Forrest’s Reviews > Herald of the Hidden & Other Stories > Status Update

Odd. Though one of the earliest stories in the volume, chronologically-speaking, "Woken by Candlelight" reads like Valentine's later, more mature works: subtlety of mood, languid action, an emergent realization of wisdom in the form of a mystical revelation. This beautiful tale is a herald of things to come in Valentine's poetry, the Connoisseur, and The Nightfarers. Definitely re-readable. A top story!

I've played cricket twice in my life, both times when I lived in England as a teen. I still have no idea what I was doing. But one need not know the game well to appreciate "Twilight at Little Brydon Cricket Club". And I do appreciate the story. But I suppose I would have to have some sentimentality about cricket, which I do not possess, to truly love the story. Still, it's a quaint, slightly haunting piece.

"Tree Worship" is a mythic idyll of understated tone, but brilliant atmosphere, a good story to read as winter turns to spring. It is a thread of pagan Genius Loci only briefly interrupted by modern intrusion, a suburban hiccup preceded and followed by the long, steady breathing of the land itself.

Words are important, even critical. But Valentine's tale of crucial misunderstanding in "Go to the West," which could have become a mere trifle of a story, something that any child could write, is instead transformed by the last sentence. Oh, those words are so critical. You must understand. You absolutely must!

"The Guardians of the Guest Room" is a ghost story proper, something that would have been right at home in the four-color horror comics of the pre-code era, but with a notch up in eloquence. I'd be curious to see this one illustrated in that old, '50s graphic style. Valentine would have at least one customer for this grisly comic, namely me.

"The Almanac" is, thus far, my favorite story of this volume. It shows a growing maturity in Valentine's writing, something that would later manifest in The Connoisseur stories. The unresolved mystery adds to the weirdness, taking it a notch further than those clearly-explained revelations of earlier tales. There's an abstract quality to it that I love about Valentine's work, that I consider his "signature".

Valentine takes a shot at colonialism, by way of Ralph Tyler, in "Heritage of Fire". I honestly thought the esoteric investigator was going to meet his end here, but then who would explain the cultural implications of English development in the denouement, had he died? Someone has to bring bad news to capitalist developers, I suppose.

"Herald of the Hidden" is the closest I think I've seen Mark Valentine get to "cosmic horror," though of a decidedly English variety, meaning that those horrors are rooted deeply in the history, nay, pre-history of Avalon. Here is a glimpse (and we almost see altogether too much) of what came before, of what lurks in the hills and dales among the trees. It's a wonderful sort of departure from his "typical" work.

"The Hermit's House" is a little more straightforward than most of the stories in this volume. Make no mistake, it is firmly in "the Weird," but the resolution is fairly straightforward. A simple plot, but written so well (as Valentine always writes) that it can't just be dismissed as a "minor" story. Valentine's pen lends weight to what otherwise be a flighty, ephemeral tale.

I loved the gothic and morose "William Sorrell Requests . . ." a great deal. The dreary funerary atmosphere lends the perfect backdrop to a story of either mass hysteria, possession, or communal guilt. Or, perhaps none of these. But then, maybe all of them. Only William Sorrell knows for sure, and dead men tell no tales, as they say. Brilliantly gray and sodden, this story sticks in the brain.