The Call of Distant Shores

By: David Niall Wilson

Narrated by: Eric Dove

Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

Thirteen tales of Elder Gods, Darkness, horror, and Lovecraftian madness by Bram Stoker Award Winning author David Niall Wilson. From crazed sculpting tenants, to giant wooden cockroaches, to Tarot cards and a creepy old barber shop, these stories lead through doorways and down corridors that are not of this world. Published for the first time in this volume is the story "Anomaly".

Contents include:

• Author's Introduction
• "Glenn & The Tart of Mortar Psycho Maine Tenants"
• "The Milk of Paradise"
• "Are You Lookin' for Herb?"
• "Cockroach Suckers"
• "Darkness, and the Light"
• Death, and His Brother Sleep"
• "Death Did Not Become Him - with Patricia Lee Macomber"
• "From My Reflection, Darkly"
• "The Lost Wisdom of Instinct"
• "Rending the Veil"
• "The Hall of Captured Gods"
• "Anomaly"
• "The Call of Distant Shores"

©2011 David N. Wilson (P)2012 David N. Wilson

Humor mixed with the macabre

THE CALL OF DISTANT SHORES is a homage to the works of H.P. Lovecraft with a twist. David Niall Wilson is a author I have very much enjoyed the writings of ranging from his work for licensed properties like Star Trek, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Stargate: SG-1 to his original stories like Gideon's Curse as well as the Dechance Chronicles.

As a huge H.P. Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos fan, however, I was skeptical of him bringing anything new to the table. Many people have chosen to write in HPL's style and few people manage to become anything more than a pale imitation. The people who actually succeed in adding something new to the Mythos are those people who take the Man from Providence's work as an inspiration then do their own thing with it.

I'm pleased to say that David Niall Wilson is one of the latter rather than the former. The big thing he brings to the Cthulhu Mythos is humor. You can tell that DNW is a man who doesn't entirely take the creeping, looming, and gnawing horror of the universe all that seriously. It's not so much that man isn't irrelevant in this universe but that such things don't actually scare your average citizen. They know they're cogs in a wheel and the existence of ancient gods beyond the horizon doesn't do
much to change the price of your gas bill.

The majority of protagonists in this book are various shades of idiot, working class hero, or average joe versus the nebbish scholars which serve as the prototypical Lovecraftian hero. "Are you looking for Herb?" has an obnoxious set of travelers venture off the roads into the backwoods and miss all the signs they've found themselves among people who are best left undisturbed.

"Cockroach Suckers" is my favorite of the stories here as it's a tale of people who find a horrifying eldritch entity and decide to build a freakshow around it. The superintendent of a building discovers a mad artist building unnatural grotesques that may be summoning SOMETHING horrifying but he's too distracted by the man's daughter's boobs to make much sense of it.

There's some serious and even haunting stories in this work but the sense of humor the author brings to his collection is what I give him the most props for. If you're looking for a short story collection that doesn't blandly copy the work of the artist formerly immortalized as the World Fantasy Awards then this is definitely a place to do your shopping.

The narrator does an excellent job and I think added to the sense of humor as well as humor both.

9/10