BFS 12, Flute and Harp Reviewed on “Nemonymous” Blog

Well, the blog’s formal name is RAMEAU’S NEPHEW, for (I believe) the 18th Century French writer and critic Denis Diderot’s philosophical satire Le Neveu de Rameau ou La Satire Seconde.  Be that as it may, a few days ago it included a review of the BRITISH FANTASY SOCIETY JOURNAL #12 (see below, December 9) including, as one scrolls down, this about my story “Flute and Harp.”

“Playing together, they syncopated, their melodies weaving.  Trading crescendoes.

“…not exactly the duelling banjos in ‘Deliverance’ or the clinching love between fist-tapping warriors amid this journal’s earlier fiction, but more a feminine symbiosis of ‘augmenting rhythms’ within music and gentle love’s passion.  This is a major work of some sumptuous substance that I enjoyed, combining previous Dunsanyan elements and, inter alia, the honest-to-goodness tunnelling of culverts reminding me of similar in The Allotment and Nielsens’s version of Wonderland, all from the point of view of a ratcatcher in this tractably believable fantasy world, where ghouls and tombs are the effectively gruesome backdrop to the two women’s love and sacrifice, and, yes, the music of words themselves as well as the conjured music that I believe I can actually hear within what the words describe.”

I might note the “fantasy world” is that of the Tombs, of which I’ve written a number of stories (ah, now comes the plug) including three that appear in THE TEARS OF ISIS.  (Also one can be found in STRANGE MISTRESSES:  TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE and three in DARKER LOVES:  TALES OF MYSTERY AND REGRET, among various other publications, for more on which one can click on their pictures in the center column).  And more immediately, the “nemonymous” nephew’s review can be read in its entirety by pressing here.