Reviews and Comments

At first this seemed like a good idea. However, by the end I found myself in a blur of anecdotal, sometimes mythological, other times authorial passages which, although having chaptered themes, began to lose its pep. The author dips in and out of elucidation and sometimes I felt a bit disconcerted as how much the author had contributed to the telling of each piece and how much was "verbatim" from the sources from whence they came. In that I didn't want to read Welsh Folk Tales as told by Peter Stevenson, I wanted some background on who told the story and where it came from.

To be honest, the book for me was less a folk compendium and more a periodical assortment of loose tales. Having said that, it is still worth a read if you have an interest on the subject as it may introduce many myths and folktales that may otherwise remain unknown.

Around the time this book was published and the term “Steam Punk” was being bandied about, and people were modding computers with Victorian facades, a university friend of mine mentioned the words to me, “The difference engine”. I never read the book but I used the term freely over the years to express the À rebours aesthetic taking place with new technologies. The concept overall, quite interesting, albeit twenty years later, I actually got round to reading the book. I couldn’t have felt flatter. It felt like Gibson and Sterling had over-researched the era and decided to throw in as much of this research as possible in order to either authenticate the world within or just let the reader know they had done their homework.

Consistency was lost through-out. Even some of the main character dialogue shifted from cockney brogue to received pronunciation without seemingly intending to do so, as if the two authors were getting muddled. At points, as if trapped in a corner, the authors would spring a further development to keep the plot moving, although this at times felt jarring and inconclusive.

There were parts in which I can honestly say I was deeply drawn into the narrative (author having a good day) and other parts of which the diplomatic intrigue dragged on unbearably (author needing to meet a word-count deadline). In some respects, the underlying story arc was no more than a Western set in a speculative alternative history and then moments would arrive where I was expecting Sherlock Holmes to crop up. The ending literally a Spaghetti Western shootout.

All the main characters seemed to have an almost superhuman endurance, especially Mallory, who at times, I wondered if he ever rested. The catastrophe was well deployed but the underlying alternative technology was almost an aside to the alternative political and scientific background.

The addendum highly unnecessary and almost seemed like the authors wanted to include their backstory notes to fill any holes the narrative might have had throughout. Overall, an innovative concept poorly executed with decent writing peppered by moments of superb writing. For me it is not ranked as a remarkably influential book by nature of its story as a whole, but you will find parts that, if had been condensed into a shorter book, and certain concepts teased out to weave those parts together, would have made a far greater impact ... at least to me.

The Galactic Pot-Healer is a melange of analogue and future technology brought together by an alien mythology, the shapeshifting Glimmung who is an alien deity but not actually a god, the gods of Plowman's Planet were Borel and Amalita who were worshipped in two magnificent cathedrals now plunged in the depths of the vast ocean where the shadows of the dead survive. The story follows Joe a "pot-healer", someone who repairs ceramics as he is coaxed to leave Earth and his rather banal existence to join a team gathered by the Glimmung. Philip moves his protagonist in a seemingly random way through-out the plot but by the omniscience of Glimmung and the Book (A tome which writes in real-time the past/present/future of all beings), his actions despite their oblique reasoning are in fact quite linear. Although initially set on a futuristic Earth and an alien planet, Philip retains some old world technologies such as tape recorders, telephones, and the phonograph. There are humorous scenes as if written in on occasion when Philip was in the mood and moments of science-fiction fancy such as when Joe and Mali use the SSA machine. This is the second book featuring a Glimmung and set on the Plowman's planet, the first was Dick's Nick and the Glimmung written as a children's book.

I enjoyed Terry's revision of his 1971 novel The Carpet People. The book challenges the reader to imagine a world full of tribes within the scope of a carpet, challenging I say because despite all the familiar aspects of what it might be like to be minute and living deep in the hairs, the tribes grow vegetables and fruit from dust, ride horses and other animals, make campfires and forge weapons. The world of the Carpet is full of kingdoms and peoples, with the perilous Fray hovering (or hoovering) above them at all times. The story entails an uprising of the mouls and snargs who lurk in the underlay as the various tribes and kingdoms of the Carpet find unity in defeating the threat which has arrived to overcome them. However the Carpet People is about more than just warring peoples, it concerns the transitory nature of empires, the evolution of technology in an environment of found-objects, and most importantly the hypertextual characteristic of storytelling with an emphasis on outcomes. What I like about it as a contrast to Terry's other work is that in a little under three hundred pages Terry gives us a complete world, a complete history with complete saga to go with it. The humour is less contrived than what I've noticed in some of his other books. Terry himself has said that he felt sometimes he was writing a string of jokes with narrative in between, I thought the Carpet People, although brimming with buffoonish mirth dispersed the gags wisely throughout without it soaking up the storyline.

This coverage of the general Celtic folklore in relation to Welsh mythology and legend is not bad. It covers a wider than what probably would be possible scope of such folklore in the limitations of its length. Anne writes with a personal reference to much of her subject matter having visited the places she mentions and retelling the stories she is told by people she knows. The let down is the lack of consistent referencing throughout, possibly a publishing flaw, but I struggled to make note of where the material came from and some explanation of the original intention. The numeric referencing without text became obscure. Sometimes I didn't know whether Anne was paraphrasing a written text or writing verbatim. The only other issue I had with the book as a whole was that it is written like a dissertation and not an analysis, the need for an ambiguous conclusion on partly contemporary views I felt unnecessary, indeed I felt there need not be a conclusion at all. The last niggling thing is that Anne writes that examples will follow or details will be mentioned further along and they are so minimal it might not have been worth telling the reader so.

However like a lot of contemporary writing on such things I feel it necessary to divine the source, but Anne reproduces lovely tales she has garnered from people she has spoken to, so perhaps at the end of the day, she upholds and contributes to the oral tradition that is the focus of the book in the first place.

Richard concludes that he felt the book was written too quickly than he preferred, however, my feelings are that The History of Magic and Witchcraft in Wales sticks to an almost case-by-case timeline allowing the reader to gather the whole picture in summary by the end of the book. I personally wanted this book, as part of a wider a research, and thought its examples drew from documented evidence well devised, so my research need was well satisfied. It covers a variety of topics during and after the Reformation, such as cursing (cursing wells), witchcraft trials, conjurers, grimoires, and demonologists. Richard delves into the court records producing witness statements and defences, he recounts particular cases of interest without too much speculation on his own part. The book includes Welsh language terminology, has a small section of illustrations, and extensive notes and reference section. What I like about Richard's writing on this matter is that he does not try and set the mood, or place himself in the research but instead sets the scene and draws for the reader a historical context upon which to desire further investigation into his own findings.

Rambling lunacy indispersed with moments of lucidity, Bukowski steps between crazy imaginings or retelling of other's stories to his own observations on life at the fringe of American culture. I returned to Bukowski after many years of not reading him, it was in my teens that I read his poetry which in turn inspired me to write as his free-form and at times slapdash method appealed to my brain which was overflowing with thoughts I couldn't get out. Tales of Ordinary Madness continues with that method but in parts veers into the conventional prose writing style. At the start of the book, the first few anecdotes, Bukowski annotates his writing style, talking directly to the reader, as the anecdotes continue he begins to distance himself from the text and deepens the narrative by focussing on the characters, stories and culture of his time. He references other writers, contemporary and past. He reflects on the poetry scene of the time, and its writers. Indispersed with imagery that is less intended to shock than to rather wake the reader up, or give them a jolt. Or perhaps Bukowski got bored and amused himself with a lurid thought put to paper for its own sake, or he was writing with his beer goggles on. Whatever the reasoning, Bukowski toys with the reader, he invents and rants, making Tales of Ordinary Madness a veritable porridge of ideas and observations cut with the daily muck of life by the gutter.