Tales From the Perilous Realm

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It’s been a week of very real experiences, growth, and adult functionality and I honestly don’t think I could have made it through in tact without the aid of my chosen read. When the realities of the world are banging at your door, sometimes the best method of relaxing after dealing with them is going into a very unreal world. Yay voyeurism! So this week, I conversed with dragons, travelled to Faery, watched a painter pain his afterlife, and followed a dog to the moon. This week’s book was Tales From the Perilous Realm by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Made up of five separate works, Tales From the Perilous Realm is a gorgeous array of bedtime stories filled with beauty, adventure, magic, and meaning. In Roverandom, a poor little dog gets made littler by a wizard and goes on all sorts of adventures in the hope of eventually getting back to his proper size. In Farmer Giles of Ham a simple farmer becomes a folk hero when he rids his town of a giant and then, later, a dragon. We get to travel all over Middle Earth with the poems that make up The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. In Smith of Wootton Major a child gets blessed with visits to Faery via the magic ingredients of a giant cake. And in Leaf by Niggle a kind-hearted painter gets put through his paces as he tries to paint the most magnificent tree, while also trying to aid his ‘friends and neighbours’.

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Tolkien’s simple prose is always a treat: accessible and digestible to a varying range of ages from eight to eighty. His stories are simple, sweet, and wholly immersive; the perfect thing for a spot of bedtime reading. The mixture of narrative and poetry is a particularly lovely part of this reading experience, as The Adventures of Tom Bombadil efficiently breaks up the strict, structural delight of narrative prose and covers a great expanse of ground in so short a space of time.

There’s not much more that can be said about a work of Tolkien’s that hasn’t been said already. Tales From the Perilous Realm is an enchanting and compelling bedtime read, perfect for any age and personality.

Author: J.R.R Tolkien

Published: Pictured edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers, Great Britain, 1997. Farmer Giles of Ham first published in 1949. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil first published in 1961. Leaf By Niggle first published in 1964. Smith of Wootton Major first published in 1967. Roverandom first published in 1998.

Illustrations by Alan Lee.

Labyrinths

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There is something fascinating and enthralling in reading anthologies or collected works of authors – especially when done in a continuous bout. I find it very intriguing to pick out the niche nuances, unique tricks or quirks of the author, and spot the recurring theme of the works. I just finished enjoying such an experience, having just closed the cover of Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.

Labyrinths is a collection of short fictional stories, essays, and parables that explore the compelling and contrasting methods of thinking in which mankind tries to understand the world, their selves, and their gods. The ‘labyrinths’ of the title refers to everything and nothing in the human experience; the literal labyrinths of a house, the labyrinths of one’s mind, the endless labyrinths of theology, philosophy, mythology, and idealism.

 I found it fascinating and provocative; an enjoyable challenge that raises more questions than it answers and almost metafictively becomes a comment or an examination of itself. Borges’ doomed and dispirited cast of characters reflect a self-deprecating – almost loathing – omniscient narrator and author who in turns takes an almost fiendish delight in torturing both characters and readers alike with questions and scenarios that are both unanswerable and the simplest of things to fathom.

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Citing renown and celebrated works such as The Divine Comedy and Don Quixote, as well as featuring cameos from Pascal, Judas, Kafka, and Bernard Shaw, Borges explores these conflicting ideologies that humanity has invented to refute, recast, disassemble, and reinvent literary tropes, traditions, behaviours of the fictional heroes, and the world theories put forward by other literary giants. Thus, turning the entire collected work into another step that keeps the paved road of literature going: ever winding forwards and backwards without an end in sight – a twisted labyrinth.

It's a fascinating read and indeed a challenge, the reward being a widened sense of perception and ability to question what is and what is not.

Author: Jorge Luis Borges, 1962

Published: First published in the USA by New Directions, 1964. Pictured edition published by Penguin Books, 1970.

The Necronomicon

 

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So, for a little bit of context, I have decided to constantly have at least two books on the go: one that I read during to day, either on my way to work or during my lunch break, and the other to read in the morning and evening. I started this practice when I read my way through Edgar Allen Poe’s collected works (which took me ages, but I did finish it) and have since then closed the cover on another epic bedtime-reading adventure: Lovecraft’s The Necronomicon.

This 800+ page monstrous tome has taken me months and months and months, but I can finally say that I have read it! For those wanting to get into H.P. Lovecraft, it’s a good place to start, featuring many of his most celebrated works including At the Mountains of Madness, Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Curious Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Stories filled with a chilling blend of horror and science fiction.

I am proud to have achieved such a feat, and am very happy to now be able to say, ‘yes I’ve read some Lovecraft’, but I have to admit it was a looong journey. For those not familiar, Lovecraft (while cool and celebrated) is hard to read. His prose is dense, wordy, and oftentimes pretentious, favouring long and ponderous words that have fallen out of common vocabulary. But while the writing itself can be very tricky to wrap ones’ head around (don’t even get me started on dialogue), one can’t deny that the drama and narratives of the stories still make their way unimpeded into the reader’s mind through incredible imagery and wholly creepy and original ideas of the horrific. The plights of the protagonists are made more compelling because a lot of the horror that Lovecraft writes about is beyond the comprehension of the human mind, thus fear culminating in madness is a common theme throughout his stories. The unreliable narrator treads a fine line in various tales, as most are recounted by a witness or survivor who makes it plain to the reader that they can’t even trust in what their own senses perceived. 

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The stories of Lovecraft are fun and exciting, though the reading experience can be a long, dense, uphill struggle: a little like wading through a tar pit. However, the payoff is there and there is a second layer of pride that comes with being able to say, ‘I’ve read the Necronomicon’. For horror novel fans, Lovecraft is a canon must-read, and if you can get past the intense racism, his stories and exciting, spooky, and enjoyable. 

Author: H. P. Lovecraft

Published: This commemorative edition was compiled and padded with editorial material by Stephen Jones, 2008. First published in Great Britain by Gollancz, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, London, 2008. 

Tales of the Unexpected

 

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To me, nothing seems like a worse omen than beginning a new year in a reading rut. It’s taken me more than a week to overcome it, but I’m finally here; having just closed to the cover on Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected: a book that took me way longer to finish than was necessary. 

Tales of the Unexpected is a collection of mature short stories from one of my favourite children’s authors. They share a common theme of strangeness, wackiness, and sinisterness, sadly with most of them finishing before you really sink your teeth into it. Beginning with a tale in which a father jokingly bets his daughter’s hand in marriage in a wine-tasting gamble and finishing with a couple who believe they have found the reincarnation of Liszt in a stray cat, Tales of the Unexpected can be best described as a quirky collection of Dahl’s experimental forays into genre. 

There’s a lot happening within its pages, ranging from thriller to science fiction, and potentially even horror. While some of the stories are dark and twistedly funny and satisfyingly whole, such as Lamb to the Slaughter, which tells the story of a women killing her husband with a leg of lamb and then feeding the murder weapon to the investigating officers, others read a little more like introductory snippets for a wider story that gets cut off as soon as some real drama starts happening. While every idea is different and interesting indeed, there are some definite hit and miss moments with stories landing a high score, while others left me wanting more. I think it was this strange mixture of complete and incomplete that made me struggle with this book. 

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Although I was left feeling more or less unaffected by this book, I still believe that it’s worth delving into, as it shows a different and unexplored side of a celebrated author. There’s intelligence, versatility, and dark underlying humour in every tale. 

Author: Roald Dahl, 1954-69

Published: First seven published in Someone Like You, by Secker & Warburg, 1954. Remaining stories published in Kiss Kiss, by Michael Joseph, 1960. All stories published in Twenty-Nine Kisses From Roald Dahl, Michael Joseph 1969.

The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe

 

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It’s been a bit of a long bout between reading adventures. As a reader I have been trying to exercise and strengthen my abilities by juggling. Whilst I have concluded that this is something that I can do, it is not something that I like to do. The last book that I closed the cover on was one that I had been working on solidly for months. Plucked from the shelf with the intent of serving as my bedtime reads with tea in the evening and then morning reads with coffee, sharing my attention between the two books meant that this one took me absolute ages. An epic challenge that I have finally triumphed over, this book was The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe.

Featuring absolutely everything from Poe’s gothic thrillers such as The Fall of the House of Usher and Murders in the Rue Morgue, to his Verne-esque tales of scientific adventure, classic adventures tales akin to Louis Stevenson, and of course his various poems, this book is an absolute rollercoaster of a reading experience. Being a chunky anthology, I most certainly would not recommend going through it in one sitting. My thought process behind my choice to read it was to read a tale or two before bed in nice, manageable instalments. Even so, Poe’s incredible prose, long-winded descriptions, and sometimes brain-imploding plots are definitely not the light evening read I had envisioned. 

Of course.

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Most modern readers will probably only know Poe for The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Raven and if there is one thing that I have discovered from reading his collected works, it is that he was such a well-rounded and versatile writer. At any point within these pages one could mistake the story for one from Jules Verne or Robert Louis Stevenson. Whilst some tales are an absolute struggle, others are gripping, thrilling, and captivating from the get-go and –at the end of it all- one cannot help but feel a little smarter and more culturally enriched for having read them all. 

Author: Edgar Allen Poe

Published: Random House, Inc., New York, 1938. Penguin Books, 1982.

Fragile Things

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Most of my readers (if indeed I have any at all) will probably know that I adore stories and the telling of them in all their forms. What you may not know is that I am also an aspiring writer with my first story in the works (a collaboration with my grandmother). Recently, I had hit that horrible, dark, and seemingly immovable wall of writers’ block and the work on my first draft has been suffering aaand making me somewhat reluctant to do anything (hence the terrible gaps between book reviews).

But I am happy to say that I have finally managed to scale that despairingly tall wall and it was thanks to Neil Gaiman! Reading his anthology of short stories and poems, Fragile Things, reinvigorated my love of narrative and stirred a little current in the stagnant pool that had become the narrative flow of my story. So... my greatest thanks to you, Neil.

Fragile Things is a collection of short stories and poems that both entertain the readers and work as a wondrous exploration into literature, genre, the longevity of both, and how past authors’ works affect the present. Beginning with a mystery that screams Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, transcending into delightful young adult sci-fi, crisp and clever poetry, explorations into Norse mythology and faerie tales, Lovecraft, Poe, and finally a spin-off of one of Gaiman’s own most celebrated works.

What I loved the most about this book was how much it said about the author. Gaiman is a person who really adores stories and Fragile Things shows just how much stories and literature in general has affected and shaped him. The glorious melting pot of genres and narrative tropes that is this book is truly inspiring and a real celebration of stories and their wonder.

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Gaiman shows off all his creative muscles with this collection, producing fantastic narratives that are original, but at the same time are reminiscent of other canonical works.

This was also one of the few books that my co-workers have seen my nose buried in and have jerked me out of my reverie with exclamations of “how good is it?!” (and I try to read a book a week, so they see me with my nose buried in a lot). Anyone, absolutely anyone who loves reading must read Fragile Things!

Fragile Things is a collection of short stories and poems written by Neil Gaiman. It was published in 2006 by Headline Review, an imprint of Headline Publishing Group.

Norse Mythology

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Continuing on the mythology bender theme of the week, this week saw me nestled down on the couch enjoying the magical tales from Norse mythology as retold by one of my favourite authors, Neil Gaiman.

Norse Mythology chronicles a number of well-known stories concerning the gods, giants, and monsters of Norse mythology, the numerous tricks of Loki, the various adventures of Thor (including how he got his signature hammer), and the uncountable bouts of wisdom from Odin the all-father, all leading up to the inevitable Ragnarok, the end of things. A glorious mixture of fantasy, creation myth, and fun bedtime story, this book is a wonder; very easy to read and highly enjoyable.

Like Stephen Fry’s Mythos and Heroes, Norse Mythology really shows Gaimain’s love for the content and characters. As is depicted in a number of his other books, namely Good Omens and American Gods, his fascination with myth and creation stories that early people created to make sense of the world is what makes this book so consumable, as the excitement and admiration is gloriously apparent in the prose, like a small boy retelling his favourite story, only with a better vocabulary and use of grammar.

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The stories he tells with a modern twist of inflection and voice, but they still retain their traditional short and predominantly oral tone, which would make this book a perfect one to read out loud to the younglings at story time or bedtime. It’s a truly wonderful book!

Norse Mythology is a collection of short stories and myths as retold by Neil Gaiman. It was published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in 2017.

Heroes

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Continuing on the Stephen fry bender, this week saw me curled up on the couch reacquainting myself with those most fabulous of timeless tales, those of the Ancient Greek heroes. A brilliant collection of magic, murder, misdeeds, and meanders, Heroes is a wonderful continuation of Fry’s loving exploration into the ancient world while also being a delightfully exciting and entertaining examination of some of the most classic tropes and genres of storytelling.

With the loving nurture of man by Prometheus being mused over by the Gods on Olympus and the titan on a rocky hillside being continuously (and torturously) devoured, mankind is fast taking their place in the world, indeed they are making it their own. A time when the Gods no longer reign seems inevitable, as people like Heracles, Orpheus, Jason, Atalanta, and Theseus run about performing incredible feats of strength, wit, and will. With heroes like these, who need deities?

Perhaps what I adore most about this book and its predecessor, Mythos, is that they are both wonderful, fresh, and modern retellings of some of the oldest and classic stories, and the books really show Fry’s love for the subject. Mythos and Heroes are more than just a collection of sparkling bedtime stories, they are a celebration of theatre, performance, and cultural arts. Fry injects the tales with fun little pops of his own opinions and jokes, giving them new life, as well as footnotes that don’t just explain how to pronounce some of the more confusing Greek names, but highlight just how much these myths and stories have influenced theatre, poetry, and the arts over the centuries.

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The stories themselves he retells with that lovely, intelligent and sophisticated wit that he’s got, which just makes everything sparkle and another thing that I really love about these books is that they so beautifully tell the well-known stories (e.g. that of Heracles), as well as a number of the smaller and less well-known ones (like that of Atalanta, of whom I have never heard).

Heroes is the perfect way to while away the hours in a delightful, voyeuristic swirl of excitement, danger, suspense, and hilarity. I would highly recommend both of Fry’s books on the myths of Ancient Greece, as they tick all the boxes for a truly wonderful reading experience.

Heroes is the follow-up book to Mythos, written by Stephen Fry. An exciting anthology of tales, it was published by Michael Joseph in 2018.

Mythos

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Fairytales and myths have been around for millennia; indeed they are the oldest form of entertainment and making sense out of the world around us. Amongst the most celebrated stories in human history are the myths from Ancient Greece that feature Gaia and Ouranos, the Titans, and, of course, the Olympian gods. Many, many, many interpretations and retellings of these stories have been passed down through the ages and, this week, I took a wander amongst the olive groves and vineyards with Stephen Fry and his beautiful retelling of the ancient stories, Mythos.

The book is a chronological, at least as chronological as can be established through laborious research, narration of all the well-known (and not so well-known) ancient Greek mythology beginning with Chaos, then moving through the Titanomachy (rule of the babe-eating Kronos and his kind) before moving on to the war between the Gods and the Titans and finally ending on the high notes of the creation and government of mankind.

It doesn’t matter who’s narrating, the myths of the Ancient Greek world have always been and will always been incredible, and enrapturing experiences that excite the imagination as well as provide explanations for the world around us. We’ve all been exposed to the wondrous stories of Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hera, Aphrodite, etc… usually in primary school where the watered down stories of magic immortal beings instil us with awe, but Fry brings new life to them for a wider range of readers that, not only keep the ‘educational’ tone (e.g. the story of Persephone and its establishment of the calendar seasons), but regale readers with the tales told in  a little more adult and risqué way (as all great fairytales were before they were watered down by Disney and the arrival of animated cinema).

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Fry’s eloquent and sophisticated vocal tone makes for a wondrous voice in which to read these tales, and his inclusion of personal remarks within the text and the footnotes, make the book unique reading experience, mixing the exciting, story-time tone, with one of passionate dinner conversation.

While the collection of stories can ultimately speak for themselves, Fry’s fascination and regard for the tales, their characters, and their morals/lessons, makes Mythos a highly enjoyable read that is perfect for either binge-reading or just coming back to every now and again. I absolutely adored it.

Mythos was written my Stephen Fry and published by Penguin Random House in 2017. It’s a glorious and succinct collection of stories coupled with beautiful images of artists renditions through the ages; a true celebration of ancient Greek mythology.

Deltora Quest 2

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And so, like all exciting and classic fantasy series, the adventures continue this week with Deltora Quest 2! A trilogy rather than a saga, this collection of tales is every bit as rollicking, exciting, and action-packed as the first, with more mythical lands, monsters, and dangers awaiting our heroes on practically every page!

Lief has banished the Shadow Lord back to the Shadowlands and assumed his role of King of Deltora, but all is still not well. With so many of his people imprisoned and enslaved in the Shadowlands, the rest of Deltora is pushing Lief to march on the cursed realm and rescue them. Unwilling to engage on such a suicide mission, Lief is distant and spends his time locked away in the library trying to find a way to help his people. He finally finds it in a legendary fable about the magical Pirran Pipe, possibly the only thing that could defeat the Shadow Lord once and for all! And so another quest begins…

Immediately, the first thing that I really liked about this part of the series was how it so simply, but effectively changed my attitude towards certain characters. By now we have a pretty strong sense of who these characters are and whether we like them or not, and Deltora Quest 2 takes those attachments and turns them over so that you quickly find yourself siding with characters you found annoying in the first adventure and looking forward to seeing characters you liked in the first series get their come-uppance because they’ve suddenly become irritating. It’s a very interesting exploration into the reader-character chemistry and Rodda expertly plays on it, morphing it so that the reading experience of this series differs from the first one.

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In terms of construct and narrative, it’s more or less exactly the same; a solid and perfectly adequate hero’s journey and quest narrative filled with wonderful bouts of action and suspense. Taking place in a world underneath a world, Deltora Quest 2 has more nightmarish monsters and creations than I could have imagined and, as our heroes travel further towards the ultimate bad place, there is a delicious and strongly established feeling of keen hopelessness as every chapter proves to be a classic example of 'out of the frying pan and into the furnace'. Even experienced readers have to take a step back and wonder whether everything will work out all right in the end. 

The entire thing is a wonderful play on the emotional attachment to the quest and characters, making Deltora Quest 2 just as (if not, more) thrilling as the first!

Deltora Quest 2 is the second series of adventures in Deltora written by Emily Rodda and published by Scholastic in 2002. The series is made up of three books: The Cavern of Fear, The Isle of Illusion, and The Shadowlands.

Deltora Quest

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This week at our house, it’s been an interesting journey of reading and observing. For Christmas, I got my partner the entire Deltora Quest series –books that he loved from his childhood- and it has proved to be a wonderful present for both of us as he reread them on a delightful wave of nostalgia, and then he got to witness me reading them for the first time (which he has said he's quite enjoyed).

I recall having the first two books when I was little, but I never actually read them, having been given them when I was just getting out of the habit of reading. Yep, I missed out! But this week I have made up for lost time!

Deltora Quest establishes the world of Deltora, a realm of seven tribes that has been united under one King for centuries. But over the years, the Kings’ rule has grown lapse and the evil Shadow Lord has used that weakness to infiltrate the kingdom and take over! Sixteen years after the Shadow Lord usurped the throne and began his dictatorship, young Lief discovers an amazing truth about his family, which sends him on a great quest to travel the lands of Deltora to find the seven powerful gems that fit into the fabled Belt of Deltora, which, when worn by the true king, is the only thing that can defeat the Shadow Lord and save Deltora. Lief’s quest is dangerous, filled with monsters and magic, but with the help of an ex-palace guard named Barda and a wild girl called Jasmine, he rises to the challenge to save his home from tyranny.

This first series of eight books is just good, fantasy fun. It’s a recognisable hero’s journey, written in very simple prose for its young audience and positively filled to the brim with exciting action and adventure.

While the story itself can be a tad predictable for an older audience, the brilliance of Deltora Quest lies in the amazing visual world that Rodda has created. Every book is filled with beautiful or barren settings that one can easily picture, not to mention striking characters about whose trustworthiness we keep being buffeted back and forth on, and piles upon piles of impressive and terrifying monsters. Yeah, these books are all about the monsters! Rowling’s great basilisk has got nothing on the slimy, blood-soaked slug creature from The Maze of the Beast and her Devil’s snare is tame and tickling when compared to the grippers! Don't even get me started on who would win if a boggart faced off with an ol!

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The other thing that I particularly loved about this series is Rodda’s adherence to recognisable fantasy tropes and tricks, and then turning a few of them completely on their ears. On more than one occasion during the books, she indulges in that common trick of hiding secrets in plain sight, –riddles and that sort of thing- but she mixes them up so that some are metaphorical and others are very literal so that when the answer is revealed, you’re kicking yourself for not realising it earlier. It all adds to the suspense and excitement that makes up the rich reading experience of these books; being a perfect blend of fantasy adventure and -sometimes- detective mystery novel!

I am officially hooked and already into the next instalment of the series. See you all next week!

Deltora Quest is a fantasy series of 8 books written by Emily Rodda and published by Scholastic Australia in 2000. In order the books are: The Forests of Silence, The Lake of Tears, City of Rats, The Shifting Sands, Dread Mountain, The Maze of the Beast, The Valley of the Lost, and Return to Del.

The Jungle Book

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First off, my apologies to readers for the lengthy absence; it would appear that I am going through a stage of apathy and mental conditioning that prevents me from finding the point in doing or attempting anything bar getting out of bed. It has been three weeks since my last book review and, whilst I am about to finally break that drought, believe me that it has not gone unfelt and unforgiven on my part.

Struggling with my latest literary venture (I’m only halfway through so a review is yet to come), I decided to set it aside and see if I couldn’t knock out a quick read just to have something to write about and keep the blog fresh. It took longer than expected, but here it is: that classic Rudyard Kipling novel made into a memorable Disney flick (twice) – The Jungle Book.

A classic nursery tale or bedtime story, The Jungle Book (not that I need to remind anyone) tells the story of Mowgli, a human baby who was saved from the tiger Shere Khan and raised in the jungle by a pack of wolves. Despite being safe in the jungle thanks to the teachings of Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther, Mowgli’s life remains in danger as Shere Khan vows to hunt him down and kill him.

This is but the main focus of The Jungle Book; there are a number of other short stories set in the jungle and at sea with anthropomorphised animals being the protagonists, including Kotick the White Seal, Little Toomai of the Elephants, and animals in her Majesty’s service in India.

All Kipling’s stories within The Jungle Book exhibit a sometimes grim and hostile and other times honorary and humble attitude toward the native fauna of India and their relationship with Man. Rich in jungle fables, no doubt plucked from his own experiences growing up, The Jungle Book is a good read for all ages as its content, and a number of its heroes, is directed at children while its prose is mature and geared toward adult readers.

Image credit: Encyclopedia Britannica

This particularly, is what makes The Jungle Book so all-inclusive: it’s a collection of children’s tales that is supposed to be read by adults. There’s this wonderful, traditional, oral inclination when you read these, much better suited to a schoolroom or fireside in front of a group of youngsters.

The stories themselves are sweet, exciting, and have something of the fairytale adventure vibe to them, much like the Indian equivalent of the Brothers Grimm. I found it most enjoyable.

The Jungle Book was written by Rudyard Kipling in 1894 and was first published in magazines between 1893 and ’94, accompanied by illustrations from Kipling’s father, John Lockwood Kipling.            

Armageddon Outta Here

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As the series gets increasingly exhilarating, action-packed, and all-around intense, it’s really lovely that Landy has injected smaller books that pop us in the same universe, but distance us from its central drama (a bit like the Marvel movies) so that we can catch our breath and come to terms with whatever terrifying plot twist or character loss we’ve just encountered.

Armageddon Outta Here is an anthology of several short stories and one novella that keeps us playing with our favourite characters, but in between bouts of serious drama. Set between the various volumes in the series –and there’s a chronology in the front to help us keep track- the book chronicles a number of fun and exiting stories that answer a few questions about certain characters and their relationships with others. Beginning with Across A Dark Plain, which chronicles the Dead Men’s tracking of Nefarian Serpine across America as well as how the grudge between Skulduggery Pleasant and Solomon Wreath began, the book tells a series of exciting adventures (all about the end of the world of course) and ends with a sneak peek at a chapter of the final book (obviously when it was believed the series was to end).

This is where we get to see Landy’s love of certain genres and appreciation of iconic artists and works, as well as how they’ve worked as an influence on the series itself. The book, being a collection of short mysteries, is rather reminiscent of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as a whole. We’ve got a classic Western vibe that infuses the first story, there’s definitely some Douglas Adams-ness happening in the fun weirdness of The Wonderful Adventures of Geoffrey Scrutinous, a little bit of Stephen King’s It creeps into Get Thee Behind Me Bubba Moon, and the final story, The Button, reminded me particularly of that sci-fi thriller with Cameron Diaz and Frank Langella (The Box).

Image credit: Skulduggery Pleasant Wiki-Fandom

The segmented structure of the book makes it so very easy to just sit and power through and, for the most part, Landy continues to write in the voice of an omniscient narrator that we know and love; Bubba Moon is the one exception, written as a reflection in the first person.

Filled with as much excitement, action, and fun as the series itself, Armageddon Outta Here provides a really lovely respite between the intensity of Last Stand of Dead Men and the final book, The Dying of the Light. It’s a great read and, in a way, is strategically placed so that we might have enough strength to take on the final battle.

Armageddon Outta Here is a short story collection set within the Skulduggery Pleasant universe by Derek Landy and published in 2014 by HarperCollins Children’s Books.

Anthology of Fear: 20 Haunting Stories for Winter Nights

There are times when you don’t want to read an entire 300-page intrigue, but yearn for something short; still packing that suspense and delivering a punch. I found this exact thing in a beautiful hardback little gem sitting precariously atop a pile of pre-loved novels in a Naremburn second-hand bookshop. 

The book: Anthology of Fear: 20 Haunting Stories for Winter Nights. It’s a gorgeous selection of chilling gothic horror stories from an undeniably captivating list of authors. The list looks a little something like this: Mary Braddon who, you’ll remember, wrote the delightfully intriguing Lady Audley’s Secret, Nathaniel Hawthorne who’s name cannot be brought up without attaching The Scarlet Letter, Washington Irving who brought us The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, W.W. Jacobs, M.R. James, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Frederick Marryat, Edith Nesbit, Bram Stoker (no need to remind you what he’s famous for), and Edith Wharton. With such a strong list of credentials, the appeal of this anthology is, as I said, undeniable! 

Whilst the supernatural or paranormal, so ghosts and vamps and unholy agents are the recurrent theme of many of these tales, there is a good sense of variety on offer. From Jacobs’ terrifying tale of the magic monkey paw that grants three wishes in a most Faustian way, to Stoker’s horrid story of a gruesome revenge executed on man by a cat, Anthology of Fear does exactly what its title advertises; stringing up multiple tight threads of suspense and anxiety and then bringing them to perfect breaking point by either providing payoff or leaving the ending open for you to make up your own mind as to what happens. 

The balance between the various realms of Gothic, from the religious evil of devil-worshippers and corruption of purity in Hawthorne’s story through to the idea of villainous houses and traumatic landscapes, reminiscent of Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn in Irving’s tale, and then the many paranormal horrors of ghosts and hauntings that colour the works of Braddon, Stoker, Wharton, James, and Nesbit make this book a continually enthralling read. 

Many of the Gothic tropes are explored; the fear of the foreign Other, corruption and decay of human decency and purity, the past haunting the present, destruction of innocence, even a little bit of homo-erotica, giving each of the stories this extra layer of depth, meaning, and complexity, so that they manage to accomplish a lot given that they are not very long. Whilst reading these stories, you are strung through an array of emotions and it’s very telling of the level of talent that these authors have that these stories can steer you through such emotional turbulence in so short a space of time. 

This book is filled with everything from pirates, to vampires, to werewolves, ghosts, manifestations of Death, extreme devices of human torture, witchcraft, and unholy unions, all accompanied by striking imagery and an ever-present feeling that the worst is yet to come. I absolutely loved it!

Different Seasons

From the narrative master of horrors and thrillers comes this collection of four novellas that exhibit the lighter side of Stephen King. To give some perspective as to the types of stories we’re talking about, two of these tales were made into the cinematically brilliant and critically acclaimed films TheShawshank Redemption and Stand By Me! In Different Seasons, it’s a change of pace for King and a different type of story than we’re used to reading from him, making the book refreshing, confronting, and compelling. 

Hope Springs Eternal (‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’): This story chronicles the journey of federal prison inmate, Andy Dufresne, from his arrival in Shawshank Prison to his eventual escape. 

Narrated in the first person, it’s told from the point of view of inmate, Red, who observes Andy’s story with much detail and interest. Whilst it is technically a first-person register, the story does have this third-person omniscient tone that King manages to create beautifully in Red’s narration. In this way, readers get to learn so much intimate detail about two characters rather than just one and it’s this and Red’s relationship with Andy that makes the tale so beautiful. 

But despite the clever blend of the first and third person omniscient narration, I did find that sometimes the pace of the story would slow and become a bit of a drone making it hard to continually pick up and read. It pays to watch the film first as the scene-by-scene reruns that the mind is capable of adds to the page-turning inspiration. 

But negative aside, it’s a story of patience, bravery, incredible discipline and determination, and hope and it makes for a very compelling read. 

Summer of Corruption (‘The Apt Pupil’): Tells the story of a young, talented, and promising student who, out of some morbid fascination, tracks down a war criminal and entices him into a strange union that threatens them both as it progresses. 

Written in the third person, this story begins a little slow and then starts to heat up when the past of the elderly man that the boy befriends is revealed and their relationship starts to develop. Taking a sharp turn away from the hopeful feelings inspired by Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, this story explores the corruption of innocence and young potential in a really shocking and confronting way. 

King’s incredible attention to detail works to make the more dramatic and confronting scenes really gut-churning, whilst the nonchalant way in which he describes events through the alternating tones and perspectives of the two central characters, establishes a strong and growing sense of dread and serious disturbance. It’s gritty, and shocking, and so damned compelling. 

The Loss of Innocence (‘The Body’): This exhibition of bildungsroman (more or less ‘coming of age’) is the best in the book I think! It tells the story of four boys on the cusp of adolescence venturing into the woods to find the body of a missing boy, discovering life, death, and the loss of innocence along the way. 

A riveting story told in the first person register as a flashback, it’s one of King’s most intimate stories: entirely character-driven with an impeccable attention to detail of the culture being described. You do feel as though you are there in that town, in that year, at that time. Yes, of the four this is the best! 

A Winter’s Tale (‘The Breathing Method’): Depicts a man telling the story of a man who told a most incredible story about an unmarried pregnant woman determined to give birth…no matter what. 

Admittedly the weakest story in the book, this is the classic story within in a story and one thing that it does achieve quite successfully is create a sense of dread and anticipation without providing payoff at the end. Readers are left with so many unanswered questions, which is probably for the best, and no sense of justification for the effort put in to reading the story about the pregnant woman. 

Having said that, the story about the pregnant woman does provide some weird and horrible closure in the form of blood and horror, which King does all very well. 

It’s simply written and we don’t really get a good sense of any of the characters depicted, so it’s hard to say what it is that keeps us turning the pages. But we do. 

Amongst the intimate registers, empowering tones, and incredible and graphic detail, King also subtly references the tales within each other, which brings another level of enjoyment to the whole thing. Keep an eye out for references to Andy in ‘The Apt Pupil’: particularly enjoyable. 

Filled with action, violence, drama, suspense, growth, despair, and even a little comedy, Different Seasons is an apt title for this collection of novellas that demonstrate King’s ability to write stories with heart as well as horror.