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A review by balancinghistorybooks
Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane by Alison Littlewood, Robert Shearman, Sophia McDougall, Dan Abnett, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jonathan Oliver, Gemma Files, Paul Meloy, Storm Constantine, Liz Williams, Christopher Fowler, Will Hill, Sarah Lotz, Gail Z. Martin, Thana Niveau, Audrey Niffenegger, Lou Morgan
3.0
Review written in 2012.
Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane presents ‘fifteen new stories of the sorcerous arts’ from a series of different fantasy authors. Among the contributors are Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller’s Wife, award winning comic book writer Dan Abnett, Sarah Lotz, a screenwriter with ‘a fondness for the macabre’, and Doctor Who writer Robert Shearman.
The volume has been edited by Jonathan Oliver, who states in his introduction that ‘you will find much about the magical arts that may not be familiar to you within these pages’. His aim is ‘not to fulfil your expectations but exceed and confound them’. A whole host of elements have been woven into the bare bones of the stories, from fairies to sibling rivalry, and from gambling to murder. They are told from the first person perspective and the third. They are modern and old fashioned in their form and style. Some feel realistic and some do not. Some of the stories jump out and grab you, and others merely make you jump. They are thought provoking, inventive, creative and often creepy.
The stories begin with ‘The Wrong Fairy’ by Audrey Niffenegger, who ‘takes the father of a very famous writer’, in this case Arthur Conan Doyle’s, ‘and explores the nature of his “illness”’. The said father, an alcoholic, is being looked after at the Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum. Whilst the author’s prose is relatively simplistic at first, it becomes an incredibly useful mechanism to describe his ‘horrors’: ‘He was infested by insects that marched across the underside of his skin like directionless armies. He could feel each tiny foot as it touched each nerve… People stood by his bed and whispered. Someone said, “… seizures”. They put something cold and hard in his mouth’. Niffenegger builds up the terror of the situation incredibly well, and the world which shifts around the protagonist is clearly one which has been built by his own imagination. It is clever and creative with echoes rather reminiscent of the more bizarre twists and turns in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and provides a great way to start such a short story collection.
Will Hill’s story, ‘Shuffle’, is told in a series of short, separate paragraphs and revolves around the life of an unnamed casino worker. We as readers are drip fed information, some of it startling. A sleight of hand card trick is presented alongside an horrific event: ‘“I can’t remember anything”... No one who came up out of the cellar is talking. Erin and Adam are catatonic, Chris is on life support somewhere in the hospital, and Johnny and Alice are dead. My word is gospel’. The story is told out of sequence, so we are aware of the outcome of the situation before we learn what has happened to lead the characters to such an ending. Hill’s story is cleverly written and well plotted.
In their tale ‘Domestic Magic’, Melanie Tem and Steve Rasnic Tem create a story based around a young boy named Felix, who is irked by the very existence of his troublesome young sister, and by the world around him: ‘Felix didn’t believe in evil spirits but he did believe in germs’. The children’s mother – ‘too crazy for the crazies’ - is a witchlike being, the narrator tells us: ‘She preferred [to be called] “seer” or “person of powers”, so he [Felix] made a point of thinking “witch” in case she could maybe read his mind’. The characters in this story and the relationships between them have been so well drawn, and the negative effects of having no fixed abode and having to cope with very little money are discussed in surprisingly great detail for such a short piece of fiction.
As with such a collection, some of the stories are inevitably stronger than others, but the volume itself works well as a whole. The tales themselves have been well ordered.
Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane presents ‘fifteen new stories of the sorcerous arts’ from a series of different fantasy authors. Among the contributors are Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller’s Wife, award winning comic book writer Dan Abnett, Sarah Lotz, a screenwriter with ‘a fondness for the macabre’, and Doctor Who writer Robert Shearman.
The volume has been edited by Jonathan Oliver, who states in his introduction that ‘you will find much about the magical arts that may not be familiar to you within these pages’. His aim is ‘not to fulfil your expectations but exceed and confound them’. A whole host of elements have been woven into the bare bones of the stories, from fairies to sibling rivalry, and from gambling to murder. They are told from the first person perspective and the third. They are modern and old fashioned in their form and style. Some feel realistic and some do not. Some of the stories jump out and grab you, and others merely make you jump. They are thought provoking, inventive, creative and often creepy.
The stories begin with ‘The Wrong Fairy’ by Audrey Niffenegger, who ‘takes the father of a very famous writer’, in this case Arthur Conan Doyle’s, ‘and explores the nature of his “illness”’. The said father, an alcoholic, is being looked after at the Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum. Whilst the author’s prose is relatively simplistic at first, it becomes an incredibly useful mechanism to describe his ‘horrors’: ‘He was infested by insects that marched across the underside of his skin like directionless armies. He could feel each tiny foot as it touched each nerve… People stood by his bed and whispered. Someone said, “… seizures”. They put something cold and hard in his mouth’. Niffenegger builds up the terror of the situation incredibly well, and the world which shifts around the protagonist is clearly one which has been built by his own imagination. It is clever and creative with echoes rather reminiscent of the more bizarre twists and turns in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and provides a great way to start such a short story collection.
Will Hill’s story, ‘Shuffle’, is told in a series of short, separate paragraphs and revolves around the life of an unnamed casino worker. We as readers are drip fed information, some of it startling. A sleight of hand card trick is presented alongside an horrific event: ‘“I can’t remember anything”... No one who came up out of the cellar is talking. Erin and Adam are catatonic, Chris is on life support somewhere in the hospital, and Johnny and Alice are dead. My word is gospel’. The story is told out of sequence, so we are aware of the outcome of the situation before we learn what has happened to lead the characters to such an ending. Hill’s story is cleverly written and well plotted.
In their tale ‘Domestic Magic’, Melanie Tem and Steve Rasnic Tem create a story based around a young boy named Felix, who is irked by the very existence of his troublesome young sister, and by the world around him: ‘Felix didn’t believe in evil spirits but he did believe in germs’. The children’s mother – ‘too crazy for the crazies’ - is a witchlike being, the narrator tells us: ‘She preferred [to be called] “seer” or “person of powers”, so he [Felix] made a point of thinking “witch” in case she could maybe read his mind’. The characters in this story and the relationships between them have been so well drawn, and the negative effects of having no fixed abode and having to cope with very little money are discussed in surprisingly great detail for such a short piece of fiction.
As with such a collection, some of the stories are inevitably stronger than others, but the volume itself works well as a whole. The tales themselves have been well ordered.