2025 read #69: The Changeling Sea by Patricia A. McKillip.

The Changeling Sea by Patricia A. McKillip

137 pages

Published 1988

Read from September 18 to September 19

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Unless you count The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, which was marketed as such, this is my first exposure to McKillip’s fiction for younger readers. Fifteen year old Peri has lost her father to the sea and her mother to grief. Her mentor, who taught her ineffectual hexes in a hut on the beach, has disappeared. Then a bedraggled prince and a sea-dragon on a golden chain show up in quick succession. Could there really be a strange country under the sea, like the one Peri’s mother daydreams about?

McKillip’s prose is perfect for a young adult novel from this era, communicating complex feelings with beautiful clarity, layers of loss and yearning and frustration, of having no world to return to. Peri and her island village are vivid presences from the first page.

2025 read #68: Weird Tales, October 1934 issue.

Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, October 1934 issue (24:4)

Edited by Farnsworth Wright

132 pages

Published 1934

Read from September 17 to September 18

Rating: 2 out of 5

I want to write better sword & sorcery, which means I want to read a lot more of it, both contemporary and classic. C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry series is foundational to S&S. This issue of Weird Tales features the first Jirel story, as well as entries from Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard. Could be a fun issue!

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“The Black God’s Kiss” by C. L. Moore. This story fucking rules, in a “throwing the horns while playing D&D in the basement” kind of way. Her castle conquered by the grinning Guillaume, Jirel escapes only to delve into the extradimensional dungeon beneath, braving a realm worse than hell in order to gain a weapon of vengeance. It is a story of a woman’s agency at a startlingly early date, but above all, this is classic weird fiction at its finest, crossing gritty Dark Ages warrior fantasy with alien world cosmic horror. By 1934 standards, this gets an A!

“The Seven Geases” by Clark Ashton Smith. First an unearthly idol, now geases and strange gods—this one issue seems to have been a major source for D&D all on its own. This is a Hyperborean tale of a cocky hunter trespassing in a sorcerer’s mountain fastness. Smith throws as much weirdness as possible at the wall; some of it even sticks. Being me, I was particularly taken with the references to dinosaur leather, extra-planar allosaurs, and the fact that the sorcerer’s familiar is an Archaeopteryx, which is just enough to add it to my list of dinosaur fiction. Maybe B-?

“Old Sledge” by Paul Ernst. After two extravagantly imaginative cosmic fantasy pieces, we’re brought back down with this ho-hum eccentric inventor story. Cantankerous old man Sledge invents a machine that enables him to see any point in the coming five hundred years. He attempts to gain the help of our narrator, a fellow-boarder who happens to be a writer, to write the history of the future. An unremarkable story. C-

“The Sleeper” by H. Bedford-Jones. Crossover in the Orientalist cinematic universe. Mystical powers of bodily control attributed to India share a facile storyline with an Egyptian sarcophagus. The best I can say for it is, it’s not as racist as something with these trappings could be expected to be in 1934? Maybe D+

“The Pistol” by S. Gordon Gurwit. Interminable ghost romance set in an Old Southern mansion, sprinkled with all the casual racism that implies. Tedious. F

A poem, “The Hill Woman” by Frances Elliott, is pretty good for its time.

The next story is part four of a seven(!) part serial, “The Trail of the Cloven Hoof” by Alrton Eadie. Rather than beginning in the middle, I decided to read the first part instead, which was published in the July 1934 issue of Weird Tales. Young new doctor Hugh Trenchard, walking on a misty night in wild Exmoor, hears gunshots and runs to help. He stumbles into what I’m supposing is a rustic Island of Doctor Moreau scenario, though one given an occult gloss appropriate to the 1930s. Purple, pulpy, and prone to tedious quips, but mildly entertaining. Rather reminiscent of old black and white movie serials, with that same geography of fresh twists rising from a sea of padding. Who knows, I might try to read the rest soon (though how are there six more installments?). Maybe C-?

Another poem: “Children of the Moon (The Moths)” by A. Leslie. It’s kind of cheesy, but amusing.

“Supper for Thirteen” by Julius Long. An eccentric host holds a macabre dinner party, himself and his twelve guests strapped into electric chairs. This has the vibe of a Weird Tales clip show, as the guests recount a variety of murder tales but fail to entertain their host, who relishes the idea of murder for murder’s sake. You’ll never guess what happens next! Yawn. D-

Another poem: “Old House” by Marvin Luter Hill. Rhyming poetry about ghastly ghosts in a house. Fully in keeping with the magazine it’s in, but reads like children’s Halloween verse now. Imagine a mid-’80s Tim Curry, paying his rent in a made-for-TV warlock costume, is reading it to you.

Another installment of a serial follows: part two of three of Robert E. Howard’s “The People of the Black Circle.” We turn instead to the September 1934 issue to read part one. Conan gets tangled in court politics and sorcerous betrayals at the foot of the “Himelian” mountains. The setting is a jumble of vaguely subcontinental names and Orientalist vibes, but the first installment, at any rate, lacks the grotesque full-bore racism I’ve come to expect from Howard. A solid start; I certainly want to read the rest at some point. B-

“At the Bend of the Trail” by Manly Wade Wellman. Botanical horror besets white explorers in generic Africa. Quite predictably racist in a colonial cliché sort of way; not much else to it. F

“The White Prince” by Ronal Kayser. Set in the Great War, apparently based on (credulous) contemporary reports. Serbs hurl ethnic and religious invective at Turks occupying a castle on the high ground, until an ethereal folk hero appears to lead the charge. Nationalist drivel, and not well-written. F

“Fioraccio” by Giovanni Magherini-Graziani (1886). A translation of an Italian tale of a fencer of stolen goods who lives a blasphemous life and dies, but won’t stay buried. I think I’m impatient to finish this issue; this didn’t charm me. F+

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And that’s it for another issue of Weird Tales! It started out strong, only to peter out at the end. Still, surprisingly solid overall.

2025 read #67: The Box-Car Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner.

The Box-Car Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

Illustrated by Dorothy Lake Gregory

146 pages

Published 1924

Read September 17

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

One of the great contemporary British nature writers, probably Roger Deakin (though it might have been Robert Macfarlane), first piqued my interest about this series. It sounds right up my alley: Abruptly orphaned, refusing to be sent to their grandfather, four young siblings learn to subsist on their own, avoiding the clutches of meddlesome adults. For shelter, they luck into an old boxcar on an abandoned logging spur in the woods.

Children’s literature of this era lacks depth. The characters are little more than outlines, the plot only a series of incidents culminating, inevitably, in a fortune. But I grew up on fantasies of Mississippi River islands and running away on a raft, so the concept is immensely appealing. And small but skillful touches of natural beauty (not to mention the comforting descriptions of food) add to its appeal. I would have loved the hell out of this book had I read it when I was 8.

2025 read #66: Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City, edited by Elizabeth Dearnley.

Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City, edited by Elizabeth Dearnley

319 pages

Published 2020

Read from September 13 to September 17

Rating: 3 out of 5

Another installment of the British Library Tales of the Weird anthology series, this one naturally centers stories set in London. Dearnley’s introduction is especially interesting, evoking the danger and weirdness of befogged London, a shifting terrain of social anxieties amid tumultuous change. Her story introductions also provide vital context to the authors and the topics they addressed.

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“The Telegram” by Violet Hunt (1911). This story was a bit of a speed bump right at the start of the anthology. I went into it expecting a specific vibe from these Tales of the Weird collections, which this literary character study of a woman who just wants to enjoy her own life and flirt with men without settling for any of them did not meet. It’s a good story, a fascinating document from a leading writer of the New Woman era, and its eventual ghostly turn plays well with the story’s examination of women’s autonomy. But I had to get into the right headspace for it, and the story itself sure takes its time. B-

“In the Séance Room” by Lettice Galbraith (1893). Sociopathic men and patriarchy are the horrors of this piece, which portrays both with a frankness all too rare even today. More so now than ever, I understand the fantasy of supernatural justice depicted here. Heavy-handed and melodramatic as fiction of this era often was, it still works. Kinda. C+

“The Demon Lover” by Elizabeth Bowen (1941). Wartime retelling of the namesake ballad, brief but atmospheric. C+

“The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth” by Rhoda Broughton (1868). Suspiciously cheap apartments in Mayfair lead to supernatural death. Mildly entertaining, ends rather abruptly. C+

“War,” an extract from London in My Time by Thomas Burke (1934). Fascinating essay on London’s attitudes during the Great War. It’s an eccentric choice for an anthology of London Weird, with the surreality of zeppelin raids and dimmed streetlights supplying the weird, but it’s not entirely misplaced.

“Street Haunting” by Virginia Woolf (1927). Another creative non-fiction piece, a sensorium of walking and daydreaming through interwar streets, rather reminiscent of Hope Mirrlees’ Paris: A Poem. Dreamlike and mostly enjoyable. Like Mirrlees, however, Woolf can’t resist throwing in some riff on marginalized populations, here making a spectacle of the disabled segment of society for several paragraphs. 

“Pugilist vs. Poet,” an extract from A Long Way from Home by Claude McKay (1937). My first exposure to McKay’s writing, a too-brief extract on his experiences in London in 1919. Scintillating. I want more!

“N” by Arthur Machen (1936). I read and reviewed this story in the British Library’s Weird Woods anthology. There I wrote: “Machen’s primary interest here appears to be the art of reproducing rambly conversations between older men. All of which is a roundabout path to not much in particular. Only the last page hints at the story this could have been, had Machen been inclined to tell it instead of what we got.”

“The Lodger” by Marie Belloc Lowndes (1911). An early novelette treatment of what, a couple years later, this author would turn into the very first novel about Jack the Ripper. Working-class protagonist Mrs. Bunting, onetime foundling and former maid, wants to avoid the obvious conclusions after her lucrative new lodger proves suspicious. The story is less of a murder mystery and more of a complex psychological study in how financial insecurity leads to complicity. B

“My Girl and the City” by Sam Selvon (1957). An absolutely stunning mood piece about the fluctuating city. Again, not sure why it’s in a Tales of the Weird collection, but it’s lovely. A

“The Mystery of the Semi-Detached” by Edith Nesbit (1893?). Quite brief but well-written mood piece of suburban unease. B-?

“The Old House in Vauxhall Walk” by Charlotte Riddell (1882). A disinherited young gentleman, kicked out by his father that morning, shelters for the night in the antique grandeur of a Vauxhall house lately turned into a rental. The hauntings of the house pervade his dreams, and he decides to stay and find the late miser’s treasure. Interesting mainly as a document of how useless the upper classes are without working folk to take care of them. C+

“The Chippendale Mirror” by E. F. Benson (1915). A more conventional eerie tale, in which a secondhand mirror discloses glimpses of the murder it witnessed. Perfectly adequate. C

“Spring-Heeled Jack” by Anonymous (1884). Straightforward write-up of the titular urban legend, detailing alleged exploits then fifty years in the past.

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And that’s it for London Fog! A major departure from other Tales of the Weird volumes, which all tended to feature tales of the, well, weird. Not much eeriness to speak of, but a good collection all the same, if you ignore its title and the vibe of the rest of the series.

2025 read #65: Quag Keep by Andre Norton.

Quag Keep by Andre Norton

192 pages

Published 1978

Read from September 12 to September 13

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

I learned about this book the other day in a fantasy-themed chat channel. It has the distinction of being what appears to be the very first Dungeons & Dragons novel ever published, so early in the evolution of D&D (and the TTRPG genre) that Norton describes it as a “war game” throughout the book.

We begin with a scene to remind us that dorks have been dorks for at least fifty years: Eckstern, the war game’s “referee,” dramatically unboxes a painted miniature, much to the fascination of his friends. Norton attempts to introduce the then-esoteric concepts of miniature gaming and collecting to the normies, while also not talking down to aficionados. She fails at both. It’s an awkward way to open a novel.

If you guessed that perhaps the weirdly detailed miniatures might enchant our everyday dweebs into the strange realm of Greyhawk, you win, uh. Not much. Because it’s pretty obvious. If you guessed that mystical dice would be built into the costumes of the characters the lads inhabit, that’s a weirder choice, so good job foreseeing that. (“They are like gamers’ dice,” our warrior helpfully explains, “save that there are too many shapes among them to be ordinary.”)

I think the way Norton consistently shoves game-manual concepts into her story is both a bad storytelling choice and a fascinating look into how fantasy and gaming, two musty old subcultures on the precipice of terrific evolution over the ensuing decades, overlapped and fed into each other at this early juncture. Witness this totally natural bit of exposition from page 14:

He had no fear of the berserker even though the huge man might well be deliberately working himself into one of those rages that transcended intelligence and made such a fighter impervious to weapons and some spells.

It’s the “some spells” that sets it over the edge for me.

Quag Keep is the original and archetypal “I turned my campaign into a novel” book, and perhaps it just wouldn’t have been the same without magical dice bracelets and two warriors compelled to chat when they meet in a shady tavern. Contrast it with a much more recent D&D isekai, Perception Check by Astrid Knight, which has decades of genre familiarity behind it and doesn’t need to integrate game mechanics into its descriptions (and is much better as a result).

While this would probably work better as someone’s meta game campaign than as a novel, and nothing here is particularly good, it isn’t wholly unenjoyable, in a masticated, regurgitated pulp sort of way. A fight against undead in a dust-swallowed ship would be a solid D&D encounter to this day. However, this being Norton, we cannot escape without some “women are as alien as the thoughts of a dragon” bullshit. 

2025 read #64: Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire.

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

174 pages

Published 2020

Read from September 6 to September 12

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Another standalone entry in the Wayward Girls series, this one introduces us to Regan, a young girl who is desperate to conform and to correctly perform femininity, and the Doorway to the Hooflands, an equine realm of centaurs, kelpies, and unicorns.

I had wondered why this entry’s Goodreads rating was noticeably lower than the other books in the series. Spoilers: The answer arrives when Regan learns from her parents that she’s intersex, with XY chromosomes and androgen insensitivity. Representing any of humanity’s vast biological diversity in your book will inevitably result in review bombing. Some people have nothing better to do.

I doubt the folks wetting their pants about epigenetic representation even got far enough in the book to pick up on its themes of racism, conformity, and how putting ourselves into neat little boxes merely perpetuates a cycle of generational trauma. Spoilers again: At one point a group of shopkeepers kidnap Regan from her loving, accepting adopted family. One of the kidnappers tells Regan, “Surely a little slice of your freedom is a fair price to pay for knowing our families will never go hungry.” I’m sure the Goodreads crowd would be furious about that, if they got that far (and understood the rather blunt metaphor).

Do I think Fields is as good as the high point of the series, In an Absent Dream? Of course not; that’s the high point for a reason. But Fields is every bit as insightful and meaningful as the rest of the Wayward Girls, and rating it noticeably lower than the others says a lot about people who probably don’t even get the books in the first place.

2025 read #63: The Sorceress and the Cygnet by Patricia A. McKillip.

The Sorceress and the Cygnet by Patricia A. McKillip

231 pages

Published 1991

Read from June 17 to September 6

Rating: 4 out of 5

I began reading this one in the middle of my couldn’t-focus-on-anything phase early this summer, hoping to squeeze it in before hosting my teenager for his school break. I made it roughly seventeen pages in before abandoning it on my nightstand for the following three months.

Part of the reason for that is McKillip’s prose. She was always a groundbreaker when it came to making fantasy fiction a thing of beauty. At her best, she was like a less-horny Tanith Lee. McKillip’s prose in this book is especially lush, often so dreamlike that the only way forward sometimes is to stop trying to make sense of it and just let it carry you along. That’s hard to do when you have an energetic teen at home with you for the summer (and a world that’s burning down around you).

It’s September now, and I’m happy I decided to persevere.

A wandering wagon-dweller is marked with white hair from his mysterious, mystical ancestry, which links him to strange powers. He stumbles into a quest in order to free his people, and his love, from dreamlike wanderings in an unreal place. From such tired, conventional materials, McKillip crafts tales within tales, stories recorded in the stars, in the wings of swans, in centuries of magic moving through the wood. It isn’t a perfect book, but it is spellbinding.