BOOK REVIEW: The Ravener
The Ravener, by Donald Tyson, published by Avalonia, is based on such a good idea that one wonders why no-one's thought of it before - perhaps they have? I am open to being corrected. It's a series of short stories about John Dee and Edward Kelley, Elizabethan sleuths of the supernatural, and it reads - in the best way - like an earlier version of Dion Fortune's Dr Taverner stories, with a touch of Sax Rohmer. These are - on occasion with quite gruesome literacy - ripping yarns. Both Dee and Kelley are well portrayed, Dee as the wise elder statesman, close to his Queen but wary of her capriciousness and unpredictability. Tyson is very good at portraying a subtle menace in his characters, and Kelley is quite a disconcerting individual: not quite a brute, but heading in that direction. As a detecting double-team, they work very well together and the cases are great - including a family curse, some unpleasantness at a Saxon burial ground, a disturbing apparation at Nonsuch House on the old London Bridge, and the hair-raising title story, which takes place in one of the near-vanished forests around the capital.
Tyson has written a number of non-fiction books on magical practice and it came as no surprise to this reader that he is also the author of a bio of H P Lovecraft. If you want an entertainingly dark read which is based on some informative insight into Elizabethan magical practice, then this is the book for you. It can be found here:
http://avaloniabooks.co.uk/catalogue/magical-fiction/the-ravener-others
Tyson has written a number of non-fiction books on magical practice and it came as no surprise to this reader that he is also the author of a bio of H P Lovecraft. If you want an entertainingly dark read which is based on some informative insight into Elizabethan magical practice, then this is the book for you. It can be found here:
http://avaloniabooks.co.uk/catalogue/magical-fiction/the-ravener-others