corner” or “through a veil,” as it were, the author builds up a sort of mythical aura in the reader’s mind. Later, we learn that this mythical aura surrounding Coltaine’s conquest is shared by those in his world. Thus, we become observers of Coltaine’s exploits in the same manner as those who encounter him in the book: first as a shadow, then a rumor, then as the person he is, and the Ascendant that he is becoming.

“What is an Ascendant?” you ask. Frankly, I don’t know. There are many things I don’t know about this world, just like the characters themselves. We learn through their eyes, though there are many cultural assumptions and phrases that we just have to learn as we go. Yes, there are several very short glossaries to help you from going completely off the rails, but they are sparse and intentionally vague, leaving you to fill in the gaps as you go – or not: several things about . . . well, things, are never fully explained. Ascendancy is one of them. We know it happens and that those who are ascending are greater than mere humans. But are they gods, demigods, or merely heroes?

These vagaries are often presented in poetic language (and sometimes outright poetry). For example, one of the more epic battles in fantasy literature, the Battle of Sekala Crossing ends:

If not for a dumb beast's incomprehension at its own destruction beneath the loving hands of two heartbroken children.

Where else do you find poetry like that in fantasy literature (in a sentence fragment, no less), especially at the end of as grim a scene of combat as you've ever read?

Nowhere.

Nowhere, at all.

Finally, Erikson shows a clever wit. The running dog jokes throughout are hilarious. I love Erikson's sense of humor. Kalam describing Salk as "breathtakingly sardonic" and the merchants' excuse to leave Tremorlor, that place of utter horror: "Now we must flee - ah, a rude bluntness - I mean 'depart' of course. We must depart."

I laughed out loud, which typically does not happen when I’m not reading Wodehouse. This lightness makes the darkness all the more bearable.

Still, I shall probably not read another volume of the ten-volume set. Honestly, this is the best sword and sorcery novel I’ve ever read, and I really don’t want to spoil it. I don't want to leave this higher ground.

And, yet, I’m still curious about that lapdog. Oh, that rare lapdog . . . I mean, the raw one . . . you’ll know what I mean when you read it. Enjoy!

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