A Son of the Rock

Luna Press, 2025, 176 p including Author’s note on Finding Inspiration in Scottish Folklore. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

This is a collection of one novella and 22 short stories – some very short; the title story is barely three pages long, a couple are only two, with the longest, The Frittening, just twelve – all taking inspiration from Scotland’s folklore, superstitions, or landscape.

The short pieces are loosely bunched under headings for the four seasons with each section’s stories prefaced with a wood- (or lino-)cut engraving of one of the Moon’s principal phases and a scene illustrative of a story within it. A ‘Bonus Section’ at the end outlines those particular tales and legends which sparked Croal’s imagination.

An individual story here can contain relatively familiar apparitions or hauntings – selkies, kelpies, hagstones, seer stones, magpies, omens and shape shifting, Will-o’-the-Wisp, the Otherworld, Changelings – but others like the Sluagh, the Frittening or the Boneless, the Cat-Sith, the Ghillie-Dhugh, Baobhan Sith and the Fiddlers of Tomnahurich Hill, the Cailleach, the Nuckelavee, the Marool, the Ceasg, Bee-telling, the Sea-Mither, Each Uisge, the Wulver, the Bride and Angus, may be less so. Some are set in depopulated post-disaster worlds and border on Science Fiction; others touch on gothic, weird horror, dark fantasy, and solarpunk. Many draw stimulus from nature, climate, and the environment, with feminist and eco themes prominent. Croal’s Author’s Note informs us three of her tales do not have a specific derivation but are original to her.

Hence, among others, we have omens in the sky, tappings on windows, a strange puddle emerging on a doorstep, pebbles appearing in a nest in the night, a will-o’-the-wisp manifesting more strongly each day, a fiddler finding his muse in a painting whose scene gradually changes, the green man as a malevolent influence, the thoughts of the last surviving whale as it roams the deserted seas. Except for a common thread of the sea there is little beyond the Gaelic names of the various phantasms to mark these stories out as specifically Scottish.

The novella, Daughter of Fire and Water, with its intermingling of gods/goddesses and mortals in fact reads more like a Greek, or perhaps Norse, myth – except for the prince in it being named Angus.

Taken individually the stories here are perfectly fine but the cumulative effect of Croal’s general style tends to the dry. She has a fondness for italicized paragraphs, especially in throat-clearing beginnings, and there is the occasional odd choice of verb, which can be jarring. There tends to be a kind of distance between the tale and the reader and the stories are too often told rather than shown while some are not really given enough room to breathe fully. There is not much emotion evoked in these tales but then stories of weird creatures and the whole apparatus of fairy tale have always been admonitory in intent.

This is a collection to be sipped rather than quaffed. (Not really an option available to a reviewer.)

Curiously, a few lines on Content Notes and Warnings come dead last in the book though a signal to them does lie on the publishing information page. Surely if such warnings are needed they ought to be more prominently placed?

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- focussing (focusing,) maw (more than once. A maw is not a mouth,) several USianisms (cookies, snuck, dove [for dive,] inside of, etc,) sunk (several times; sank.) “The only muscle the woman moved was her mouth” (a mouth is not a muscle,) razor—sharp (razor-sharp,) sung (x 2, sang.) “She lay the Seer’s map on the table” (She laid the Seer’s map on the table.) “She was his only companion, his confidant” (she; therefore ‘confidante’,) “Then she said with sharp cruelty, ‘no. Not if you…’” (she said with sharp cruelty, ‘No. Not if you…’,) “Everyone knelt and lay the offerings at her feet” (and laid the offerings,) “all that kept me company were layers of clouds” (all that kept me company was ….) “If I wanted so bad not to be alone” (If I wanted so badly not to be alone,) “and lay it over my chest as a pendant” (and laid it over my chest,) “and lay her in blankets” (and laid her in.) “When the sea witch, turned away and disappeared” (doesn’t need the comma, which in fact detracts from the sense,)  “that I’d wove so carefully” (woven,) “mouth scrunched up into an eclipse” (only makes sense if ‘ellipse’ was meant,) a new paragraph that was not indented, a missing full stop, “span” (spun,) “as if expecting me turn into” (to turn into.) “‘Your association with them isn’t exactly customary’” (sense expects, ‘Your association with them isn’t exactly exemplary’,) sat (seated; or; sitting.) “The fall made the landscape blur, and then a screech” (needs clarification,) “there were no sign of burns or marks” (there was no sign.) “then he swept out the room” (as written this means he cleaned the room with a brush; what was intended was ‘he swept out of the room’,) “the hot water stung into my legs” (the hot water stung my legs,) focussed (focused, annoyingly used two pages earlier.) “They looked between one another” (looked at one another,) galivanted (gallivanted.) “Much of these stories are inspired by” (Many of these stories are.) “I became fascinated in the dark, strange, and rich folklore” (became fascinated by,) “rife with unexplained phenomenon” phenomena makes more sense.) “Hagstones are stones with natural holes bored in centre are thought to be,” (the holes can’t have been bored; plus the sentence needs an ‘and’ before ‘are thought’.)

Collins, 1949, 669 p, including 2 p Note, 5 p Contents and 6 p List of Characters.

The title of this book is, these days, liable to a different interpretation to the one it would have received on first publication. It is, of course, the third in the author’s Immortal Memory sequence of novels about the life of Robert Burns.

Here, after the printing of the Kilmarnock Edition of his poems, Burns sets out for Edinburgh – the gay world referred to above – to seek a second edition, this one printed in the capital, and finds his fame has preceded him. He is lionised and feted as the ploughman poet and Scotland’s bard in most quarters but still largely looked down on because of his origins.

Most of the intrigue revolves around Edinburgh bookseller and publisher William Creech who is quite clearly intent on exploiting him, offering Burns what to the poet is a large sum – fifty pounds – for his copyright. Even the offer’s swift increase to one hundred pounds then one hundred and fifty guineas does not arouse any suspicion. Only the inordinate amount of time to pay him the sums he is due from the publishing does that, by which juncture Burns has travelled through Scotland, at one point scribbling anti-government sentiments on a pub window in Stirling using his diamond pen, a transgression he later removes.

Burns doesn’t take much time settling in to his womanising habits. Within about a week, it seems, he is disporting with Peggy Cameron, a serving-girl in the Cowgate, on a shakedown under a table in her workplace and he takes up with various others of the fair sex, entering into a relationship with the woman he will write to as “Clarinda” while bedding her servant girl, Jenny Clow, on the side.

Among other luminaries he meets the Duchess of Gordon, a woman of some reputation – it is said none of her various children were sired by her husband – but no intimacy between them is implied. (How likely is that, given both their reputations?)

Peggy Chalmers is  otherwise the only woman in the book who spurns Burns’s allures (though she is attracted to him and Barke conveys that his intentions were honourable.) She tells him, “Where a woman’s concerned men are never content with friendship – and you are no exception … which is a gey pity.”

On the after Sunday Service proclivities of the church-going, Barke ascribes to Burns’s thoughts the idea that, “never, since John Knox came thundering out of Geneva, had the Scots, as a race, been able to imbibe their Presbyterian theology without the aid of strong drink”

He also describes the securing of the then reasonably recent Union of the Parliaments as unparalleled bribery, which had “enraged the Scottish people at the time; and the stench had lingered in their nostrils ever since.”

Barke also takes the opportunity to delve into the political situation in Scotland at the time where Henry Dundas “ruled Scotland on behalf of William Pitt” and made sure his cronies were able to ensure there were no obstacles to his will being observed.

On those wanderings about Scotland, travelling first south – as far as Newcastle – before returning to Mauchline via Dumfries to look over the land he might rent for farming at Ellisland and later a journey north to Inverness and Moray, during which he enjoys the playing of Fiddler Niel Gow, and comes back to Edinburgh via Aberdeenshire, he conceives the idea of reviving the fortunes of Scottish song. “In the songs of Scotland do we not find enshrined in words and in melody something of this essential goodness, simplicity and harmony that is essential to the ordinary, unlettered folk of our country? Our national songs have not been written by the learned and mighty, but by the humble and the unpretentious – by simple men and simple women” – in them are to be found the old truths and the old satisfaction of living. He notes that after the defeat of the Jacobites – still an aching wound – “Deadness and defeatism ate into what vitals remained of the old Gaelic economy.”

Barke does not wear his research lightly. Almost every gathering Burns goes to is attended by an extensive list of those present and their standing in Edinburgh society. This makes for trying reading at times. The Edinburgh scenes – and even the travelling ones – do not have the same immediacy as the accounts of Burns’s life in Ayrshire in the previous two volumes. It is only when he returns there, to be among his old cronies and reconciled with Jean Armour that the same sense of authority prevails.

Pedant’s corner:- Barke still spells Mauchline as Machlin. Otherwise; the customary commas are missing between words that form lists, “the bench of judges were thrown into variance” (the bench … was thrown,) “since all men are not corrupt all the time” (since not all men are corrupt all the time,) “had been mowed down” (mown down,) “who had rode away” (ridden away,) staunch (stanch,) the text can be read as if it was Edward I, Hammer of the Scots, whom Bruce defeated at Bannockburn, as he was mentioned in the previous paragraph, but “the final utter rout of Edward” was of Edward II, Calgacius (usually spelled Calgacus,) Mons Grampius  (Mons Graupius,) sunk (sank,) “the ruins of Elgin abbey” (it’s actually a cathedral’s ruins in Elgin.) “He would liked to have spent more time” (He would have liked to have spent more time,) “the Ochills” (It’s Ochils,) Calvanistic (x 2, it’s Calvinistic – used a few pages later!) “since he had rode put of Edinburgh” (ridden out,) the Ahasuerus’ sceptre” (Ahasuerus’s.)

Luna Press, 2025, 187 p. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

At the start of this novella Elif is the sole inhabitant of the apparently desert planet Maoira-I. At twelve years old she has hitherto known only the companionship of the AI, VAS-H, her Vital Auxiliary Support: H-unit, and her knowledge of other humans is derived solely from the films and shows available to her on screen.

Contact from Commander Isabel Aremu of the Interplanetary Mission, based on Polaris, who addresses Elif as Warden, comes to her out of the blue, as does the task she is assigned of growing, or attempting to grow, plants to see if Maoira-I might be a suitable future home for humanity. The Mission is on an indefinite space flight fleeing something unspecified back on Earth. VAS-H retrieves the seeds Elif will need, seeds she had not known were there, from the base’s storage freezer.

Part One centres on Elif via both a third person narrative tightly focused on her unfolding experiences and the log entries VAS-H asks her to compile. While these are not the reflections of an unreliable narrator they are those of one without knowledge of the full picture. Helping to fill in those gaps for the reader there are also two italicised sections dealing mainly with the consequences for Commander Aremu on Polaris of the Mission having to admit that Elif exists and its failures regarding her. This leads to Aremu’s replacement as contact by the much less sympathetic Lieutenant, later Commander, Julian Bishop.

In the meantime Elif uncovers a buried Transporter vehicle on the surface and learns to drive it while Maoira-I’s long-term climatic variations begin to manifest themselves.

Part Two makes a step change. Mission operative Rokeya Khan, whose grandfather Latif was on the original team to land on Maoira-I, has set off on her own to get to the planet and find out what happened. Her arrival shocks Elif but they learn to work together.

Rokeya’s presence is the catalyst for the discovery of what became of the original crew, one of whom, naturally, but against all protocol, must have been pregnant.

It also crystallises Elif’s feelings towards the rest of humanity and towards the only home she has ever known.

There are some caveats to this. The premise does stretch credibility a bit. Could an infant human really thrive under only the influence of an AI and old videos? Could she retain sanity even? Could the original expedition genuinely have been forgotten by the Mission for twelve years?

But Reza has written this well. She captures Elif’s initial ingenuousness and growing confidence. The claustrophobic atmosphere of an isolated environment comes across, as does the slightly sinister sway of an AI companion.

This is an impressive long form debut.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:-  shrunk (x3, shrank,) CO2 (several times. It’s CO₂,) “wherever the fleet of ships were” (wherever the fleet … was,) fit (fitted,) “than several millions” (than several million,) “about to reach a crescendo” (you don’t reach a crescendo, you reach its end,) sunk (sank.) “Rokeya’s opened her mouth in shock” (Rokeya opened her mouth.)

Arcadia, 2024, 380 p. Reviewed for ParSec 13.

It is a usually unspoken assumption that it is the duty of a reviewer not to imbue a review with spoilers. Yet what to do if to give some flavour of the contents (something necessary to any review,) makes that all but impossible? Not that in this case any comments would really be much of a spoiler. The manner in which the story is told along with the structure of the book manage to do that without requiring any assistance. The main narrative is told in four Parts but its title (The Queen) is a hefty pointer to the contents, and the title page itself, plus those introducing the Prologue, each Part, the three separate sections of Part IV, plus the Epilogue, are blazoned with pale drawings of wasps. The Queen? Wasps? Some sort of vespine nightmare, pheromone driven, is surely being not merely hinted at, but promised. Moreover, the Prologue pretty much embodies the climactic scene, so anyone reading that already knows what the spoilers are. The rest of the text describes how the scenario got to that point.

The main action unfolds over a period of around twenty-four hours in June 2018 in the town of Saint Catharines, Ontario. Margaret June Carpenter (Cherry) has closeted herself at home since the disappearance of four students from her school, Northfield, several weeks before: three boys, Chad Dearborn, Will Stinson, Allan Teller, who are remembered fondly and worriedly, and Margaret’s best friend Charity Atwater (Plum,) who isn’t.

Margaret’s isolation is ended when a surprise package arrives containing a mobile phone. The texts on it appear to be from Charity as they mention things that only she would know. They insist Margaret follow the instructions she is given. These lead her to the school where in Margaret’s absence a mysterious girl called Serena – about whom the only thing anyone can remember is that she is ‘hot’ – has been instigating confusion. So far so High School story but there follows a very well written scene where a teacher, Mr Foster, is clearly under mental coercion while revealing to a shocked class avidly filming his confession on their phones an act of inappropriate conduct towards Serena. Here, too, Margaret is joined by Harry Cook, her boyfriend of sorts, and there is talk of a gathering remembered as Burning Van from the burnt-out vehicle where its events, the trigger for the plot, centred.

Another strand relates the back story of an Elon Musk-like billionaire called Rudyard Crate, who as a child witnessed his elder sister eaten alive by a swarm of dorylus, or siafu, ants while barely escaping himself, which has naturally haunted him ever since but given him an unhealthy fixation. He has instigated Project Athena, designed to introduce insect phenotypes (mostly of wasps, but also of other genera) into human DNA to produce a hybrid creature. The most successful of these is Subject Six, indistinguishable from a human child until triggered by a “time of dynamic bodily or neurological change like human teenage-hood.” Subject Six: a wasp in the nest of Northfield.

When she meets Crate, Margaret notes his Businessman’s laugh, a phenomenon her father warned her of. “‘It’s as fake as a three-dollar bill, Margaret. Never trust a man who’s perfected his Businessman’s laugh.’”

The June 2018 setting is, perhaps, an authorial mis-step given that in the book the climactic events are well publicised and discussed but of course readers in 2024 have never heard of them. In all, though, The Queen is a well written but curiously unconvincing tale from the area where Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror overlap – at least unconvincing to those like me who normally don’t read horror stories – until we reach Part IV, Ever After, and a section where in an article reprinted from a magazine, Chris Packer, a journalist born and brought up in St Catharines, compares and contrasts the post-happening world-wide reactions to Margaret and Charity and so the novel begins to comment on itself and take on wider concerns.

Packer remembers from a case of abduction and killing years earlier that not all missing girls were treated equally. The one from the better-off families was spoken of with adoration: the one from the wrong side of town dismissed. It was ever thus.

Two more shorter bits of Part IV provide further perspective and reflections on the story’s events – even a touch of hope.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian. Otherwise; “He had no other companions other than” (has one ‘other’ too many,) sunk (x 5, sank, which did appear once,) “hung myself” (hanged myself.)  “Plum and me had been” (Plum and I had been,) “left raw wheals on its ankles and wrists” (raw weals.) “Queens force-feed it to her drones and attendants” (force-feed it to their drones and attendants.) “The larvae hatches” (The larvae hatch – larva was used correctly as the singular a few lines later,) “Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain’” (usually translated as ‘Night on the Bare Mountain’,) sprung (sprang,) “their DNA helixes” (helices?) sanitarium (sanatorium,) staunch (stanch,) “she shrunk in the swing” (shrank.) “The song rose to its glittering crescendo” (the crescendo is the rise, not the end of the rise.) “Outside of” (no ‘of’ please, just ‘outside’.)

Penguin Essentials, 2019, 365 p. First published 2007.

Addressing as it does the Armenian genocide of 1916 (though only in a historical sense,) this was the book that saw the author put on trial for “denigrating Turkishness,” but the charges were eventually dropped.

The novel’s main focus is on the Kazancı family, one with an unfortunate history of its male members dying at a young age. There is a hint of magical realism here, the more sweeping kind of narrative more or less alien to the Anglophone tradition, in any case a nod to the supernatural elements which often appear in fiction from other literary backgrounds. The Kazancıs have a cat named Sultan. (They’re now on Sultan the Fifth. This naming system though, did remind me of Mad Jack’s burro in The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.)

The chapter titles all relate to foodstuffs – or at least substances which can be ingested; cinnamon, pine nuts, orange peels, etc, though one is water and the last potassium cyanide. For the Kazancıs are a family for which food occupies a central nurturing role. Many Turkish dishes are named or described during the course of the novel.

In the first chapter the then nineteen-year-old Zeliha Kazancı strides the streets of Istanbul wearing her trademark short skirt – which she will not relinquish even in later years. Under harassment she recites to herself “The Golden Rule of Prudence for an Istanbulite woman: When harassed on the street never respond” as that only fires up the enthusiasm of the harasser. (There are also Silver and Copper Rules of Prudence.)

Zeliha is on her way to a clinic to seek an abortion but, perhaps due to hallucinations brought on by anæsthetic or else a subliminal wish to carry the child – though the latter seems unlikely – becomes over-agitated and makes it impossible for the procedure to continue. The bastard of the title (though there is one other metaphorical candidate) could thus be Zeliha’s daughter, Asya, who is brought up among her aunts Banu, Feride and Cevriye, their mother, Grandmother Gülsüm, and the matriarch Petite-Ma. Acknowledging the unusual circumstances of Asya’s origins (in her late teens of the novel’s main timeline her father’s identity has still not been disclosed,) Zeliha is also known as aunty. The only son of the family, Mustafa, long ago left Istanbul for the US and has never returned. The aunts’ father had of course when still young succumbed to the curse on the family males. Even so, by the age of sixteen Asya had discovered that “other families weren’t like hers and some families could be normal,” a twist to that quote from Tolstoy. [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7142-all-happy-families-are-alike-each-unhappy-family-is-unhappy]

Asya is fixated on Johnny Cash and spends time in Café Kundera, associating with characters identified only by their attributes, the Non-Nationalist Scenarist of Ultranational Movies, the Closeted-Gay Communist, the Exceptionally Untalented Poet and the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist, who says the real civilization gap is not between East and West but between Turks and the Turks. “‘We are a bunch of cultured urbanites surrounded by hillbillies and bumpkins on all sides. They have conquered the whole city.’” The Exceptionally Untalented Poet says, “‘We are stuck between East and West …. the past and the future … the secular modernists … and the conventional traditionalists.’” In its own way this is a signal that the book could be read as a ‘condition of Turkey’ novel.* When one of them brings along a new girlfriend we are told of Asya that “When she met a new female she could do one of two things: either wait to see when she would start hating her or take the shortcut and hate her right away.”

Mustafa, in the US, has taken up with Rose, who was divorced from Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, a first generation Armenian American. Barsam and Rose’s daughter Armanoush (Amy,) is the second pivot of the plot, brought up as she was with her father’s family’s constant reinforcement of Armenian memories and attitudes vis-à-vis the Turks. Shafak has some fun depicting Amy’s date with a man she soon finds unsuitable, where they both contemplate plates of food whose arrangements are based on expressionist paintings. To resolve the conflict she feels between her US and Armenian heritages Amy decides to travel to Istanbul to visit her stepfather’s family, where her revelations about the treatment of her ancestors creates at first bewilderment.

“She, as an Armenian, embodied the spirits of her people generations and generations earlier, whereas the average Turk had no such continuity with his or her ancestors. The Armenians and the Turks lived in different time frames.” For Armenians “time was a cycle, the past incarnated in the present and the present birthed the future. For the Turks, time was a multihyphenated line, where the past ended at some definite point and the present started anew from scratch, and there was nothing but rupture in between.” Even Aunt Cerviye, as a history teacher, was unaware of the details or extent of the Armenians’ tribulations. For the aunts, the history of Turkey only began in 1923, with Atatürk’s reforms. (Such historical forgettings, or forgettings of history, are by no means confined to Turkey, though.)

In another expression of literary apartness, that rebuff to Western fiction’s conventional realism, Aunty Banu has – or claims to have – control of two invisible djinn, one on each shoulder; the good one, whom she calls Mrs Sweet, on the right, the bad one, Mr Bitter, on the left. It is from Mr Bitter she learns the truth about the Armenians’ sufferings. And about Asya’s father, news which she keeps to herself, though his identity is revealed later.

Shafak has her characters make more general observations too. Asya tells Amy, “When women survive an awful marriage or love affair … they generally avoid another relationship for quite some time. With men, however … the moment they finish a catastrophe they start looking for another one. Men are incapable of being alone.”

Curiously, Shafak at least twice used the word wee in the Scottish sense of small, as in “a wee bit.”

Some reviews I have seen online of The Bastard of Istanbul have been a bit sniffy, one even going so far as to say that on this evidence Shafak isn’t a good novelist. I suspect this means that reader had not had a wide experience of fiction from outwith the Anglosphere. Shafak’s writing has a brio, an exuberance, too often missing from that more staid inheritance.

Pedant’s corner:- *Turkey is now officially known as Türkiye; “wrack your nerves” (rack your nerves,) “and her cheeks sunk in” (sank in. There were other examples of ‘sunk’ for ‘sank’,) “as she laid still on a table” (as she lay still,) “phyllo pastry” (filo pastry,) “always on demand” (always in demand,) no introductory quotation mark when one chapter began with a piece of dialogue but there was with other chapters.

Penguin, 2015, 446 p. Translated from the Turkish Bit Palas (Meris Yayinlari, 2002) by Müge Göçek.

This, Shafak’s debut novel, has similarities with Aala Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building – both are concerned with the inhabitants of a block of flats – but was originally published in the same year so these will be coincidental.

From the outset it is clear that things will not be entirely straightforward: the narrator – accused of having a fanciful mind; ie talking nonsense – riffs on the differences between truth (conceived of as a horizontal line,) deception (a vertical one,) and nonsense (a circle.) This is as a way to approaching story, a circle can be entered anywhere; but it isn’t a beginning, nor is it an end.

We are then given the history of the building, Bonbon Palace, from ‘Before’ and even ‘Before Before,’ it was built on the site of an old Christian (Armenian) cemetery.

The inhabitants of the various flats within the building are Musa, Meryem and Muhammet; Sidar and Gaba; hairdresser Cemal and Celal, twins who were not actually brought up together; The Firenaturedsons family; Hadji adji Hadji, his Son, Daughter and Grandchildren; Metin Chetinceviz and HisWifeNadia; Me; The Blue Mistress; Hygiene Tijen and Su; Madam Auntie.

Already that running together of words in Firenaturedsons and HisWifeNadia signal the otherness of the narration, that heightened sense which comes from a slightly surreal take on fiction and can be a signature of non-Anglophone literature. The whole thing would seem to be narrated by the ‘Me’ occupying Flat 7 as his are the only sections written in the first person. Chapters of the book focus on and return to the flat-dwellers’ various lives in no particular order. The circumstances under which he wrote this account are not revealed  until the end.

Another surreal touch is that Bonbon Palace has an accumulation of rubbish around it which keeps being added to despite the attentions of bug fumigator Injustice Pureturk. This forms the core of the plot as, in an attempt to prevent people adding to the rubbish piles, ‘Me’ paints on the enclosing wall a sentence declaring a saint is buried inside the premises.

All serious novels are attempts to sum up the world in microcosm. Limiting the story to such a small part of the world highlights this. Not all of human life is here but a good portion of it certainly is.

An initial surprise to me was the use in the translation of the word wee in the Scottish sense (‘a wee bit of clarification,’ ‘one wee bit,’ ‘a wee bit of sadness’) – and the fine British term nutter (‘a good-for-nothing nutter’.)

Peppered throughout are some adages such as, “Men committing adultery find quality significant: they enjoy receiving from another woman love that is in essence different from what they receive from their wives. Yet women committing adultery find quantity significant: they enjoy receiving from another man love that is more than that which they receive from their husbands.”

The narrator’s assertion that “Life is absurd, at its core lies nonsense” is as good a justification for the deployment of magic realism – or exaggerated reality – in a novel as you could get.

Then again he says, “Deception turns truth inside out. As for nonsense, it solders deception and truth to each other so much so as to make them indistinguishable.”

So does fiction.

The Flea Palace is as accomplished a debut novel as anyone could wish to write – or read.

Pedant’s corner:- the print looks  as if was photocopied and on some pages is slanted, quantative (quantitative,) “raise to the ground” (raze to the ground,) sprung (several times, sprang,) “café chantants” (cafés chantants,) “she had suddenly ran screaming” (she had suddenly run screaming,) sunk (sank,) “the gage of their nature” (gauge. ‘Gage’ for ‘gauge’ appeared once more,) a missing full stop, “you might may well start to believe” (has a ‘might’ or a ‘may’ too many?) “where he had laid down” (lain down,) “in spite of our eating in hoards” (in hordes,) “as they silently drunk” (drank,) “of the ‘The Oleander of Passion’” (that first ‘the’ is not needed,) “had all ended up in flop” (ended up as flops,) “a unfussy end” (an unfussy end,) “raised to the ground” (razed to the ground,) shrunk (x 2, shrank,) tealeaf (tea leaf,) dopey (dopy,) “he would lay in the corner” (he would lie in ….,) “as if hadn’t been him” (as if it hadn’t been him,) “they always go through their houses as if they had never gone through it before” (‘houses’ therefore ‘them’ not ‘it’,) “chaise long” (chaise longue,) “and before you it, know” (before you know it,) gamma-amino-butiric-acid (it’s not spelled butiric, it’s gamma-amino-butyric acid,) “no sooner had they given their consent that an objection was voiced” (than an objection,) “the saints existence” (the saint’s existence,) “he fished from the thrash” (from the trash,) “the end of last the century” (end of the last century,) “I laid next to her” (I lay next to her.) “All though this period” (All through.)

Gollancz, 2019, 430 p.

The previous novel in this sequence, Revenger, was narrated by Arafura Ness. In this one, by contrast it is her sister, Ardana, whose viewpoint we are privy to.

Like in Revenger, the scenario – even down to modes of speech – is reminiscent of old-time pirate stories and the adventures have a swashbuckling feel, though the characters are blessed with (some) higher-tech.

They inhabit a human society arranged in the Congregation, an array of worlds centred round the now fading Old Sun. All of human activity is carried out within a volume only eighteen light minutes across. Fairly recently an enigmatic race of aliens known as Crawlies has entered into The Congregation whose past history has consisted of a series of so-called Occupations in which what Ardana calls monkey civilisations – of which her own is only the latest – have risen only to fall again. These efflorescences take place on a fairly regular basis, a fact which Ardana feels is significant and may be due to an object orbiting the Old Sun at a considerable distance beyond The Congregation’s limits. That, though, is for a later book.

Travel between the many scattered usually relatively small worlds is by spaceships powered by solar sails, with rocket powered launches used for shorter distances (approaches to habitats and so on.) This slow mode of travel is of course a direct analogue of sailing ships of the past.

Due to having to eat lightvine to survive, Fura is a victim of a disease known as the glowy. In the last book she rescued Ardana from the clutches of the notorious pirate Bosa Sennen, who was killed and her ship taken over. Bosa’s malign influence on Ardana in trying to mould her into a possible successor still lies within her and comes out in times of stress. The sisters are now in charge of that ship, Nightjammer, which they call Revenger. Their companions are Surt, Prozor, Strambli, Tindouf (who speaks like an old sea dog,) and a diminished AI called Paladin.

Their first objective here is to stock up on fuel for their launch to which end they have to venture down into the habitat where Bosa stored it. Inside they follow a corridor traversed every thirty-eight or so minutes by a tight-fitting sphere, rolling over everything in its path like something out of Indiana Jones, not to mention a group of zombie-like twinkle-heads from which they have to flee with only a couple of fuel tanks.

However, on the Revenger’s scope Surt has noticed a sail flash, possibly from a shadowing ship. Being on Bosa’s ship whose death being unknown  means they will likely be taken for her and subject to possible arrest.

In the captain’s cabin an object called the Glass Armillary (though it’s more like an orrery) displays the Congregation as a series of spheres arranged in processionals – rings around the Old Sun.

When Strambli is injured while the sails are being adjusted to disguise Revenger’s appearance, there are three possible habitats to find medical help. Metherick needs too much fuel, the inhabitants of Kathromil hate Bosa, which leaves Wheel Strizzardy. Fura secretly has another reason to land there as she hopes to find a man called Lagganvor, one of Bosa’s former crewmates who managed to escape her clutches.

Wheel Strizzardy, a gloomy, misbegotten place somehow or other suffering from sodden conditions, turns out to have fallen under the control of Mister Far-Gone Glimmery, a victim of the glowy more advanced than Fura. Glimmery’s physician, Dr Eddralder, administers a palliative when he suffers an attack, but to protect against poisoning Eddralder also has to give the drug to his daughter Merrix beforehand.

An incident involving the death of a Crawly allows them to leverage an escape along with Eddralder, Merrix and Lagganvor, whose knowledge of Bosa’s habits enables them to locate the world known as The Miser where she kept her hoard of quoins the Congregation’s mysterious currency. What happens there means they have to get themselves well away from the Congregation presumably to seek out Ardana’s object circling well away from the Old Sun. But Ardana knows Lagganvor and Dr Eddralder have secrets of their own.

While Shadow Captain has plenty of incident – and intrigue – it wasn’t as engaging as Revenger. This may be the curse of middle parts of trilogies. The scenario is no longer new, the resolution delayed. It is executed well though, the main characters are sufficiently complex to remain interesting. The third instalment, Bone Silence, (bones are a fantastical type of instantaneous communication device involving twinkles) is on my tbr pile.

Pedant’s corner:- maw (x 2, it’s not a mouth,) “none of the others were directing,) (none of the others was directing,) “like a gristly pendulum” (grisly? Though gristly also works,) “like a carrion” (like carrion,) “‘we’d unwise to’” (we’d be unwise,) “none of us were immune” (none of us was immune.) “‘At least day or so’” (At least a day or so,) “to be reliable judge” (to be a reliable judge,) “off of” (just ‘off’, no ‘of’,) “feeling that that,” (only one ‘that’ needed,) sunk (sank,) “a Bone Merchants” (Bone Merchant’s.) “One was small black pouch” (was a small black pouch,) “it was handsome piece” (was a handsome piece,) “though I had strived” (had striven.) “‘Is it a falsehood, I trust?’” (It is a falsehood, I trust?) skeptical (sceptical,) “was a like a coffin” (no need for that first ‘a’,) an extraneous end quotation mark, sprung (sprang,) “‘may spare us a save us two or three days’” (either ‘may spare us a two or three days’ or ‘may save us two or three days’.) “‘Yours is still be finalised’” (still to be finalised,) “on such a doubtful grounds” (either ‘on such doubtful grounds’ or ‘on such a doubtful ground’,) “that might have once have adorned” (has one ‘have’ too many,) from whence (just ‘whence’,  the ‘from’ is superfluous,) diaphanous (diaphanous.) “Lagganvor’s answered me” (Lagganvor answered me.)

Taproot Press, 2021, 148 p.

This is a novel (or more correctly a collection of nine shorter pieces linked to each other, four with the same narrator) which tells the story of a woollen mill situated thirty miles from Perth. The viewpoint characters are:-

The stone mason who leaves a stylised mark on the reverse of the entrance lintel in order to house a glaistig (defined in a later section as a sort of green witch) which has been troubling a local family during the building of the mill in 1831.

A woman in the years immediately prior to the Great War (an event whose imminence will save the mill’s fortunes – for a while,) who addresses the mill directly as she unfolds her story of frustrated suffragism and workers’ rights.

The loyal worker who lingers in the mill after it closes in 1990 and takes the pattern book and last bolt of cloth home with him.

The owners’ son who in 2003 hives himself off to Zanzibar to set up a loom there. But it is a short-lived interlude. On the train home from the airport he reflects of an encounter that, “He would have hugged the man, but there was a table between them, and he was Scottish.”

The property developer who hasn’t calculated the effect of his refurbishments on the mill building’s safety.

The young urban woman dragooned into a project to find rare fruits (a wasted ‘food resource’ and repository of knowledge and skills on how to store and cook them) who can’t believe anyone would choose to return to such a backwater but comes across the now demolished entrance lintel. Mrs Campbell, the old artist whom she meets, tells her a witch is just another word for a strong woman.

Each of these works on its own as a short story. Cumulatively they describe the rise and fall of an industry, the lure of patronage, feelings of hope and revenge, the transience of human endeavour, but that the future will come regardless.

Cracknell’s writing is sharp and her characters are drawn superbly. This is excellent stuff.

Pedant’s corner:- “a midgie” (a midge,) “softened by sticky dust. .” (only one full stop needed,) “has been put it in the newspaper” (doesn’t need the ‘it’,) “there’s nothing more that Knights can do” (Knight’s.) “He span round to face her” (He spun round.) “Her question sunk him onto one of the kitchen stools” (Her question sank him into…,) “where the stone had laid before” (where the stone had lain.)

White Rabbit, 2021, 363 p.   Illustrations by Mark Edward Geyer.

This tale of a hanger-on of a rock-star, general factotum of the (oddly named it has to be said) big house, Kitchenly Mill Race, whose telephone number provides the novel’s title, at times reminded me of the style of Iain Banks. Espedair Street obviously, but also Dead Air, yet is a different beast altogether from those and different, too, from David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue, which also hymns the prog rock era.

Each chapter is preceded by an illustration of the house – or part of it – plus a few words, like those you might find in Victorian novels, indicating what said chapter will contain. The novel is markedly lighter in tone than Warner’s previous works. Reading those I could never have imagined myself laughing out loud while enjoying one of his books. But I did here at one particular scene.

Apart from first person narrator Crofton Clark, the house is in many ways the most prominent “character” in the book. It has an extensive set of connected buildings based on the Tudor original – mostly destroyed by a fire – with Elizabethan, Queen Anne, Georgian and Arts and Crafts extensions, different sections of which are connected by two air bridges. Here is where Marko Morrell, member of the band Fear Taker (and greatest guitarist in the world – according to Crofton,) lives with his Scandinavian wife Auralie and daughter Molly. Or at least where Marko stays when he is not touring or away seeing to his business interests. Crofton patrols the place every night, switching lights on or off depending on their location and shutting all the curtains. Through his eyes we are given an extensive depiction of the rambling pile. It is almost as if the house is taking the place of that delineation of landscape which is a feature of the Scottish novel. But that box is ticked by Crofton also extensively describing the house’s surroundings.

This attention to detail, and his obsessiveness about Fear Taker’s œuvre, indicate that Crofton may be in some way autistic. Though he believes himself to be essential to Marko and the house’s smooth running he only got the job after a stint as a roadie as he was a friend from way back. He has illusions of competence but he is not as close to Marko nor as privy to his employer’s intentions as he thinks. Then there is his belief that an intruder makes his or her way onto the property at night.

Minor mishaps begin to spin things out of Crofton’s control but his life really begins to unravel when two fifteen-year-old girls from the local village come to the gate to ask for a Fear Taker album to be signed for the brother of one of them. Crofton cannot resist showing off and invites them in for a tour of the house.

Kitchenly 434 is a portrait of a man who thinks he knows who and what he is and his station in life but who is deluded about almost everything – including Doris Boardman, the good time girl he had been seeing in his home town of Stafford before she found a better option.

(Though Warner clearly intended it as a signifier of different, less informed, times there was an unnecessary and therefore needlessly provocative aside about Jimmy Savile’s effectiveness as a presenter on Top of the Pops.)

Pedant’s corner:- “had strode” (had stridden,) “hide-and-go-seek” (USian, in the UK, Scotland certainly, it’s just ‘hide-and-seek’,) Whacky Races (this TV programme was titled Wacky Races,) Some Mother’s Do ’Ave ’Em (mothers plural, not ‘of mother’, Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em,) “which would lay … on … her thighs” (which would lie on,) “prime ministers” (Prime Ministers.) “The Cream” (x 2, that band was called, merely, ‘Cream’, and in the text its chronology seems a bit askew,) Prestos (Presto’s,) “‘was if fact spent’” (was in fact spent,) sunk (x 2, sank.) “Rose looked and me and frowned” (Rose looked at me and… ,) “troop of horses had shit all down the road” (had shat,) “in any good chemists” (any good chemist’s,) imposters (I know it’s an alternative but it just doesn’t look right to me; impostors,) “turned towards to me” (‘turned towards me’ or ‘turned to me’,) “abit like” (a bit like,) “‘ hasn’t had his barbers open since’” (barber’s,) “‘I amn’t’” (nice to see this grammatical Scottish usage but it was said by an English girl so unlikely. They usually say ‘aren’t’,) “in a weave patterns” (in a weave pattern,) Herstmonceaux (that village is spelled Herstmonceux) “Quick as shot” (Quick as a shot.)

NewCon Press, 2023, 228 p.  Reviewed for ParSec 9.

This is the author’s first collection of stories, twenty-one in all, plus one poem. Sixteen of them were culled from appearances in a variety of outlets over the past ten years, five are making their first appearance in print. The contents range in genre over SF, fantasy, myth and horror, with stories sometimes crossing over their borders.

In general, literature deals largely with the themes of love, sex and death. Science Fiction tends to be more restrictive (love for example tends to be bypassed and sex for the most part avoided) but its signature feature is in making its metaphors literal. (The outstanding example of that here is the title story, about the bond between a daughter and her mother.) Fantasy, myth and horror act more as warnings and as stripped-down guides to human relationships.

In the first few stories here the theme of death seems to be a connecting thread but this does not then extend to the collection as a whole.

The poem, Icarus Dreams, opens proceedings and partly sets the tone by inviting Icarus to heed his father and rewrite his story. Smits is more than adequately equipped to provide new shapes to old tales. To that end there are herein updated treatments riffing on the Blackbeard and Theseus stories, while the Baba Yaga of Russian folklore meets an AI.

But the author has further strings to her bow. Elsewhere, moles on the skin are a marker of long, perhaps immortal, life, and carry the threat of incarceration to unravel their genetic secrets. We meet an AI repairman whose encounter with his charge becomes reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. One story (not narrated by Dr Watson) features Sherlock Holmes, but only in a bystanding part as he asks his psychic investigator – and female – cousin to help him. We have tales where a psychological decline follows the break-up of a relationship which had settled into routine, the Green Man appears to rescue a ravaged future Britain, a woman inherits a bookshop with an unusual kind of ghost, AI/human hybrids question each other over their origins – and the nature of God. One story centres on the reliving of bottled memories. There is an African inspired SF/fantasy cross-over. A woman falls in love with her witness protection AI android bodyguard, another tells of the lengths she went to in an attempt to get pregnant, a brother and sister hatch a plot to rescue their twin siblings from VR addiction in a warehouse, a female painter who sells pictures under her brother’s name finds she cannot hide her expertise from J M W Turner (with whom she shares the same reverence for sunlight,) two people celebrate their involvement with the commercial start-up of nuclear fusion at Sellafield, a woman on the point of death remembers incidents from her life while subjectively traversing a fantastical purgatorial maze.

Their telling requires a comprehensive array of authorial registers and Smits handles them all well, with very few infelicities. She is a talent to watch.

Pedant’s corner:- Theseus’ (x 2, Theseus’s,) focussing (x 2, focusing,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech,  Holmes’ (x 2, Holmes’s, which appeared later,) shrunk (shrank,) focussed (x 3, focused,) sunk (sank,) Geena Davis’ (Davis’s,) “legs akimbo” (I doubt it. It’s extremely difficult to put your feet on your hips,) “and laid down again” (lay down again,) data used as a singular noun (that would be datum, data is plural,) Jesus’ (Jesus’s,) “the settings on each gamer’s capsule isn’t” (the settings … aren’t,)  “‘it’s okay to chop down all the forests and poison the soil.’?” (has that question mark in the wrong place. It ought to be where the full stop is,) “him and Kel had looked to the stars” (he and Kel,) James’ (x 3, James’s; annoyingly employed a few pages later.) “A trail of soapy bubbles stream after his fleeing form” (a trail streams.) Plus points, though, for using maw correctly as a stomach.