Imaginarium 2012
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Chiaroscuro Reading Series
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Millennium Macabre
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This Enigmatic chapbook contains three varied stories, bound in an attractively clean design with a glossy cover. Meikle has over a hundred story credits and it shows these tales are streamlined and concise, wasting no time to get to the meat.
In the likely Bob Bloch-influenced "The Dark Island," a man travels to his friend's ancestral home. A family curse, a mysterious island in the center of the loch, and night rowboat trek all add up to a tidy little Scottish tale of vague but atmospheric grue. Definitely a journey worth taking.
"The Blue Hag," with Graeme Hurry, is the centerpiece of the collection, with yet another journey as a brother and sister travel by train to the wilds of Scotland after their father's brutal butchering by culprits unknown. The narrator hated his father, a deer farmer who was about to modernize the farm's killing and butchering process, nor was he interested in the family business. Good thing, it turns out, because he's asked to make a choice by his father's killer, who has good reason to have the deer's best interests at heart. A bracing tale full of Scottish atmosphere and flavor, with a strong naturalist message nicely tucked into the chilling narrative.
I can't help it, I'm not generally fond of C'thulhu stories (sacrilege!), so the charms of "The Johnson Amulet," a noir-Lovecraft pastiche, didn't have their way with me. Suffice to say that a great-lookin' dame hires a down-and-out Glasgow private eye to recover a lost amulet, and toss in one encroaching Old One with hair-snakes. It's fun, harmless homage which makes good use of the local color. Contact Firebird Distributing, 2030 First Street Unit 5, Eureka, CA 95501 sales@firebirddistributing.com.