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The Call of Distant Shores
Thirteen tales of Elder Gods, Darkness, horror and Lovecraftian madness by Bram Stoker Award Winning author David Niall Wilson. From crazed sculpting tenants, to giant wooden cockroaches, to Tarot cards and a creepy old barber shop, these stories lead through doorways and down corridors that are not of this world. Published for the first time in this volume is the story Anomaly.
Contents
Author's Introduction
Glenn & The Tart of Mortar Psycho Maine Tenants
The Milk of Paradise
Are You Lookin' For Herb?
Cockroach Suckers
Darkness, and the Light
Death, and His Brother Sleep
Death Did Not Become Him – with Patricia Lee Macomber
From My Reflection, Darkly
The Lost Wisdom of Instinct
Rending the Veil
The Hall of Captured Gods
Anomaly
The Call of Distant Shores
PRAISE FOR THIS
"If you revere the 'traditionalists' of the horror field like I do -- Lovecraft, Hugh B. Cave, Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman (who was one of my mentors, I'm proud to say) -- then you'll love these tales. Many of them would have had pride of place in any issue of Weird Tales in the 30s or 40s."
--Al Sarrantonio, author of Skeletons, Moonbane, and Halloween and Other Seasons
Contents
Author's Introduction
Glenn & The Tart of Mortar Psycho Maine Tenants
The Milk of Paradise
Are You Lookin' For Herb?
Cockroach Suckers
Darkness, and the Light
Death, and His Brother Sleep
Death Did Not Become Him – with Patricia Lee Macomber
From My Reflection, Darkly
The Lost Wisdom of Instinct
Rending the Veil
The Hall of Captured Gods
Anomaly
The Call of Distant Shores
PRAISE FOR THIS
"If you revere the 'traditionalists' of the horror field like I do -- Lovecraft, Hugh B. Cave, Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman (who was one of my mentors, I'm proud to say) -- then you'll love these tales. Many of them would have had pride of place in any issue of Weird Tales in the 30s or 40s."
--Al Sarrantonio, author of Skeletons, Moonbane, and Halloween and Other Seasons
Nook
First published June 7, 2011
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About the author
David Niall Wilson
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David Niall Wilson has been writing and publishing horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction since the mid-eighties. An ordained minister, once President of the Horror Writer 's Association and multiple recipient of the Bram Stoker Award. He lives outside Hertford, NC with the love of his life, Patricia Lee Macomber, His children Zane and Katie, occasionally their older siblings, Stephanie, who is in college, and Bill and Zach who are in the Navy, and an ever-changing assortment of pets.
David is CEO and founder of Crossroad Press, a cutting edge digital publishing company specializing in electronic novels, collections, and nonfiction, as well as unabridged audiobooks and print titles.
Join my street team on Facebook to win prizes, discuss my work with others, and get exclusive content and offers
David Niall Wilson has been writing and publishing horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction since the mid-eighties. An ordained minister, once President of the Horror Writer 's Association and multiple recipient of the Bram Stoker Award. He lives outside Hertford, NC with the love of his life, Patricia Lee Macomber, His children Zane and Katie, occasionally their older siblings, Stephanie, who is in college, and Bill and Zach who are in the Navy, and an ever-changing assortment of pets.
David is CEO and founder of Crossroad Press, a cutting edge digital publishing company specializing in electronic novels, collections, and nonfiction, as well as unabridged audiobooks and print titles.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 6, 2019
http://booknest.eu/reviews/charles/14...
Note: I've worked with the author and his publishing house but these are my honest thoughts as best I could make them. Consider yourself forewarned.
THE CALL OF DISTANT SHORES is a homage to the works of H.P. Lovecraft with a twist. David Niall Wilson is a author I have very much enjoyed the writings of ranging from his work for licensed properties like STAR TREK, VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE, and STARGATE SG-1 to his original stories like GIDEON'S CURSE as well as the DECHANCE CHRONICLES.
As a huge H.P. Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos fan, however, I was skeptical of him bringing anything new to the table. Many people have chosen to write in HPL's style and few people manage to become anything more than a pale imitation. The people who actually succeed in adding something new to the Mythos are those people who take the Man from Providence's work as an inspiration then do their own thing with it.
I'm pleased to say that David Niall Wilson is one of the latter rather than the former. The big thing he brings to the Cthulhu Mythos is humor. You can tell that DNW is a man who doesn't entirely take the creeping, looming, and gnawing horror of the universe all that seriously. It's not so much that man isn't irrelevant in this universe but that such things don't actually scare your average citizen. They know they're cogs in a wheel and the existence of ancient gods beyond the horizon doesn't do much to change the price of your gas bill.
The majority of protagonists in this book are various shades of idiot, working class hero, or average joe versus the nebbish scholars which serve as the prototypical Lovecraftian hero. "Are you looking for Herb?" has an obnoxious set of travelers venture off the roads into the backwoods and miss all the signs they've found themselves among people who are best left undisturbed.
"Cockroach Suckers" is my favorite of the stories here as it's a tale of people who find a horrifying eldritch entity and decide to build a freakshow around it. The superintendent of a building discovers a mad artist building unnatural grotesques that may be summoning SOMETHING horrifying but he's too distracted by the man's daughter's boobs to make much sense of it.
The book isn't entirely limited to humor, though, and contains a variety of takes on the Mythos that other authors don't necessarily touch on. For example, aside from Stuart Gordon, not many people ever explore the sexier side of the Mythos. There's just not much appealing in matings between human women and fishmen or Yog-Sogoth. Here, however, there's two stories that are a bit on the steamier side.
I also appreciated the "Call of Distant Shores" itself, which is more akin to a ghost story than a traditional Lovecraftian tale. Indeed, it's actually a tribute to Clark Ashton Smith (another member of the Lovecraft Circle). It does, however, have many themes of inherited guilt and the unfathomable otherworldly power embodied by the sea. Horror fans should enjoy the story simply because it's great fiction rather than its similarity to the work of Howard Phillips, however. I could easily see this expanded to a Stephen King BAG OF BONES-esque novel as David really manages to nail small-town life.
Another great treat in the story is a Sherlock Holmes encounter with an unnatural horror that was co-written with another author. THE SHADOW OVER BAKER STREET is one of the best anthologies ever written, in my humble opinion, and something everyone should pick up. This was the story included there and reflects the fact he's written for (in his own words) a lot of Lovecraft anthologies. At heart, David Niall Wilson gets the heart of HPL isn't tentacles or specific monsters but ideas that rattle the soul.
There's some serious and even haunting stories in this work but the sense of humor the author brings to his collection is what I give him the most props for. I also love how he tweaked the formula of so many pastiches by adding elements which the original author never touched on (romance for one). If you're looking for a short story collection that doesn't blandly copy the work of the artist formerly immortalized as the World Fantasy Awards then this is definitely a place to do your shopping.
9/10
Note: I've worked with the author and his publishing house but these are my honest thoughts as best I could make them. Consider yourself forewarned.
THE CALL OF DISTANT SHORES is a homage to the works of H.P. Lovecraft with a twist. David Niall Wilson is a author I have very much enjoyed the writings of ranging from his work for licensed properties like STAR TREK, VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE, and STARGATE SG-1 to his original stories like GIDEON'S CURSE as well as the DECHANCE CHRONICLES.
As a huge H.P. Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos fan, however, I was skeptical of him bringing anything new to the table. Many people have chosen to write in HPL's style and few people manage to become anything more than a pale imitation. The people who actually succeed in adding something new to the Mythos are those people who take the Man from Providence's work as an inspiration then do their own thing with it.
I'm pleased to say that David Niall Wilson is one of the latter rather than the former. The big thing he brings to the Cthulhu Mythos is humor. You can tell that DNW is a man who doesn't entirely take the creeping, looming, and gnawing horror of the universe all that seriously. It's not so much that man isn't irrelevant in this universe but that such things don't actually scare your average citizen. They know they're cogs in a wheel and the existence of ancient gods beyond the horizon doesn't do much to change the price of your gas bill.
The majority of protagonists in this book are various shades of idiot, working class hero, or average joe versus the nebbish scholars which serve as the prototypical Lovecraftian hero. "Are you looking for Herb?" has an obnoxious set of travelers venture off the roads into the backwoods and miss all the signs they've found themselves among people who are best left undisturbed.
"Cockroach Suckers" is my favorite of the stories here as it's a tale of people who find a horrifying eldritch entity and decide to build a freakshow around it. The superintendent of a building discovers a mad artist building unnatural grotesques that may be summoning SOMETHING horrifying but he's too distracted by the man's daughter's boobs to make much sense of it.
The book isn't entirely limited to humor, though, and contains a variety of takes on the Mythos that other authors don't necessarily touch on. For example, aside from Stuart Gordon, not many people ever explore the sexier side of the Mythos. There's just not much appealing in matings between human women and fishmen or Yog-Sogoth. Here, however, there's two stories that are a bit on the steamier side.
I also appreciated the "Call of Distant Shores" itself, which is more akin to a ghost story than a traditional Lovecraftian tale. Indeed, it's actually a tribute to Clark Ashton Smith (another member of the Lovecraft Circle). It does, however, have many themes of inherited guilt and the unfathomable otherworldly power embodied by the sea. Horror fans should enjoy the story simply because it's great fiction rather than its similarity to the work of Howard Phillips, however. I could easily see this expanded to a Stephen King BAG OF BONES-esque novel as David really manages to nail small-town life.
Another great treat in the story is a Sherlock Holmes encounter with an unnatural horror that was co-written with another author. THE SHADOW OVER BAKER STREET is one of the best anthologies ever written, in my humble opinion, and something everyone should pick up. This was the story included there and reflects the fact he's written for (in his own words) a lot of Lovecraft anthologies. At heart, David Niall Wilson gets the heart of HPL isn't tentacles or specific monsters but ideas that rattle the soul.
There's some serious and even haunting stories in this work but the sense of humor the author brings to his collection is what I give him the most props for. I also love how he tweaked the formula of so many pastiches by adding elements which the original author never touched on (romance for one). If you're looking for a short story collection that doesn't blandly copy the work of the artist formerly immortalized as the World Fantasy Awards then this is definitely a place to do your shopping.
9/10
March 7, 2012
Though some of the stories contained within this collection aren't exactly Cthulhuian or Elder God stuff, they do hold true to Lovecraftian storytelling. The writing is well done and the stories themselves are very well planned out and executed wonderfully. Each is fairly unique in what they present to the reader and the subject matter they contain.
As with all collections, some stories were more enjoyable than others. Wilson himself admits that he has never really considered himself a fan of Lovecraft, but in saying that, it helps rather than hinders his writing in this collection. It means he doesn't stick to the tropes of the material and instead branches out into other areas.
So why four stars you ask? Because as mentioned above, as with all anthologies, there are stories I enjoyed, and others that I cared less for where it seemed that the author was perhaps trying too hard to stretch his wings in areas he was not experienced in writing. ('Death, and His Brother Sleep' being the first that comes to mind) Though one can hardly be faulted for trying new things, I feel that perhaps they could have been refined before seeing publication with other, more successful stories.
That said, I do recommend this book, and from the looks at reviews on other sites, so do many others. If you are a fan of Lovecraft's style, check out this book. Many of the stories will have you coming back to the anthology time and time again after you set it down.
As with all collections, some stories were more enjoyable than others. Wilson himself admits that he has never really considered himself a fan of Lovecraft, but in saying that, it helps rather than hinders his writing in this collection. It means he doesn't stick to the tropes of the material and instead branches out into other areas.
So why four stars you ask? Because as mentioned above, as with all anthologies, there are stories I enjoyed, and others that I cared less for where it seemed that the author was perhaps trying too hard to stretch his wings in areas he was not experienced in writing. ('Death, and His Brother Sleep' being the first that comes to mind) Though one can hardly be faulted for trying new things, I feel that perhaps they could have been refined before seeing publication with other, more successful stories.
That said, I do recommend this book, and from the looks at reviews on other sites, so do many others. If you are a fan of Lovecraft's style, check out this book. Many of the stories will have you coming back to the anthology time and time again after you set it down.
May 28, 2019
Great weird fiction.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews