98. Will-O-The-Wisp – Thomas Burnett Swann

The Gubbings live in Dartmoor and after poor pious Nicholas breaks his leg running away from his first sexual encounter at Cambridge, he returns to an adjacent location to hang out with his family and his vicar, Robert Herrick. Herrick is apparently very interesting, he’s definitely presented as one of the cool ones when it comes to vicars, he likes the lusty things and also poems, but to me the coolest thing about him is that he has a pig named Caligula who sleeps in a trundle bed and apparently isn’t very nice. Oh, really? I wish there had been a lot more about Caligula, pig version.

Anyway, Nicholas and Herrick get lured into Dartmoor by Stella, a widow with wings, and her daughter Aster who is way too into boys for a 9 year old. They have a bear in their care and that’s super cool too. Good pets in this book, generally, even if some do not have good ends.

This story was very odd, very folk horror but not scary, just odd. It’s a bit of a character study of Robert Herrick as the author presents at the end and if I was intrigued by the Gubbings and their presentation as super Puritan I would have been more keen on it. But, I think my lack of religious interest affected how much I could get invested in these characters and so I was really more keen on finding out more about their pets rather than if anyone was getting married or getting out of the weirdo trial in Dartmoor and subsequent weirdo trial back home. The pets stole the show, as they often do.

Danger Crumples, eater of carrots, stealer of shows, also not that worried about the weirdo trial, even in the limbo time before New Years.