 Amanda Crum's To Leaven His Bones is the perfect autumnal read, full of seasonal trappings and imagery, alongside a plot involving gradual rot and renewal. Alyson Faye's The Witch Tree is by far the best poem, with tragedy and terror woven throughout its short glance at witchcraft trials. And Kev Harrison's Shaft offers some underground terror with echoes of Quatermass and the Pit minus the aliens, as a burial shaft is unearthed along with something unpleasant. Hallowe'en slowly but surely invades our house every year, and I like to leave some pumpkin-themed stuff up all year round, because, well, it's my joint favourite time of the year alongside Xmas. So I'll always welcome the themed seasonal anthologies that spring up in & around October, but this 4th edition of Things in the Well's Trickster Treats series left me colder than a forgotten spiced latte at the back of the fridge. Offering up a mix of 32 original stories, along with some flash fiction and poems, there were very few standouts here, with most of the misses coming down to either stories that leave you catching up with what the characters already know, or tales that took their time between shocks so much that it was sometimes hard to keep track of the proceedings. If you present a threat, then spend a bunch of time going back in time to explain the origin of that threat, it becomes far less threatening, and a fair few stories are bound to that bad habit. It's a shame, because the concepts are often gleefully ghoulish, ideas that would fit nicely in an EC Comics offering, but they keep lurching into past events just when you're hooked into the present-day stuff, and struggle to pick the pace back up afterwards. Others are more languid in their pacing, better for enjoying whilst curling up next to something warm, but not as chilling as they could be. Similarly, the poetry mostly falls flat, either offering rhyming schemes that are more Kids Bop than Groovie Ghoulies, or running so long that again, any impact is long forgotten as you slog your way through to the end. Between this and the fiction, there are occasional mentions of literal things in wells, and I don't know if this was a deliberate thing asked for on the submission call or just a cutsey thing some of the writers threw in there, but those winks to camera seemed a little bit out of place, drawing focus away from the overall theme of things being buried or returning from the grave.  Like the season itself though, it's not all doom and gloom, and there are a few highlights that offer some spooky thrills. Amanda Crum's To Leaven His Bones is the perfect autumnal read, full of seasonal trappings and imagery, alongside a plot involving gradual rot and renewal. Alyson Faye's The Witch Tree is by far the best poem, with tragedy and terror woven throughout its short glance at witchcraft trials. And Kev Harrison's Shaft offers some underground terror with echoes of Quatermass and the Pit minus the aliens, as a burial shaft is unearthed along with something unpleasant. Overall, it feels like the burial theme was too narrow a space to let creativity breathe, with many stories feeling constrained by the limitations of such a specific topic. But at least proceeds will be going to a good cause as with so many Things in the Well publications, so even if you don't check out the book, it's worth visiting indigenousliteracyfoundation.org.au for more on the work they're supporting with the proceeds from this release.   Comments are closed.
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