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Absinthe and Arsenic
A collection of mysterious, ghostly Victorian and steampunk tales by award winning dark fantasy author Raven Dane
244 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2013
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36 people want to read
About the author
Raven Dane
33 books53 followersRaven Dane is a UK based author of dark fantasy, alternative history, post apocalyptic SF, horror, steampunk novels and short stories. Her first books were the dark fantasy Legacy of the Dark Kind trilogy, Blood Tears, Blood Lament and Blood Alliance. These were followed by a High Fantasy spoof, The Unwise Woman of Fuggis Mire.
Her steampunk novels so far are the award winning Cyrus Darian and the Technomicron and sequel Cyrus Darian and the Ghastly Horde. She has had many short stories published, including one in a celebration of forty years of the British Fantasy Society and in international horror anthologies. These have included Tales of the Lake 2, alongside Richard Chizmar, Ramsey Campbell, Tim Lebbon and Jack Ketchum. She also had a story in Billie Sue Mosiman’s Frightmare –Women Write Horror which was shortlisted for a prestigious Bram Stoker award in 2016.
She has appeared in two international lists of best female horror writers. In 2013, she was signed up by Telos Publishing for her collection of Victorian ghost stories, Absinthe and Arsenic and in 2015, the alternative history/ supernatural novel, Death’s Dark Wings. All the Cyrus books are with Telos now in new editions with the third book in the series due in 2019.
A lifelong Dr Who fan, Raven was delighted and honoured to be part of the script team on a spin off film, The Daemons of Devil’s End by Reeltime Pictures in 2017. She also contributed to the novelisation of the film.
Raven brought out a horror novella, The Bane of Bailgate in 2018 and is currently working on a Victorian-based supernatural novel, The Arcane and a prequel to her Legacy of The Dark Kind trilogy, entitled The Blood of Kings More recently Raven has a post, post apocalyptic SF novel released by Demain Publishing called House of Wrax and a short story in an anthology set in celebrated author Dave Jeffery's A Quiet Apocalypse world called A Silent Dystopia.
Readers, please note , some old editions of Blood Tears,Blood Lament, Blood Alliance and the Unwise Woman of Fuggis Mire are no longer available and publishers no longer trading. So far Blood Tears and The Unwise Woman of Fuggis Mire are now republished with lovely new covers. Goodreads does not let the author remove out of date editions
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 31, 2013
A fine collection of short stories, featuring ghosts, demons, the Great Old Ones, fraudulent, and disturbingly less fraudulent mediums, steam punk, and sometimes more conventional horrors, rampaging through the London we know and love - I was delighted, for example, to see Hackney Marshes get a story to themselves...excellent reading for the dark nights of winter - and it could well put a chill into summer as well.
June 28, 2021
Absinthe & Arsenic’ is a collection of sixteen tales by Raven Dane, a mixture of Victorian weird fiction and steampunk. In the introduction, she confesses to being a lifelong fan of M.R. James and Wilkie Collins. Most of the pieces were written especially for this book and have not appeared elsewhere. One exception is an extract from her award-winning steampunk novel, ‘Cyrus Darian And The Technomicron’.
To set the scene, every story begins with a year, always in the latter half of the nineteenth century and a place name, usually London, but some take place in Yorkshire, Ireland or even France.
For openers, there’s ‘The 10.15 To Lealholm’, an extract from the journal of Edwin Hazeldine Esquire, who went to visit his elder brother at ‘a godforsaken remote farm on the North Yorkshire moors’ and found that worthy besieged by strange shambling dirty nasty creatures that strongly resemble zombies, though that term isn’t used. Can they survive?
‘Annie By Gaslight’ is set in Whitechapel, London, 1888 so just one guess who turns up. Annie is a nice eight year-old who feels some sympathy for the pretty ladies she sees hanging about on the street, especially when they start getting murdered. An interesting twist on the old Ripper yarn.
‘Worse Things Happen At Sea’ is a story of the Mudlarks who scrounge what they can from the mudflats of the Thames when the tide recedes, harassed by the police, thieves and stranger perils that lurk in the dark water. Getting some social history, along with the horror, is a bonus of these fictions and a timely reminder of how easy life is for most of us nowadays.
One of the highlights here is ‘Breath Of The Messenger (A Lovecraftian Steampunk Tale)’ featuring Dane’s hero Cyrus Darian, a half-Persian, half-Irish maverick alchemist and his companion, Belial, a Fallen Angel, one of the seven High Princes of Hell. Aided by aristocratic inventor and genius Sir Miles Hardwick, they must prevent one of the Old Ones from breaking through to Earth. I like a ghost story as much as the next man, but this sort of retro daft high adventure is more my cup of tea and was hugely enjoyable. The book also features ‘A Fateful Encounter’, an extract from ‘Cyrus Darian And The Technomicron’, in which he meets a dangerous demon.
In ‘The Chill’, John Harbinger hates spiritualist mediums, the table tappers who extract money from the bereaved and, in London of 1888, he spends much time going to their charades and exposing them. Unfortunately, one disgruntled fake has some real powers and puts a spell on him, so he feels chilly all the time. His doctor can’t help and he must turn to another medium for help. Harry Houdini exposed hordes of these fakes in the real world, but as soon as he died, they crawled back out of the woodwork and are thriving now. In any case, this is a heart-warming story, despite the Chill.
In ‘Daniel And Lydia’, the latter is a young lady whose parents have tragically died, leaving her to the care of a distant relative in a cold, lonely deserted mansion house. The former is a ghost who roams the grounds. Lydia won’t get her inheritance until she reaches her twenty-first birthday, which leaves her helpless meanwhile. It is a reminder of how limited life once was for the ladies and a splendidly gothic tale with a surprising twist.
I wouldn’t want a steady diet of Victorian weird tales, but a small dose like this is perfectly acceptable and made more so by Raven Dane’s literate but accessible prose. She has a good feel for the era, its customs, mores and, most importantly, its dialogue. Nobody says ‘I’m like’ or ‘totally’ to break the nineteenth-century mood. All in all, a pleasant tome, best read on a steam train at night while your manservant prevents the lower orders from bothering you.
To set the scene, every story begins with a year, always in the latter half of the nineteenth century and a place name, usually London, but some take place in Yorkshire, Ireland or even France.
For openers, there’s ‘The 10.15 To Lealholm’, an extract from the journal of Edwin Hazeldine Esquire, who went to visit his elder brother at ‘a godforsaken remote farm on the North Yorkshire moors’ and found that worthy besieged by strange shambling dirty nasty creatures that strongly resemble zombies, though that term isn’t used. Can they survive?
‘Annie By Gaslight’ is set in Whitechapel, London, 1888 so just one guess who turns up. Annie is a nice eight year-old who feels some sympathy for the pretty ladies she sees hanging about on the street, especially when they start getting murdered. An interesting twist on the old Ripper yarn.
‘Worse Things Happen At Sea’ is a story of the Mudlarks who scrounge what they can from the mudflats of the Thames when the tide recedes, harassed by the police, thieves and stranger perils that lurk in the dark water. Getting some social history, along with the horror, is a bonus of these fictions and a timely reminder of how easy life is for most of us nowadays.
One of the highlights here is ‘Breath Of The Messenger (A Lovecraftian Steampunk Tale)’ featuring Dane’s hero Cyrus Darian, a half-Persian, half-Irish maverick alchemist and his companion, Belial, a Fallen Angel, one of the seven High Princes of Hell. Aided by aristocratic inventor and genius Sir Miles Hardwick, they must prevent one of the Old Ones from breaking through to Earth. I like a ghost story as much as the next man, but this sort of retro daft high adventure is more my cup of tea and was hugely enjoyable. The book also features ‘A Fateful Encounter’, an extract from ‘Cyrus Darian And The Technomicron’, in which he meets a dangerous demon.
In ‘The Chill’, John Harbinger hates spiritualist mediums, the table tappers who extract money from the bereaved and, in London of 1888, he spends much time going to their charades and exposing them. Unfortunately, one disgruntled fake has some real powers and puts a spell on him, so he feels chilly all the time. His doctor can’t help and he must turn to another medium for help. Harry Houdini exposed hordes of these fakes in the real world, but as soon as he died, they crawled back out of the woodwork and are thriving now. In any case, this is a heart-warming story, despite the Chill.
In ‘Daniel And Lydia’, the latter is a young lady whose parents have tragically died, leaving her to the care of a distant relative in a cold, lonely deserted mansion house. The former is a ghost who roams the grounds. Lydia won’t get her inheritance until she reaches her twenty-first birthday, which leaves her helpless meanwhile. It is a reminder of how limited life once was for the ladies and a splendidly gothic tale with a surprising twist.
I wouldn’t want a steady diet of Victorian weird tales, but a small dose like this is perfectly acceptable and made more so by Raven Dane’s literate but accessible prose. She has a good feel for the era, its customs, mores and, most importantly, its dialogue. Nobody says ‘I’m like’ or ‘totally’ to break the nineteenth-century mood. All in all, a pleasant tome, best read on a steam train at night while your manservant prevents the lower orders from bothering you.
August 31, 2018
Finally a decent horror story book!
Several mini stories of Victorian horror and steampunk but all perfect!
This is the first book I have read by this author but definitely will not be the last.
Can’t recommend enough.
Several mini stories of Victorian horror and steampunk but all perfect!
This is the first book I have read by this author but definitely will not be the last.
Can’t recommend enough.
April 18, 2022
Thoroughly enjoyed pretty much all of these short stories. Couldn't put it down. I especially loved A Taste of Almonds.
April 20, 2015
I bought this book from a sci-fi convention in Wales last month. To be honest, my reasoning wasn't purely literary, and it surely wasn't very ethical. I'd attended a talk at the con by the one of the heads of Telos Books, David Howe, about the state of publishing. Inevitably the talk rolled around to independent publishing, with Howe making the point that there was more validation in being published by a house than by going the independent route.
Not going to lie-I bought this book, and a few others, with the idea of pointing out its flaws. But based on this book, he might have a point. Ok, the cover art is a bit basic, but frankly, as we're all adult(ish) and we all know the old maxim, that isn't really an issue. The writing is fresh and vivacious, and yes, very genre oriented, but to my mind that isn't a criticism, just a fact.Dane has some great ideas and they are well presented. It's a steampunk/horror sort of crossover, and the narratives are good. The stand-out track is the one featuring the character Cyrus Darian, around whom Dane has based a couple other novels, and in him we get the best characterization. Maybe not surprising, as the short story format usually focuses more on plot than character, but you can tell the author has given him more flesh than some of the other characters. Still, her take on the zombie genre is intriguing, and is a great opening tune. The Jack-the-Ripper murders seen through a child's eyes is also a good one, and more heartwarming than you might expect from that description.
So where does this leave the argument? Not one jot further or more behind. People will continue to self-publish good books and bad, and the same holds true for publishing houses.
Not going to lie-I bought this book, and a few others, with the idea of pointing out its flaws. But based on this book, he might have a point. Ok, the cover art is a bit basic, but frankly, as we're all adult(ish) and we all know the old maxim, that isn't really an issue. The writing is fresh and vivacious, and yes, very genre oriented, but to my mind that isn't a criticism, just a fact.Dane has some great ideas and they are well presented. It's a steampunk/horror sort of crossover, and the narratives are good. The stand-out track is the one featuring the character Cyrus Darian, around whom Dane has based a couple other novels, and in him we get the best characterization. Maybe not surprising, as the short story format usually focuses more on plot than character, but you can tell the author has given him more flesh than some of the other characters. Still, her take on the zombie genre is intriguing, and is a great opening tune. The Jack-the-Ripper murders seen through a child's eyes is also a good one, and more heartwarming than you might expect from that description.
So where does this leave the argument? Not one jot further or more behind. People will continue to self-publish good books and bad, and the same holds true for publishing houses.
March 14, 2014
nearly finished, not bad book but maybe a bit disappointed. the title was what caught my eye. have a signed copy so it will defo go on the shelf.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews