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Above Ker-Is and Other Stories
This volume, edited and introduced by noted fantasy scholar Douglas A. Anderson, collects Walton's ten completed fantasy short stories, including her 1950 story published in the legendary magazine Weird Tales, and three superb Breton tales which first appeared in anthologies in the early 1980s. Four stories are published here for the first time.
134 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 2012
About the author
Evangeline Walton
36 books131 followersEvangeline Walton was the pen name of Evangeline Wilna Ensley, an American author of fantasy fiction. She remains popular in North America and Europe because of her “ability to humanize historical and mythological subjects with eloquence, humor and compassion”.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 21, 2012
Nodens Books is a new press whose first publication is this collection of ten short stories by Evangeline Walton.
The first three are based on Breton Celtic myth and are sure to please admirers of Walton's amazing Mabinogion novels from the 1930s and 1970s. The others are excellent examples of what today is called dark fantasy, on the border between mythological fantasy and horror. Even "Werwolf," the only story that could be said to have a standard plot, has a high degree of polish and the added interest of being set during the Soviet Revolution.
Walton was an excellent prose writer by any standard, and she got better as she aged --- the three Mabinogion novels that she revised for publication by Ballantine in the 1970s are clearly superior to the one she published in 1936. Apparently she never stopped working despite not having been "discovered" until she was in her mid-60s, and this collection is the first fruit of a pile of unpublished novels and stories that Nodens Books and Walton's literary executor have now sorted and are planning to bring out! I can't wait for the two Theseus novels (which I had counted among the great lost works since I discovered Walton myself just a few years ago) and the full-length version of The Cross and the Sword. Kudos to Douglas Anderson of Nodens for this undertaking.
The first three are based on Breton Celtic myth and are sure to please admirers of Walton's amazing Mabinogion novels from the 1930s and 1970s. The others are excellent examples of what today is called dark fantasy, on the border between mythological fantasy and horror. Even "Werwolf," the only story that could be said to have a standard plot, has a high degree of polish and the added interest of being set during the Soviet Revolution.
Walton was an excellent prose writer by any standard, and she got better as she aged --- the three Mabinogion novels that she revised for publication by Ballantine in the 1970s are clearly superior to the one she published in 1936. Apparently she never stopped working despite not having been "discovered" until she was in her mid-60s, and this collection is the first fruit of a pile of unpublished novels and stories that Nodens Books and Walton's literary executor have now sorted and are planning to bring out! I can't wait for the two Theseus novels (which I had counted among the great lost works since I discovered Walton myself just a few years ago) and the full-length version of The Cross and the Sword. Kudos to Douglas Anderson of Nodens for this undertaking.
June 16, 2012
Fantasy Tales by the Author of the "Mabinogion Tetralogy"
According to Douglas A. Anderson, the editor of this posthumous collection, the first seven of these stories were written between the late 1920s and the early 1930s, when the author was between the approximate ages of 20 and 25 years, predating the 1936 publication of "The Virgin and the Swine" (later known as "The Island of the Mighty," the first novel of the "Tetralogy" to be published). The final three stories were written from the late l940s to the early l950s. This collection is a good vehicle in which to observe the development of Walton’s style.
The first three stories, which are retellings of a Breton folktale about a city sunk beneath the waves through the actions of a princess who may or may not be viewed as an evil force, employ an old-fashioned, circuitous, first-person style in which a narrator hears a story from another person and then retells it. It can be a priest hearing a confession or a folklorist recording the tale of an aged informant. This, combined with a conventional depiction of some characters, makes the early stories not particularly memorable, in spite of some fine descriptive writing and mood creation.
The central four stories can be considered a transitional phase. In “The Tree of Perkunas” we start with a narrator who has reconstructed the tale from a friend’s letters, but then this narrator disappears and a straightforward third-person tale develops. In “Werwolf” the fictional framework disappears altogether, although the opening paragraph gives an omniscient narrator’s introduction. In “The Ship from Away” the author reverts to the fiction of a third party (“Young Devlin told me this story”) who functions to reveal the fate of Devlin at the end. “Lus-Mor” also utilizes the format of a person telling the tale to another; in this case the tale is first person and the recipient also has a small role to play at the end.
The last three stories are quite different. The narrative is direct, with less time spent setting up the premise and creating layers between the reader and the story. There is a sense that the author has matured and is in command all the way through, knowing exactly how to move the story along and create a sense of horror. Here are the opening lines of “The Judgment of St. Yves” (“I had this story from old Yanouank Ar Guenn, that aged fisherman whose years must number nearly a hundred now”) or of “The Tree of Perkunas” (“It was from the last letter of my friend, Serghei Zudin, that I pieced together this story … ”) Compare the opening lines of “At the End of the Corridor” (“Whenever Philip Martin felt like being funny he would say that he was a professional grave-robber”) or of “The Other One” (“I should have locked the door. You can’t drag a solid body through a locked door.”) The endings of these last three tales are equally strong. They are the sort of story that grabs the reader and then remains in the mind.
It’s too bad Evangeline Walton didn’t return to the Ker-Is folktales after she had developed the approach presented in "The Island of the Mighty" (what a difference a few short years can make!) In that novel, the peculiarly bizarre magic and the powerful characters of the Mabinogion myths are reworked with such realism that the reader is held spellbound. That in this reviewer’s opinion is the way myth should be retold! This being said, however, there is a lot of power in the collection "Above Ker-Is" and the book is recommended to anyone interested in myth and folktale, in the paranormal, and in horror fiction.
According to Douglas A. Anderson, the editor of this posthumous collection, the first seven of these stories were written between the late 1920s and the early 1930s, when the author was between the approximate ages of 20 and 25 years, predating the 1936 publication of "The Virgin and the Swine" (later known as "The Island of the Mighty," the first novel of the "Tetralogy" to be published). The final three stories were written from the late l940s to the early l950s. This collection is a good vehicle in which to observe the development of Walton’s style.
The first three stories, which are retellings of a Breton folktale about a city sunk beneath the waves through the actions of a princess who may or may not be viewed as an evil force, employ an old-fashioned, circuitous, first-person style in which a narrator hears a story from another person and then retells it. It can be a priest hearing a confession or a folklorist recording the tale of an aged informant. This, combined with a conventional depiction of some characters, makes the early stories not particularly memorable, in spite of some fine descriptive writing and mood creation.
The central four stories can be considered a transitional phase. In “The Tree of Perkunas” we start with a narrator who has reconstructed the tale from a friend’s letters, but then this narrator disappears and a straightforward third-person tale develops. In “Werwolf” the fictional framework disappears altogether, although the opening paragraph gives an omniscient narrator’s introduction. In “The Ship from Away” the author reverts to the fiction of a third party (“Young Devlin told me this story”) who functions to reveal the fate of Devlin at the end. “Lus-Mor” also utilizes the format of a person telling the tale to another; in this case the tale is first person and the recipient also has a small role to play at the end.
The last three stories are quite different. The narrative is direct, with less time spent setting up the premise and creating layers between the reader and the story. There is a sense that the author has matured and is in command all the way through, knowing exactly how to move the story along and create a sense of horror. Here are the opening lines of “The Judgment of St. Yves” (“I had this story from old Yanouank Ar Guenn, that aged fisherman whose years must number nearly a hundred now”) or of “The Tree of Perkunas” (“It was from the last letter of my friend, Serghei Zudin, that I pieced together this story … ”) Compare the opening lines of “At the End of the Corridor” (“Whenever Philip Martin felt like being funny he would say that he was a professional grave-robber”) or of “The Other One” (“I should have locked the door. You can’t drag a solid body through a locked door.”) The endings of these last three tales are equally strong. They are the sort of story that grabs the reader and then remains in the mind.
It’s too bad Evangeline Walton didn’t return to the Ker-Is folktales after she had developed the approach presented in "The Island of the Mighty" (what a difference a few short years can make!) In that novel, the peculiarly bizarre magic and the powerful characters of the Mabinogion myths are reworked with such realism that the reader is held spellbound. That in this reviewer’s opinion is the way myth should be retold! This being said, however, there is a lot of power in the collection "Above Ker-Is" and the book is recommended to anyone interested in myth and folktale, in the paranormal, and in horror fiction.
December 31, 2013
The story Werwolf is so fricken good, it haunted me for weeks.
June 26, 2026
I am just going to cheat a bit with this because I have only read 4 stories and am marking it as read, because this was a borrowed book that I wanted to return.
I loved the stories and the 4 stars are for the first 4 that I have read.
It just felt wrong to shelf this as DNF because to me that has a negative connotation and more importantly a nod towards an intentional not-finishing rather than an accidental or circumstantial one.
Review to come soon, with more details when I can borrow it again, and hopefully finish it.
I loved the stories and the 4 stars are for the first 4 that I have read.
It just felt wrong to shelf this as DNF because to me that has a negative connotation and more importantly a nod towards an intentional not-finishing rather than an accidental or circumstantial one.
Review to come soon, with more details when I can borrow it again, and hopefully finish it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews