The Throne of Bones, by Brian McNaughton: ***3/8

McNaughton is a gifted wordsmith, and I will seek out anything by him sheerly because of this ability and his boundless imagination. The book is a collection of mostly short stories, though the title piece is a novella (maybe even qualifies as a novel - it's more than 130 pages). For reasons I can't quite explain, I've never been a huge fan of short story collections, I think maybe it's because they don't build to a larger whole. In any case, I found the title piece to be the most enjoyable read in the book, largely because of the accumulation factor that's missing in the other stories. These are some great stories though, and fans of creepy stories will absolutely love this book. I would warn potential readers, though, that there is some truly grim material at times in these stories. Potentially squeamish readers should stay clear.

How to explain McNaughton's world? The cover material, in an attempt to sell the book, describes it as "creepy and unsettling and phantasmic." There is mention of Tolkien on the back cover, which I can't really explain. I would say, however, that McNaughton creates a very real world in this book over the course of the entire collection, a much darker, more primitive world where fear and uncertainly and dirt and grime are common aspects of life. The book benefits from the fact that every story takes place in the same general world with some of the same rules, so in that sense there is an accumulation in that the later stories benefit from the ambience already created in the earlier ones. Also, McNaughton handles issues of magic and the supernatural very well. As with many of my other favorite books, this one created in me a unique feeling while I read it. I've written before about the experience of reading Smilla's Sense of Snow, and how I felt encased in ice or bundled up next to a warm fire in the dead of winter while I read it. This book created a similar feeling, except that for the duration of this read I lived in a dimly-lit thatched-roof hut next to a graveyard teeming with freaky noises. My favorite stories were the first one ("Ringard and Dendra"), the title story, and the last one ("The Return of Liron Wolfbaiter"). I look forward to more by McNaughton.
(spring-summer 2003)

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