Review: 'Once And Future' #19 Brings In A Supernatural New World Order
Review: ‘Once And Future’ #19 Brings In A Supernatural New World Order
Once and Future #19 returned this week and with the Otherworld now having subsumed our reality – well, mainland Britain at least – we move into very high concept, high fantasy and high stakes territory. It certainly feel as though there has been a seismic shift in scale and storytelling from Kieron Gillen with this new development.
As Duncan and Bridgette walk through their new reality there is…
Weaveworld by Clive Barker ~ a #fantasy #horror novel ~ #BookReview by Sian
Note: Here’s the third review from guest poster Sian, who is trying out for the team.
Barker turns from his usual horror to epic-length fantasy for this account of the Fugue, a magical land inhabited by descendants of supernatural beings who once shared the earth with humans. The Fugue has been woven into a carpet for protection against those who would destroy it; the death of its guardian…
The Making of Gabriel Davenport by Beverley Lee #BookReview
The Making of Gabriel Davenport by Beverley Lee ~ #horror novel ~ #BookReview by Coolthulhu Crew Trainee Sam B
Title: The Making of Gabriel Davenport| Author: Beverley Lee| Publisher: Ink Raven Press | Pub. Date: 2016-04-08 | Pages: 268 | ISBN13: 9780993549007| Genre: Horror | Language: English | Triggers: None | Rating: 5 out of 5 |Source: Self-purchased.
This is Sam’s second review with the team. Her first one, ‘American War’, is available by clicking here.
Quinsey Wolfe's Glass Vault - #bookreview Young Adult Fantasy #horror
Title: Quinsey Wolfe’s Glass Vault | Author: Candace Robinson | Pub. Date: 2017-5-16 | Pages: 242 | ISBN13: 9781544274652 | Genre: Fantasy Horror | Language: English | Triggers: none | Rating: 2 out of 5 | Source: Kindle Unlimited Quinsey Wolfe’s Glass Vault Some see it… Some don’t… People in the town of Deer Park, Texas are vanishing. There is a strange museum, known as Quinsey Wolfe’s Glass…
This is a bit of a quick write. Horror, weird horror, (cosmic horror hints?). Actually rather referential if you know your old stuff. Just done for fun and to work the kinks out I suppose.
Warnings include a lot of fairytale murder, some relatively tame death methods, some not tame not-death methods, and eternal unpleasantness of the nondescript variety.
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Long ago stories were wilder, weirder than they are now. Tales could pull and tug at what had happened and make it hadn’t. All sorts of beasts laid low now by pens and with bloody ink dripping from the volumes where they were buried still ran rampant across the land. The mundane was made magical where they tread just as entire lands and peoples were swept away into legend, lost to recounted words and mourning songs as their tragedies became epics and their doom carved then into history’s annals.
Thus the myths and mayhem grew, one feeding the other in a cycle that seemed without end.
Till the great city rose across the sea. Two towers reached high into the sky of twin suns, casting an eternal daylight and longer shadows on this city of travelers and tales. For every people did cross its threshold and every voice did add to its nature. Countless stories were told and retold. And written down one and again. In every version, in a thousand volumes. Tiny paper cuts that bleed dry the great monsters and captured them upon a shelf. A weight of a billion books that crushed the nightmares of the mysterious dark till they were known now only seen in paragraphs by candlelight.
There was no city like it before or since. It was a place of magic, of true sorcerery. For what is captured, what is killed can be used, remade. Changed by edit and new interpretation. The beasts of the wild yesterday, the old gods of the world…
They now belonged to the people of the city. And by their strength the city did grow.
King to Queen and back again. Each one more knowledgeable, more masterful in the arts of their chained creations than the next. Till it came to pass that every form of magic, every witch that is and isn’t, and all wizards no matter how old; did find their power descend from this, the most honored of all places.
But for all their power, all their might… they still had limits.
All stories end.
And thus do all people.
So each King and each Queen did die.
For that was the nature of it. Eventually everything ends.
Or at least it should…
-
The King hated it. He hated the sight of the portraits, the great busts and endless statues that lined the hall. Generations, great men and women, now not but ash and dead words. How was it that he, he that could write the stars out of the sky, who could make beasts of men or men of beasts with but a word, for whom the suns never set and all loved and adored by will and right…
How could he too be destined to die? How could one who set the scripture and made the angels dance, the gods themselves determined by his orders, how could he be mortal?
It didn’t seem fair that all this power couldn’t change his own tale.
These were the thoughts that burdened him when the Traveler arrived. Nameless, taleless, their face a corpse pale paper thin mockery of a man’s, they came from across the sea. They asked to see the King, claiming to be a carrier of the last wisdoms. That which is not written or spoken, never read or heard. Silent secrets that yet lay beyond the city’s reach.
Preposterous.
The King showed the Traveler how absurd he was. He had a maid fall from out a window and become a flock of crows before she hit the ground. He made the tower’s peaks crest upon an ocean in the sky, the confused fish that jumped to high raining onto the city streets below. Yesterday became tomorrow and they met again ten times over.
Till the Traveler asked if he was done with such simple tricks.
The King, infuriated, had the Traveler put to death at once. The headless corpse tossed into the shadows of the city.
And then the Traveler arrived the next day.
His broken body thrown deep, to feed forgotten creatures not fit for names or light, that dwelled beneath the city.
Next came fire, hot enough to make the iron pages of the greatest volumes glow white hot.
Then they drowned him, legs tied together and weighted down with a great stone as he plummeted into the river.
Poison, a goblet full of it, burning the edges as it was forced down his throat.
Crushed, pressed flat under the weight of a thousand blank books.
And when he came back next the King, now far beyond anger, did take one of those blank books and pen a death beyond death. An annihilation of thought, of memory, of essence and form. Flesh to smoke and blood to ash. Nothing became less than nothing.
And the Traveler vanished to the sound of tearing. Not paper, not flesh, but something other that broke apart and made the emptiness seem greater than before.
Yet the next day he stood before the city gates again.
This time the King did not greet him with anger though. He took the Traveler to the highest room of the highest tower. He gestured out to the city and all that it contained.
‘Tell me,’ the King pleaded. ‘Tell me how you deny Death and all of this will be yours.’
The Traveler looked out upon the city, the wonders of wonders. And he whispered a secret to the King.
‘Stories end so that new ones can take their place. As it is for tales it is for people.’
‘If no more came to be than whatever is could never end.’
In that moment of revelation the King knew what he needed to do.
-
There was a great festival, a masquerade for all the citizens. An ancient celebration of the city and what it had become. They wore the masks of the slain monsters and imprisoned spirits. Drank deep as plays and puppets told and retold their victories to the entranced and the inebriated. New tellings were tried and quickly forgotten amidst the revelry.
That night, as the entire city drank and cheered, the King went among them. Masked and cloaked, followed by his ten loyal retainers. Things that might-have-been men or might-have-been women but were no more. Door to door and house to house the eleven went.
Ten swords more stained with crimson with each they visited. A spreading of silence, of voices cut short and stories severed.
Till all the city lay quiet at last. A celebration made of corpses, laid low in the theaters and the libraries. No more audience and no more actors.
Everything ground to a stop.
Before the door to the highest room of the highest tower the King turned to his servants. The ten took their blades and fell upon them. Another stain of crimson to mar their gore covered cloaks.
And it was done.
He stepped into the room, his resplendent robes now the only cloth of the city not red as blood. He looked out over the city, shadows growing longer and darker as the twin suns set. It was done now. He alone existed, and thus he alone could exist.
Would exist.
Forever.
He turned to the Traveler to share his gratitude. Only to make a startling discovery. To see in the Traveler’s face reflection of the mask he now wore. And with no characters, no writers, nor readers… the tale did indeed have no end. For he most certainly could not die.
