Top Ten Tuesday: A Halloween Cryptozoo

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “Halloween Freebie”.

Today also marks the start of Witch Week, hosted by Chris and Lizzie, and their theme for this year is…Cryptozoo, “all about legendary animals, fantastic beasts and literary monsters.” I thought this would make an interesting top ten, so I am listing below a selection of monstrous animals and mythological creatures, all of which have appeared in books I’ve read and reviewed on my blog.

Not all of these are traditionally associated with Halloween, but I don’t think you would want to meet any of them after dark!

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1. The Minotaur
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

I’m starting my list with one of the most famous creatures from Greek mythology. The Minotaur has the head of a bull and the body of a man and is imprisoned in the Labyrinth of Knossos on the island of Crete. He appears in many novels and books of mythology, including Saint’s Ariadne, written from the perspectives of the Minotaur’s sisters, Ariadne and Phaedra.

2. Mari Lwyd
Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper

This final novel in Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence features several beasts and monsters, including the afanc, a Welsh lake monster, and some very threatening black minks and polecats. Most terrifying of all is the skeleton horse known as the Mari Lwyd, another creature from Welsh folklore.

3. Medved
The Winternight trilogy by Katherine Arden

This is a wonderful fantasy trilogy set in medieval Russia and grounded in mythology, folklore and fairy tales. The novels feature several chyerts, or spirits, including the demonic Medved, who at one moment can appear to be a man, the next a bear.

Statue of Ox-Head in Taiwan

4. Ox-headed demons
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

The Ghost Bride is a very unusual historical fantasy novel in which a young Chinese woman receives a marriage proposal from a dead man, then enters the underworld to investigate his murder. Here she finds that the Chinese afterlife is populated with many ghosts, spirits and monsters, among them the sinister ox-headed demons, guardians of the underworld.

5. Tintaglia
The Realm of the Elderlings sequence by Robin Hobb

There are several dragons who appear throughout Robin Hobb’s sixteen-volume fantasy sequence, but for this list I have chosen Tintaglia, the blue female who is the first to hatch when dragons begin to return to the world during the Liveship Traders Trilogy. Like the other dragons in the series, Tintaglia is proud and unpredictable, and for the human characters she can be either an ally or a danger.

6. Jörmungandr
Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt

Another mythical being, this time from Norse mythology. Jörmungandr, also known as the World Serpent, encircles the Earth and bites its own tail. When it releases its tail, Ragnarök, the final battle of the world, will begin. Byatt’s novel is written from the perspective of a little girl who has been evacuated during World War II and relates the Norse myth to her own life in wartime Britain.

Illustration of Kikimora by Ivan Bilibin (1934)

7. Kikimora
The Witch and the Tsar by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

Like the Katherine Arden books above, this one combines Russian history and folklore, this time telling the story of the witch, Baba Yaga. The kikimora, a secondary character in the novel, is a house spirit from Slavic mythology. She has a birdlike appearance and lives in a swamp, where she plagues the dreams of any human who falls asleep near her watery home.

8. The Leviathan
The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews

At first this appears to be a novel about a woman accused of witchcraft in the 17th century, but halfway through it develops into something quite different with tales of a fearsome snake-like sea monster. I loved the foreboding atmosphere of the earlier chapters and would have preferred the book to continue that way, but I know other readers enjoyed the second half a lot more than I did!

9. The Beast Folk
The Island of Doctor Moreau by HG Wells

Sometimes the most frightening monsters are those that could really exist. In Wells’ classic science fiction novel, a man is shipwrecked on an island inhabited by a scientist who has been experimenting on animals. Thankfully Wells doesn’t go into those experiments in too much detail, but the results are both sad and horrific.

10. Behemoth
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

This list wouldn’t be complete without Behemoth, the demonic, chess-playing, vodka-drinking black cat from Bulgakov’s Soviet classic. I loved this book and must read it again to see if I can pick up on some of the things I know I missed the first time!

What do you think of my list? Which other literary beasts and monsters would you include?

Benighted by J.B. Priestley

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This is the first book I’ve read by J.B. Priestley and a great choice for this time of year. Published in 1927, it was filmed as The Old Dark House in 1935, although I don’t think I’ve seen it so can’t comment on how similar or different it is from the book.

The novel begins as married couple Philip and Margaret Waverton, accompanied by their friend Roger Penderel, get caught in a storm as they try to drive home through the Welsh countryside one night. The rain is torrential and with the roads starting to become impassable, they decide to seek shelter in an old, crumbling mansion, the only house they can see for miles around. It doesn’t look very inviting…

It was the house itself that was so quiet. Driving up like this, you expected a bustle, shadows hurrying across the blinds, curtains lifted, doors flung open. But so far this house hadn’t given the slightest sign in spite of its lighted windows. It seemed strangely turned in upon itself, showing nothing but a blank face in the night. You could hardly imagine that great front door ever being opened at all.

The door is eventually opened by a huge, silent butler and as the trio step inside their sense of unease continues to grow. The house is home to the Femms – the strange and nervous Horace and his fanatically religious sister, Rebecca. The Femms reluctantly allow them to stay for the night, but it quickly becomes obvious to the visitors that they’re unlikely to get much sleep in such an eerie, unwelcoming house. After a while, they are joined by two more people looking for shelter – Sir William Porterhouse, a wealthy businessman, and Gladys du Cane, a chorus girl. The rest of the novel describes the unpleasant, frightening experiences the five guests undergo during their night in the Femm household. It seems that there are other members of the Femm family who haven’t made an appearance yet – and when they do, the guests begin to wish they had stayed outside in the storm after all!

Benighted is a short, quick read and one that I enjoyed, with a few reservations. By the standards of modern horror novels it’s quite tame – I would describe it as creepy and unsettling rather than terrifying – but as a book from the 1920s, it has clearly had a huge influence on what Orrin Grey in the introduction describes as the ‘old dark house’ subgenre. There’s nothing supernatural going on in the novel; the creepiness comes entirely from the portrayal of the odd, sinister characters, the descriptions of the dark, desolate house and the mystery surrounding a locked door upstairs and what lies behind it. I was intrigued to learn that the Addams Family creator, Charles Addams, drew the illustrations for the opening sequence of a 1963 remake of The Old Dark House, because there are some unmistakable similarities between the Addams and Femm families!

Perhaps the real horrors being described in Benighted are the effects of the First World War, which ended less than ten years before the book was published. Priestley himself is quoted as saying that the novel’s characters are “forms of postwar pessimism pretending to be people”. This leads to some long passages in which Priestley explores the mental states of the characters and how they are affected by their night in the Femm house, most notably Roger Penderel who has experienced various traumas during the war, including the loss of his brother at the Battle of Passchendaele, and has been left disillusioned and cynical. These passages added depth to the novel, but at the same time I felt that they slowed down the pace of the plot and pulled me out of the story. In the end, this book didn’t quite work for me either as a horror novel or a psychological study, but it was still an interesting read and has definitely piqued my interest in reading more books by Priestley.

Scarlet Town by Leonora Nattrass

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Scarlet Town is the third book in Leonora Nattrass’s Laurence Jago series set in the final decade of the 18th century. I enjoyed the first two books – Black Drop and Blue Water – and this one is another strong entry in the series.

It’s 1796 and Laurence Jago, accompanied by his friend, the journalist William Philpott, has just returned from his voyage to America (described in Blue Water). Jago, once a clerk in the Foreign Office, is now apprenticed to Philpott and is grateful to his friend for the opportunity, while at the same time angry with him for causing his beloved dog, Mr Gibbs, to be left behind in Philadelphia! Back in England again, they head for Jago’s home town of Helston in Cornwall, intending to visit his cousin Pythagoras (affectionately known as Piggy). On arrival in Helston, however, they are shocked by what they find. Not only does wig-wearing appear to have fallen out of fashion during their absence, but the entire town seems to be caught up in the fever of the upcoming election.

Helston is known as a ‘rotten borough’, where only two men in the town are allowed to vote – and one of these two electors has died under suspicious circumstances. It seems that someone is also attempting to kill the remaining elector, so the town’s patron, the Duke of Leeds, asks Laurence to investigate – but to Laurence’s dismay, his own beloved cousin Piggy begins to emerge as the number one suspect. Will he be able to prove Piggy’s innocence and find the real culprit? And who will win the election if both of the Duke’s electors are unable to vote?

According to the author’s note, the situation described in the book (without the deaths/murder attempts) is based on an election that actually did take place in Helston in the 1790s. Several of the characters are people who really existed, including Sir James Burges, the Duke’s candidate for Parliament, and Stephen Lushington (chairman of the East India Company), the alternative candidate put forward by the town’s mayor – and the novel’s title refers to the red ribbons and silks worn by supporters of the mayor’s candidate as opposed to the blue worn by supporters of the Duke’s. I remember learning about the rotten boroughs at school and the events portrayed in this book perfectly illustrate why electoral reform was so desperately needed. Many people complain about today’s electoral system, but the people of Helston were dealing with a system so corrupt that only a tiny minority were making decisions that affected everyone else, where there was no secret ballot and votes could be bought and sold, leaving the electors open to bribery and blackmail.

As well as the fascinating historical setting, I also found the murder mystery quite compelling; it was maybe not as enjoyable as the mystery in Blue Water, and there were times when I felt it became a bit too complicated, but it was intriguing and kept me guessing until the end. Nattrass also lightens the mood with some humour in the form of Toby the Sapient Hog (based on a real performing pig). I love the 18th century world she has created in this series – everything feels so authentic and thoroughly researched. I’m not sure if there’s going to be a fourth book, but if there is then I can’t wait to read it.

Thanks to Viper for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 44/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Once a Monster by Robert Dinsdale

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Novels inspired by Greek mythology seem to have become very popular in recent years, but Robert Dinsdale’s new book, Once a Monster, is something slightly different. More reimagining than retelling, it’s set in Victorian London and owes as much to Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist as it does to Greek myth.

Ten-year-old Nell Hart is a mudlark, one of a small group of children, orphaned or otherwise neglected and vulnerable, who spend their days searching through the mud of the River Thames for ‘treasures’ – pieces of coal or iron – to give to their master, Benjamin Murdstone. It’s a difficult life for a child, but Nell has a pair of satin ballet slippers hidden inside her straw mattress, a gift left to her by her seamstress mother, and she is sustained by dreams of one day becoming a ballerina.

One morning, Nell is the first down to the river to begin another day of mudlarking and so she is the first to discover a body washed up on the shore. At first she’s unmoved by the sight – it’s not the first dead body she’s seen – but on closer inspection she discovers that this is the body of no ordinary man. Unusually tall, with enormous hands and feet, there are strange growths on each side of the head, almost like the beginnings of horns. The other mudlarks have arrived and are urging Nell to steal the man’s boots, when she makes another shocking discovery – he is still alive.

His name is Minos and as he returns to consciousness, memories slowly begin to surface of a time long ago and another life as a Minotaur in a labyrinth. But is Minos really the Minotaur of Greek myth or is he just a man after all? What will Murdstone do when he sees what Nell has found for him – and will Nell ever break free of her mudlark existence and learn to dance?

This is the first book I’ve read by Robert Dinsdale so I didn’t know what to expect, but I found it beautifully written and atmospheric. As I’ve mentioned, there’s a strong Dickens influence, from the descriptions of the poorer parts of Victorian London to the portrayal of Mr Murdstone, who is obviously inspired by Fagin, the leader of the gang of pickpockets in Oliver Twist. As the villain of the novel, he’s a very human monster and it quickly becomes clear that a central theme of the story is that every one of us can have a monster inside us as well as a hero. Dinsdale uses the myth of the Minotaur to explore and develop this theory:

“The mythographers were a cowardly lot. Just storytellers, trying to make sense of a world too complex to be distilled in mere words…But when it came to chronicling these stories for the ages, the Minotaur presented them with the thorniest of problems. To look him in the eye and see him for anything other than a base beast must have been like peering into a looking glass. They would have had to acknowledge the monstrosity in all of us.”

I found the relationship between Nell and Minos slightly disturbing; it wasn’t really a romantic relationship but it felt like more than just a platonic friendship or a father/daughter relationship and I kept forgetting that while Minos was an adult (possibly many hundreds of years old), Nell was only a ten-year-old child. The interactions and conversations between the two of them felt more what I would have expected if Nell had been a teenager or young woman rather than a little girl. Apart from that, I did think both characters were interesting; I enjoyed following Nell as she took her first steps towards becoming a ballerina and although I found Minos harder to connect with, I was intrigued by his story and by his memories of his time as the Minotaur.

My main problem with this book was the length; there were too many long and repetitive sections where the pace slowed and nothing really happened to advance the plot. I read the ebook but the print version has over 500 pages and I think that could easily have been cut down to 400 without losing anything important. Still, I did find this an interesting novel overall and would consider trying one of Robert Dinsdale’s earlier books.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 43/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer – #1962Club

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When looking for books to read for this week’s 1962 Club (hosted by Karen and Simon), I hoped there would be a Georgette Heyer I hadn’t read yet – and there was! Like Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon, you can nearly always rely on Heyer to have had at least one book published in whatever the current club year is. The Nonesuch was published in 1962 and I’ve managed to read it just in time to squeeze in my review on the final day!

A nonesuch can be defined as ‘a person or thing without equal’ and Sir Waldo Hawkridge, hero of Heyer’s novel, certainly fits that description – at least in the eyes of fashionable Regency society. Being rich, handsome, athletic and an eligible bachelor, his sudden arrival in the quiet Yorkshire village of Oversett causes quite a stir. He has recently inherited the estate of Broom Hall and has come to inspect it, accompanied by his younger cousin, Lord Lindeth. Ancilla Trent, governess to the beautiful Tiffany Wield, has already formed an opinion of the Nonesuch before she even meets him, but is surprised to find that he’s not really what she expected at all. Ancilla is quickly won over by Sir Waldo’s kindness and calm, sensible nature and he in turn is drawn to the quiet, unassuming governess. However, they are both alarmed when Lindeth seems to be falling for the charms of the lovely but spoiled Tiffany!

The Nonesuch doesn’t really have a lot of plot – unlike many of Heyer’s other novels, there are no encounters with highwaymen, no duels, no masked balls, no abductions or elopements – and the focus instead is on country life and the relationships between the two or three Yorkshire families at the heart of the story. Heyer is often compared to Jane Austen, of course, but I found this book particularly reminiscent of Pride and Prejudice. I tend to prefer her livelier, funnier stories, like The Corinthian or Sprig Muslin, but I did still enjoy following Ancilla and Sir Waldo and watching their relationship develop. Heyer does throw in a misunderstanding to stir things up, but otherwise their romance is completely believable and it’s easy to see why each would be attracted to the other.

In contrast to Ancilla Trent, whom I liked very much, Tiffany Wield is an awful character – selfish, vain, and prone to throwing tantrums when things don’t go her way. It was such a relief when it became clear that she wasn’t going to be the novel’s ‘heroine’, so I didn’t need to try to like her. And I did find myself enjoying her storyline later in the book, after Sir Waldo’s other young cousin, Laurence Calver, arrives from London and Tiffany finds she has met her match!

The Nonesuch doesn’t rank as a favourite by Heyer, but I’m still pleased I managed to fit it in for 1962 Club. I did love the rural Yorkshire setting, which made a change from the more common Regency novel settings of London or Bath.

This is book 42/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken – #1962Club

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I’ve read and enjoyed several of Joan Aiken’s adult novels over the last few years – my favourite so far is Castle Barebane – but until now I’ve never read the book for which she’s most famous, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. It was first published in 1962, which makes it a perfect choice for this week’s 1962 Club hosted by Simon and Karen.

This is obviously a book aimed at younger readers and I’m sure I would have loved it if I’d read it as a child; however, I was pleased to find that it also has a lot to offer an adult reader. I’m definitely planning to continue with the next book in the series.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is set in England in an alternate history where the Stuarts are still on the throne in the 19th century. It’s 1832, early in the reign of King James III, and a tunnel between Dover and Calais has recently been completed, allowing the migration of a large number of wolves from Europe. In reality, of course, the Channel Tunnel wouldn’t open until 1994, so Joan Aiken really was ahead of her time – although obviously the idea had existed in theory for much longer! Other than the tunnel and the presence of wolves, the world described in this book doesn’t seem very different from the real world of 1832, but I’m assuming the alternate history element becomes more significant later in the series.

Being a children’s book, the story is told from the perspectives of two children – Bonnie and Sylvia Green. Sylvia, an orphan, lives in London with her elderly Aunt Jane, but at the beginning of the novel she travels north by train to Willoughby Chase to stay with her cousin Bonnie. Bonnie’s parents, Sir Willoughby and Lady Green, are going abroad for health reasons and have engaged a governess, Miss Letitia Slighcarp, to take care of the children while they are away.

Left alone with Miss Slighcarp, the girls discover that their new governess is not what she claims to be and has another motive for coming to Willoughby Chase. Soon Bonnie and Sylvia are sent off to a horrible school for orphans run by the cruel Gertrude Brisket. Hungry and miserable, they begin to plan a daring escape, but will they succeed – and if so, where will they go? Will their friend, Simon the goose-boy, be able to help them? And what exactly is Miss Slighcarp planning to do now that she is in full control of Willoughby Chase?

Now that I’ve read this book I can see why it is considered a children’s classic and has been so popular with generations of younger readers over the years. It has an exciting plot, child protagonists to relate to, kindly adult characters to love and villainous ones to hate, and an atmospheric setting with snowy, icy landscapes and packs of wolves roaming the countryside. Speaking of the wolves, they play a big part in two memorable scenes near the beginning of the book, but are barely mentioned after that as the human ‘wolves’ come to the forefront of the story instead. The influence of Victorian literature on Aiken’s writing is also very obvious, from the Dickensian names of the characters – Letitia Slighcarp, Josiah Grimshaw, Mr Gripe, Mr Wilderness – to the portrayal of Mrs Brisket’s school, surely inspired by Lowood School in Jane Eyre.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and just wish I hadn’t come to it so late! I’m already looking forward to reading the second one in the series, Black Hearts in Battersea.

This is book 41/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Due to a Death by Mary Kelly – #1962Club

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This week Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book are hosting another of their club weeks, where we all read and write about books published in the same year. This time, the year is 1962 and what a great year for publishing it has turned out to be! There were lots of tempting books to choose from, but I decided to start with one from the British Library Crime Classics series by an author who is new to me: Mary Kelly.

Due to a Death is a very different kind of BLCC book; it’s not really a detective novel, not really a thriller, not a country house or locked room mystery – not even much of a mystery at all. Although there is an element of crime, I would describe this more as a character study and an exploration of the lives of women in a small community in the early 1960s.

Our narrator, Agnes, lives in Gunfleet, a fictional village in the marshlands of Kent. Agnes used to be a teacher but her marriage to Tom meant she was no longer expected to work. It’s not a very happy or satisfying marriage and Tom, who works in a museum, spends most of his free time with his friends, Ian (who is also his stepbrother) and Tubby. Agnes appears to have no friends of her own so Tubby, Ian, and their wives Carole and Helen (whom she doesn’t particularly get along with), form her entire social circle. When Hedley Nicholson, a newcomer to the village, joins their little group he seems to sense that Agnes is lonely and bored and begins to spend more and more time with her, teaching her to drive – something she hopes will provide independence and freedom.

In the opening chapter, we learn that the body of a young woman has been found in the marshes. The rest of the novel is then told in the form of a flashback as Agnes sits in a church, thinking back over the events of the summer. The identity of the dead woman and her connection with the other characters is slowly revealed, but the focus of the book is always on Agnes and her relationships with Hedley, Tom, Ian and Tubby. It’s an interesting study of how, despite living in a small, claustrophobic community where everybody knows everybody else’s business, it’s still possible to feel isolated and alone.

I was very impressed with this book and although it has a slow pace, I found it difficult to put down. However, everything about it is relentlessly bleak, from the desolate marshland setting to the dreary lives of the characters and the tragic motive behind the young woman’s death. I liked it but, as I’ve said, it’s not a typical crime novel, so be prepared!

I hope to have at least one more 1962 review for you later in the week. Meanwhile, here’s my list of other 1962 books previously read and reviewed on my blog.