Skip to main content

Review of Emily B. Cataneo's "Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories"


Weird Fiction, I think by definition, is a hard genre to describe. Still, I think it's possible to point to a couple of major strains - Classic and New. 

Cover Image for "Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories" by Emily B. Cataneo
On one hand you have the heritage of Machen, Blackwood, Gilman, Ligotti, and of course the decrepit and dark idol of HP himself. These are tales almost like ghost stories, where protagonists brush up against the uncanny and either survives or succumbs to bleak fates. These tales tend towards a morose and gothic atmosphere and describe worlds I'd definitely avoid in real life.

Then you have the bizarre stuff like Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Michael Shea, and China Meiville where weirdness is something plastic and garish. Often referred to as the "New Weird," these are works where the universe keeps warping chromosomes and shoving disparate genres into weird hybrids. I'm not sure if I'm that keen to visit Bas-Lag in person, but I'm pretty sure I'd have more fun there than Carcosa. For my part, I'm a fan of both modes, which is why I dig Emily B. Cataneo's upcoming anthology "Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories."

One of the most impressive aspects of Cataneo's work is that it manages to combine these two types of weirdness with ease. Actually her works embrace a chimerical quality, borrowing from one literary genre before stretching out a pseudopod to incorporate another. And another. And another. Cataneo's work has an engagingly omnivorous quality, unafraid to mix/match/cut/paste as suits the needs of each of her peculiar and unique tales. But throughout the dozen tales included here a consistent mood prevails: the dark and uncanny gloom of Aiken mixed with the elegant derangements of Octavia Butler and Gemma Files. These are stories that evoke entire worlds, fill them with screwy oddballs, and let them play out their dramas in accordance with their own peculiar motivations.

Highlights in this collection: The title story which reminded me of the 100-acre woods as described by John Shirley, the taunt fantasy of "The Firebird," and the strange pathos of "Victoria's One-Way Ticket's" decaying machines. "My favorite story is "Purple Lemons," which incorporates a meta-fictional theme similar to Les Grossman's "Magicians" while being great deal less beholden to the imaginations of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Please note that I received a copy of this anthology in exchange for an honest review.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Response to "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

Reader Response to “A Good Man is Hard to Find” Morgan Crooks I once heard Flannery O’Connor’s work introduced as a project to describe a world denied God’s grace. This critic of O’Connor’s work meant the Christian idea that a person’s misdeeds, mistakes, and sins could be sponged away by the power of Jesus’ sacrifice at Crucifixion. The setting of her stories often seem to be monstrous distortions of the real world. These are stories where con men steal prosthetic limbs, hired labor abandons mute brides in rest stops, and bizarre, often disastrous advice is imparted.  O’Connor herself said of this reputation for writing ‘grotesque’ stories that ‘anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.’ This is both a witty observation and a piece of advice while reading O’Connor’s work. These are stories about pain and lies and ugliness. The brutality that ha...
1 comment
Read more

Death's End by Liu Cixin

Having recently finished the last book in Liu Cixin's instant classic "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, Death's End, I can only report a feeling of total amazement and awe. There is so much about this novel that blew my mind, that offered different and better ways of viewing the universe. This novel did what I wish more novels would, serve up a new universe entire, evoking beauty and horror, nobility and disgust, in a timeless monument to unfettered speculation.  Obviously, in discussing the events of the last of a trilogy books, spoilers are to be expected. I am, however, going to try to avoid discussing much beyond the first 100 pages of the third novel. I read the translation of this novel, as ushered into being by the amazing talent of Ken Liu. Ken has written of a certain prickliness when it comes to translating work. He makes an effort not to anglicize the source material, not smudging away the occasional difficulties in bringing Cixin...
Post a Comment
Read more

With the title World War Z

Early on in the mostly disappointing zombie epidemic thriller World War Z, UN Investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) hides out in a Newark apartment, trying to convince a family living there to flee with him from the hordes of sprinting, chomping maniacs infesting the city. The phrase he uses, drawing from years of experience in the world's troubled war-zones is "movement is life." Ultimately he's unsuccessful, the family barricades their door behind him and they join the ever-swelling ranks of the undead. As far as a guiding philosophy goes for a pop-action thriller like World War Z, 'movement is life,' isn't bad. And for the first half of the movie or so, it follows its own advice. Similar to other recent zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead) the warning signs of what the rest of the movie will bring are subtle and buried until all hell is ready to break through. The television mentions 'martial law,' Philadelphia traffic snarl...
Post a Comment
Read more