David A. Riley's Blog, page 33
September 7, 2021
My review of The Revenant of Thraxton Hall by Vaughan Entwistle
THE REVENANT OF THRAXTON HALL: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Vaughn Entwistle £11.25 paperback; £0.99 Kindle
Published by Masque Publishing, 308 pages
Revenant: In folklore, a revenant is an animated corpse that is believed to have revived from death to haunt the living. The word revenant is derived from the Old French word, revenant, the "returning".
A more disparate pair of collaborators it would be hard to imagine than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde, yet Vaughn Entwistle accomplishes this in The Revenant of Thraxton Hall with remarkable skill, name-dropping on the way other notables from that era in a complex novel of supernatural intrigue. And, yes, despite there being some all too human malefactors involved in this tale, the supernatural has a malignant and all-important presence.
It is 1893 and The Strand has just published The Adventure of the Final Problem, in which Sherlock Holmes brings about the death of Professor Moriarty at the cost of his own life. Thus putting an end, so far as Doyle is concerned, to the Holmes stories, which, despite the wealth and success they have brought him, he has grown completely weary. But by doing this he has suddenly made himself the most hated man in London, as crowds of outraged Holmes devotees demonstrate outside the magazine’s offices, shouting their anger at the death of their hero. Doyle has other problems to deal with though: his wife Louisa is slowly dying of tuberculosis, and for all his medical knowledge he can do nothing to save her. It is now, like something out of one of his Holmes stories, that a mysterious letter arrives asking for his help.
Through a series of convincingly elaborate circumstances, it is not long before Doyle and his close friend Oscar Wilde embark on a train to Lancashire to stay at Thraxton Hall, where the newly created Society for Psychical Research will be holding a series of investigations. Thraxton Hall is owned by Lady Hope Thraxton, who though young has an affliction which makes sunlight deadly for her and must remain sheltered from it. Her family has a morbid history of murder and witchcraft and a curse which looks to culminate soon in her violent death.
This complex novel is splendidly fast moving with some sparkling dialogue, some of which, especially between Doyle and Wilde actually made me chuckle out loud! Not that this humour doesn’t share space with some well-written horror, especially in the decaying edifice of Thraxton Hall, a memorable haunted house, replete with secret rooms and hidden passageways and a huge, mouldering, partially flooded crypt. And a blind butler!
It never lets you down and remains engrossing right to the final page, with characters that leap full-fleshed from the page.
Vaughn Entwistle has written another “paranormal casebook” of Conan Doyle, again accompanied by Oscar Wilde, The Dead Assassin. Having enjoyed reading The Revenant of Thraxton Hall I will most definitely be ordering this, as well as another historical novel, Hideous Progeny, which is about Mary Shelley and “her monster”! I can see me spending quite some time over the next few months acquainting myself with these and other books by Vaughn Entwistle, a writer I am glad to have discovered at last.
This review was published in Phantasmagoria #19
Cover of the next issue of Trevor Kennedy's anthology series Gruesome Grotesques revealed.
Here is the amazing cover for the next bumper issue of Trevor Kennedy's anthology series Gruesome Grotesques, subtitled this time Carnival of Freaks.Included will be my story Three Eyed Jack.
This is due to be published on the 4th October.
Book Reviews
I have created a new page on my blog with links to all the book reviews I have written over the past few years.
Whenever any new reviews are published I'll add these to this page.
September 6, 2021
My Review of Sleep No More by L. T. C. Rolt
My review appeared in Phantasmagoria magazine # 19
SLEEP NO MORE – Railway, Canal & Other Stories of the Supernatural by L. T. C. Rolt Introduction by Susan Hill
The History Press 2013 (First published 1948)
Perhaps better known for his association and eventual break up with Robert Aickman in the Inland Waterways Association, which did so much to save and restore our canal system, Rolt may also have had an influence on Aickman with this splendid collection of ghost stories – though, like M. R. James, the term ghost is used loosely, as the forces at work within these tales are often far more demonic.
Susan Hill, in her Introduction, makes special mention of one particular story, Cwm Garon. And this, I must concur, is my favourite tale, with its echoes of Machen and even Algernon Blackwood – there is one paragraph in particular that puts me in mind of Blackwood’s masterpiece The Willows. It also has one of the most chilling of closing paragraphs I have ever come across, hinting at worse to come after the story has “ended”. But in truth, none of these stories are poor, and a few are quite outstanding.
Hawley Bank Foundry, for instance, is a great example of Rolt’s expert knowledge of industrial places being put to good use, with this generational tale of something inexplicable within the ruins of an old Victorian foundry which, because of the needs of the Second World War, is restored to working order again – with dire consequences! I can not only see and feel this place, I can smell it too.
Rolt was a practical man, an engineer, who wrote about iconic figures such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Robert Stephenson, and Thomas Telford, and that shows in many of his stories, effortlessly adding details which make their settings incredibly well realised, especially mines, tunnels, ironworks, etc., and at the same time lending a semblance of added credibility to the supernatural elements he introduces to them.
Many of his stories are also set in isolated places, especially the Welsh mountains, the west coast of Ireland or the wilds of Scotland, places with which he was obviously familiar as a hiker, and into which the intrusion of the strange, the unknown, of malevolently hostile supernatural forces make what is already sometimes a difficult place to survive even worse.
There are just fourteen tales in this collection. After I had finished reading them I wished for more. In my opinion Rolt is certainly up there with the best names in the genre and I hope one day his stories will be better known. I can’t believe it has taken me all these years to read them! I’ll certainly reread them again someday.
September 2, 2021
My review of John Shirley's A Sorcerer of Atlantis
This review was published in the current issue of Phantasmagoria magazine.
A SORCERER OF ATLANTIS with A PRINCE IN THE KINGDOM OF GHOSTS by John Shirley
£20.00 paperback; £4.24 Kindle
Published by Hippocampus Press, 305 pages
The bulk of this book (220 pages) is taken up with a three-part novel A Sorcerer of Atlantis, which tells the story of Brimm the Savant, his close friend Snoori, and Selinn of Ur, who is a swordswoman and princess and someone with whom not to argue. Brimm was originally a not particularly ardent student of Urgus the Enchanter, from whom he learned a few rudimentary spells before deciding to embark with his friend, a fellow Hyperborean, to fabled Atlantis, which is when things begin to go wrong. Instead of being taken onboard as passengers on a galley sailing south they find themselves unexpectedly shanghaied as slaves chained to the ship’s oars. It turns out that these two hapless adventurers have an unfortunate knack for leaping from the frying pan into an even worse plight, including as sacrifices to the half-human, half-octopoid demon-princess Cleito, who becomes their arch enemy, along with the hideous mermen followers of the god Poseidon. Moving at a rapid pace, Brimm and Snoori’s fortunes rise and wane as they toil across Atlantis and become unwittingly embroiled in monstrous plans to destroy the island. Humour is mixed with high adventure and bloody skirmishes, with homages to both Howard and Lovecraft on the way.
I found the main protagonists engaging in their attempts to save Atlantis – and the evil mermen are a wonderfully horrific menace, given to eating their victims alive as they scream in agony!
The final part of this book, A Prince in the Kingdom of Ghosts (68 pages) is a completely different sort of fantasy. Set in the present day, Kerrin Kim is a Korean American who works as a diamond cutter, like his father before him. And like his father suddenly dies at a young age, awakening to find he is a prince in an outlandishly strange world inhabited by ghosts and other spirits. Here he learns that his late father is the king but was inexplicably cut down only a short time before by a mysterious poison that has left him in a coma. Bewildered to find that his father is still alive whole decades after he died on Earth, Kerrin is drawn into a bewildering conflict that has him completely confused over which side to support. It is a bizarre tale of ghostly intrigues, with real-life protagonists like Boadicea and Marcus Aurelius thrown in. It is definitely one of the strangest stories I have ever read, but amazingly well conceived by John Shirley who manages to tie all its oddities together in an impressive way.
I am not really sure why it was decided to publish these two particular tales in one volume, as the swords and sorcery story of Atlantis is certainly long enough to have been published as standalone novel. And A Prince in the Kingdom of Ghosts, though an excellent fantasy, is not a swords and sorcery story. Put together they are an odd meld of two sub-genres. Still, they are both worth reading and are definitely entertaining in their different ways, so if you don’t mind mixing your genres like this it’s no problem.
August 26, 2021
Baal the Necromancer accepted by Mythic magazine
August 20, 2021
Latest issue of Phantasmagoria has an interview with me, plus a short story, five reviews and an illustration!
The latest issue of Phantasmagoria has an interview with me, plus a short story, five reviews and an illustration!Phantasmagoria #19 is now available through amazon, other internet outlets, plus some branches of Forbidden Planet.
The short story is The Last Coach Trip, much of which was based on annual trips to Ripon races by Bold Street Working Men's Club in the early 80s. They were great days out - though none ended quite like this! According to Trevor Kennedy it is a very poignant tale.
The illustration was the cover for an issue of David A. Sutton's iconic fanzine Shadow.
There is also a glowing and satisfyingly in depth review by Trevor Kennedy of Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 2.
My artwork
August 18, 2021
A video I created about The Return
Here's a brief video I created about my Lovecraftian crime-noir horror novel The Return.
August 10, 2021
My review of Called By Cthulhu: The Eldritch Art of Dave Carson
My review of Called by Cthulhu: The Eldritch Art of Dave Carson was broadcast by Trevor Kennedy on his midday show on Big Hits Radio UK last Sunday and will be published in the next issue of Phantasmagoria magazine, due later this week.
Here it is in full:
CALLED BY CTHULHU: THE ELDRITCH ART OF DAVE CARSON Shoggoth Press, 2021
Dave Carson's magnum opus, Called by Cthulhu, contains nearly all of the artist’s illustrations for the past 50 years, much of it in the Lovecraftian Mythos vein for which he is famous.
I have loved Dave’s artwork ever since I first came across it back in the day. And indeed, when I took over editorship of the British Fantasy Society’s newsletter Prismin 2010, the first artist I contacted for a cover was Dave Carson, who immediately and generously provided me with a wonderful illustration called “De Vermis Mysteriis” (see page 261).
Measuring 10 x 6 3/4 inches and 384 pages long, Called by Cthulhuis a large soft cover book with hundreds of Dave Carson's amazingly distinctive black and white pictures, including, I was pleased to find, the illustration I commissioned for issue 1 of Beyond magazine which I edited and published in 1995, for Karl Edward Wagner's story Gremlin (see page 219). It was one of the last stories Karl ever wrote and sadly wasn't published until after he died the year before. I know Dave struggled over this illustration because, a close friend of Karl’s, he was still deeply upset at his death. Nevertheless, he forged ahead and created an unforgettable illustration I was proud to publish.
The book opens with an Introduction by Neil Gaiman, who enlivens it with some fascinating anecdotes, including the time he saw Dave on a panel at the 1983 British Fantasy Convention. After heavyweight notables Karl Edward Wagner, George Hay and Ramsey Campbell had finished expounding their views on “Lovecraftian subtext”, Dave was asked for his comments, to which he typically responded: “Fuck that, I just like drawing monsters.” Despite this amusingly modest rejoinder, Gaiman goes on to conclude that “the magic of Dave Carson’s monsters is that he loves them, and each drawing and each sculpture becomes a love letter to the night side, something perfect and true, that manages, remarkably, to communicate that love to us.” I fully concur. And its truth can be seen from the amazing amount of meticulous detail with which he creates each illustration, painstakingly constructing a thing of intricate, outlandish beauty dot by well-placed dot. The artistic talent and immense patience he must possess in drawing these is nothing short of awesome.
Called by Cthulhu is a book to pore over page by page, to take in and appreciate the skill with which each illustration has been created, and the unenviable hours of arduous work that has gone into them. Dave is a magnificent artist, whose illustrations are an endless delight to behold.
Both Called by Cthulhu and Phantasmagoria are available from Amazon.
August 4, 2021
Submissions for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 3 open till October 31st
Submissions for Swords & Sorceries Volume 3 will open on the 1st August and close on the 31st October 2021
Payment is £25 per story regardless of length, plus a contributor's copy. The book will be published as a paperback and ebook. If a hardcover version is published we will pay an additional £25. Contributors can also buy extra copies of the book through us at cost price.
Please send your submissions as attachments (doc or docx) to:
paralleluniversepublications@gmx.co.uk
You can send in more than one submission, but we will not accept more than one story per writer.
Although we prefer original stories we are prepared to consider reprints. Just inform us where and when it was previously published.
You can send in simultaneous submissions, but please let us know at once if your story is accepted elsewhere.
There is no limit on the size of submissions.
All rejections and acceptances will be sent out by email at the end of the first week in November. Please don't enquire about your submission before then.
Your story should be sent as an attachment, headed:
"Submission - Swords & Sorceries 3"
And good luck!
To get a better idea of the kind of stories we are likely to publish in this anthology check out volumes 1 & 2:
The contents of Volume One are:
THE MIRROR OF TORJAN SUL - Steve Lines
THE HORROR FROM THE STARS - Steve Dilks
TROLLS ARE DIFFERENT - Susan Murrie Macdonald
CHAIN OF COMMAND - Geoff Hart
DISRUPTION OF DESTINY - Gerri Leen
THE CITY OF SILENCE - Eric Ian Steele
RED - Chadwick Ginther
THE RECONSTRUCTED GOD - Adrian Cole
The cover and all the interior artwork is by Jim Pitts. amazon.co.uk
The contents of Volume 2 are:
The Essence of Dust by Mike Chinn
Highjacking the Lord of Light by Tais Teng
Out in the Wildlands by Martin Owton
Zale and Zedril by Susan Murrie Macdonald
The Amulet and the Shadow by Steve Dilks
Antediluvia: Seasons of the World by Andrew Darlington
A Thousand Words for Death by Pedro Iniguez
Stone Snake by Dev Agarwal
Seven Thrones by Phil Emery
The Eater of Gods by Adrian Cole
Illustrations by Jim Pitts. Other than for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Parallel Universe Publications is officially closed for submissions at the moment.
