GARY FRY

THE WAY OF THE WORM: an interview with Ramsey Campbell conducted by Gary Fry Gary : It’s two years since THE SEARCHING DEAD was released, and a year since BORN TO THE DARK. Now we have THE WAY OF THE WORM, the final entry in your Daoloth trilogy, which I’ve just had the pleasure to review [ LINK ]. It strikes me that readers new to the series now have an opportunity to read the series from start to end without breaks. Is that the way you feel it might be best enjoyed? Ramsey : I do, even though it wasn’t written quite that way – new short stories intervened between each pair of volumes. I found that each later volume gained energy from what went before, and returning to the characters to find how they’d developed was an inspiration in itself. I’d written novels before where characters age decades during the narrative – Obsession and Thieving Fear , for instance – but coming back to them after a few months away from this particular narrative is rather like meeting old friends after a wh...

THE WAY OF THE WORM by Ramsey Campbell Review by Gary Fry And so we reach the finale of Campbell’s Daoloth trilogy, the author’s latest attempt to scale the peaks of Lovecraft at his finest. I reviewed the first two volumes when each was released, and links can be found here [ THE SEARCHING DEAD ] and here [ BORN TO THE DARK ]. In summary, let me say that I found the two books excellent entries in the series, both satisfying as standalone works and thrumming with anticipatory materials in advance of the last one. The simple question now is, can Campbell live up to promises he makes in those previous novels? The answer is yes. Quite triumphantly.   THE WAY OF THE WORM is relatively straightforward plot-wise. It’s 30 years on from events depicted in BORN TO THE DARK, and our hero, Dominic Sheldrake, is approaching his dotage. His son, now an adult with a family of his own, is heavily invested in the Noble family and their (nefarious) plans for the world, but Dominic won’t give up on ...

Born to the Dark: an interview with Ramsey Campbell Gary Fry Gary : It’s a year since we discussed The Searching Dead , the first novel in your Brichester Mythos trilogy [ LINK ]. Now I’ve had chance to review the second entry Born to the Dark [ LINK ], it’s time we chatted again. The first thing I wanted to ask concerns readers both familiar with and new to the series. Do you consider each book indivisible from the others or rather as self-contained reads? Ramsey : Indivisible for sure. The second volume refers to quite a few events in the first, and I don’t believe it would be sufficiently comprehensible to anyone who started by reading it. I’d also say we need to see how some of the characters have changed in the intervening decades (other characters, not so much). I hope the three books accumulate power from drawing on their early developments. I will admit that in my youth I started reading Tolkien with The Two Towers , having been alerted to his work by the review column in Asto...

BORN TO THE DARK by Ramsey Campbell A review by Gary Fry    The second in Campbell’s Brichester Mythos trilogy, this novel takes up the ongoing story of Dominic Sheldrake’s engagement with nefarious Christian Noble about 30 years after the first book’s events ( for my review of THE SEARCHING DEAD, see here ). It’s now the 1980s; Dominic has a family and a job as a lecturer in film studies. He hasn’t been involved with the Noble family since the 1950s, but all that changes when his son develops a sleeping disorder in need of specialist treatment. Dominic’s wife is drawn to an organisation which, on the surface at least, purports to practice revolutionary new methods but, it soon transpires, has a less benevolent intention. That’s the basic story of BORN TO THE DARK, and Campbell spends 270 pages dredging compelling tension from such minimalist parts. While THE SEARCHING DEAD (the first of the trilogy) drew on a wide range of supernatural episodes, both suggestive and conc...

THE RAGE OF CTHULHU   Chapter 1 “Hey, Christine, I think I can see a way in.”         George and his wife had walked from Whitby on the Cleveland Way, a public footpath leading along England’s northeast coastline. After passing the town’s famous abbey and a holiday park located on the lip of a splendid bay, they’d spotted two buildings: a towering lighthouse and, about a hundred yards farther on, a property whose roof bore a giant foghorn at least five yards long. As the lighthouse appeared to be private, and manned by staff, they’d moved on to the second building, which looked anything but operational. It was one-storey high and bore off-colour walls. Weeds grew in wild profusion around its sealed doorway and all the windows were boarded up…except for one. This was what George had just identified.         “Be careful,” Christine said, the way she’d done lately, as if he was some sort of cripple. “If you fall, we...

BEHIND HER EYES by Sarah Pinborough Review by Gary Fry I came to this novel amid all the publicity concerning that "WTF" ending. I like to think that I'm a canny reader, knowing the tricks many authors try to pull on us. So I got started with Behind Her Eyes, soon becoming immersed in an intimate, often furtive tale of extra-marital shenanigans and offbeat characterisation. The novel excels in its depiction of three main characters, all of whom feel decidedly unreliable, especially the two female direct-to-camera narrators. Why is one befriending the other, and for what purpose? How can the other cope with guilt about what's she up to with her new friend's husband? It's all very intriguing, to say the least. But what could be that twist? I'd say the twisty-turny plot keeps the pages turning, but the thought of how it ends -- whether one can guess its denouement -- renders it literally unputdownable. Pinborough skilfully -- I can't overestimate just how...

Nightmare’s Realm (Dark Regions) – edited by S T Joshi   Review by Gary Fry   In his introduction, S T Joshi shows how dreams have played a major role in the history of weird fiction, with many major practitioners writing tales influenced by or incorporating this most mysterious of human characteristics. The editor’s mission statement here is to continue in the latter-day this long tradition, and so let’s see how well the modern writers he chose fared.   The Dreamed by Ramsey Campbell This is one of Campbell’s tales set in a foreign location, with all the sense of dislocation his characters experience heightened. A guy checks into a hotel but is soon confused for another, and as the plot unfolds this convergence of identity becomes more and more apparent, until… Well, I won’t spoil it; all I’ll say is that the tale demonstrates Campbell’s uneasy dark humour and suggestive powers to the full. A great opener.   A Predicament by Darrell Schweitzer This brief tale involv...