Murmur reviews short stories

[Murmur]

I read some online critiques of The Night Land. It looks like people really dislike it a lot. The stuff I read reminded me of some of the flaws in The Night Land which are:

Spoiler

• Hodgson was tediously repetitive in parts. This is true.
• Hodgson included fiddly details in parts where he didn't need to. This is true.
• Hodgson used a fake, archaic-sounding language. This is true, but I liked it.
• Naani acted too childish and playful when she was trekking with the hero back to the Last Redoubt. This seemed weird to me. Hodgson did indeed write that she was playful and silly on the way to the Last Redoubt, but I forgave it by thinking that life must go on. Even though she was miserable at the time that she was rescued, people can't stay miserable every second of the day. Also, her age was not stated; she may have been a teenager, meaning that she may have been immature and acted innapropriately. Of course, it could just be poor writing on Hodgson's part.

The name of Naani's home was the Lesser Redoubt, not the Little Redoubt like I had misremembered.

Even with The Night Land's flaws, I still really like it. I'm going to reread it some day.

[Murmur]

The Door to Saturn: The Collected Fantasies, Vol. 2 (Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith)

This collection of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith is very good. If you like early 20th century horror short stories, this is the book for you.

Just like the other book of short stories from CAS that I read, this one is loaded with fancy words that I had to look up. I had to look up an average of 3 words per page. It was a nuisance and it interrupted the mood while reading.

The guy on the cover of the book, with the robe, is an illustration of Clark Ashton Smith when he was young.

A few notes on individual stories.

• The Door to Saturn. Two enemy wizards travel to Saturn and they have to put their differences aside to survive.
• The Red World of Polaris. Spacers are exploring the environs of a star and they encounter what looks like an artificial planet. The horror in this story comes subtly and slowly and it's very well done.
• A Rendezvous in Averoigne. Judging by the notes at the end of the book, this is his most popular story in this volume. It's a very good story. Very creepy.
• The Kingdom of the Worm. As far as I can remember, this story was creepy, but it didn't end well. In any case, I really liked it. A guy is traveling somewhere, and he decides to go through some forbidden territory as a shortcut. He shouldn't have done that, as you can guess.
• The City of the Singing Flame. I remember that CAS's prose made me see the environment within my mind while reading it.
• An Adventure in Futurity. CAS's prose style had the same subtle and slow horror feel as The Red World of Polaris. The ending was sad.

After writing those notes, I'm reminded that a lot of the stories had a sort of Dungeons and Dragons setting to them. Not literally D&D, of course, but the stories felt like D&D, at least a little.

Recommendation: Overall, I loved the book, and I can recommend it.

[marleyg]

i wrote a 2nd book..

king arthur looked to sky exclaiming, heavens, does thou dispel my crown, does i is destined to die by the hands of men, or of a dragons fire, yay

da dragon was all like, *breathes mad fire* u cant fuck w/ me, son.. im da winner all day. lights get dimmer down biggies hallway

[Murmur]

Mysteries of the Worm
by Robert Bloch

Mysteries of the Worm is pretty good. It's a collection of short stories by Robert Bloch. I think all or most of the stories are supposed to be in the Cthulhu universe. The first story seemed like an amateur version of Lovecraftian prose and I hated it. All of the other stories were much better. I liked the book a lot and I'm going to reread it sometime.

The book is loaded with minor errors. Here's what I can remember.

• You know how, in some books, the top of the page has the name of the current story? For example, every odd-numbered page of the story The Secret in the Tomb has "The Secret in the Tomb" at the top. Well, those story titles at the tops of the pages are messed up in several places. One page in the book has "STORY TITLE".
• Mr Bloch's name is misspelled on the third page of the book as "Rober Bloch".
• There were plenty of misspellings and punctuation errors in the book.

What I can remember about the stories themselves.

• Terror in Cut-Throat Cove. This was much different in style than the other stories in this book. This story, at first, strongly resembled a thriller radio story, like from Suspense or The Mysterious Traveler. After a while, the Lovecraftian-ness showed itself.
• Several stories were set in Egypt and mentioned Nyarlathotep.
• Notebook Found in a Deserted House. This was genuinely creepy, and set in rural New England.
• Fane of the Black Pharaoh. An archaeologist or something is lead into a pyramid by one of the locals to see some mysterious wall paintings.

Recommendation: Like in some of my other reviews, if you like Lovecraft, you'd like this.

[Murmur]

Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson
The Complete Stories
by George Alec Effinger

George Alec Effinger wrote my favorite novel, which is When Gravity Fails. I read a few of his books of short stories. This was one of them. I read this book decades ago.

The book is a small collection of short stories featuring the titular heroine. It's not great. It's ok. The heroine is kind of like a valley girl type person. A teenager that normally likes shopping. That sort of thing. In this book she travels to other planets or dimensions and has adventures.

Recommendation: I don't know. Probably just skip this one.

[Murmur]

The Anthology of English Folk Tales

This is a short collection of short stories. Supposedly the writers of the short stories are actually modern "storyteller" people. It's not clear to me who are the real authors of the stories. I suppose most of the stories are anonymous.

There is no table of contents. Instead, there is a map of England with a bunch of titles pointing to counties. The titles are: name of a story, the page it starts on, and the name of the county.

Some of the stories are:

• The Giant of Pen Hill. An extraordinarily sadistic giant terrorizes villagers. This story seemed very familiar to me.
• The Lymminster Knucker. A monster eats people and livestock and terrorizes villagers.
• The Three Roses. This is a creepy horror tale which was fun to read, but ultimately sad.
• The Cheviot Shepherd's Charm. Fairies terrorize a family.
• Mathew Trigg and the Pharisees. Strangely, the old word for "fairies" in Surrey is "Pharisees". I had never heard of that before. After pronouncing each word mentally just now, I noticed that the two words sound similar. This story is about a beloved curmudgeon that the fairies kidnap.
• Humphrey Kynaston. An aristocrat becomes poor and decides to be a Robin Hood type person. It was nice to see that, in this story, his constant theft from rich landlords had negative economic consequences.
• The Silent Sentinels. During wartime, trees provide succor to villagers.

Recommendation: Overall, I enjoyed it, and if you feel like reading very short folk tales, I can recommend this book.

[Murmur]

Tales from the Grave: An Anthology of True Ghost Stories
Edited by R. G. Nojek.

This is a book of supposedly real life ghost stories. I don't believe that any of these stories are genuinely about ghosts or that they happened exactly as written. I think they're about unexplained events that the authors interpreted as ghostly events, lies, or flawed memories. The book is around 109 pages, written in a modern English style. The cover of the book has the title of the book, but it's dark red, in a skinny font, on a black background, making the title of the book nearly invisible.

I have no idea what prompted me to buy this book. This is not the sort of thing that I normally buy.

Recommendation: Don't bother.

[Murmur]

A Vintage from Atlantis: The Collected Fantasies, Vol. 3 (Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith)

This is an excellent collection of short stories. Overall, I loved the book.

Clark Ashton Smith made up a place named Averoigne. Several of his stories take place there. Like the stories in the other collections of short stories written by him, CAS liked to use a lot of fancy vocabulary.

Notes on a few stories:

• The Colossus of Ylourgne. A necromancer in Averoigne is hated, and some monks from a monestary investigate his goings-on. A bunch of corpses wake up from cemeteries and walk toward the necromancer's abode, which is a ruined castle.
• Beyond the Singing Flame. This is a sequel to another of CAS's stories. The City of the Singing Flame, I think.
• The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis. This is a very creepy story of explorers on Mars. A movie could be made from this story.
• The Immortals of Mercury. This story has a narrative flow that is very similar to CAS's other stories. For example, it resembles The Red World of Polaris in style. A spacer on Mercury runs into two different species of local aliens.
• The Empire of the Necromancers. Two necromancers revive a bunch of dead people in some ruins so that they can rule them.

Recommendation: The book is excellent for fans of short horror fiction.