City-type dangers is something they takes for granted – never questions it. But they never thinks there might be risks in the country, too, as they don’t understand. Well, we don’t understand ’em properly neither, but at least ... at least we knows there’s risks. [p. 639]
Crybbe is a quaint little town on the Welsh border, not really on the tourist trail despite its picturesque town square, its ancient monument the Tump, and its centuries-old traditional curfew bell, rung one hundred times every night at 10pm. The townsfolk are placid, untalkative, relentlessly ordinary. Radio reporter Fay Morrison, who's moved to Crybbe to look after her father the canon (early stages of dementia) finds it an unwelcoming place. Bransonesque music mogul Max Goff wants to turn Crybbe into a New Age mecca, importing tarot readers, mediums and the like. His latest recruit is J M Powys, author of a well-received Earth Mysteries book, who's mourning the death of his friend, the dowser Henry Kettle. Powys -- Joe -- finds that Kettle left him a legacy, a house in Crybbe. But he also begins to realise that there is something very dark about Crybbe, something that the townsfolk tried to keep at bay when they destroyed the ancient standing stones: something that Goff and his cohorts risk awakening.
This, Phil Rickman's first novel, is extremely long -- 700 pages in print -- and somewhat rambling: nevertheless, I raced through it in two evenings, because it's engaging, well-paced and keeps the mysteries coming. There's a nice balance between actual dark horror and gentle mockery of the New Age types, with interesting characters (including plant hire magnifico Gomer Parry, who appears in the Merrily Watkins books but is rather younger here) and some powerful scenes. First published in 1993, so it feels authentically 1990s rather than dated: no mobile phones, no internet to speak of, that pre-millennial new age culture that seems to have either faded away or transmuted into activism.
I bought this in November 2014, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.
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