Ann K. SchwaderCritiques

Apparently one of those books that Arkham House was supposed to release before they joined the choir eternal...

Pretty good creep anthology with a lot of names I didn't know. Ugly cover and dj. There were a handful of really good disturbing stories and no real stinkers, which I hate in an anthology (Why include one really bad story, harkening back to the rotten apple analogy?). Too many damn typos!

I liked it, anyway.

What starts out excellent finishes as just average. The first 121 pages of this collection by Schwader, known primarily for her poetry, are great; top notch Lovecraftian stories that are fresh and original, and not derivative. But then things change, the second half of the book is stories based around the character Cassie Barrett that partake more of the Nancy Drew mold, as in Cassie Barrett and the Curse of Yig. These are a loosely related chronological set of stories that have a more traditional structure and a less original feel. Set in the West and Southwest they are all connected but could be stand alone stories. Unfortunately for the overall collection they are nowhere near as uncanny or atmospheric as the stories in the first half of the book. One good thing is that Cassie Barrett is a strong female character that doesn't need protecting, a nice touch for the Lovecraft subgenre.

One can see Schwader is a poet in the first 11 stories in the collection. Her prose is infused with a more poetic feel. For some reason the Cassie Barrett stories just don't have this feel at all.

I guess I could have said the first 142 pages are great because one or two Cassie stories would have been okay for the book, but 5 longish stories, and over half the page count, made the second half drag a bit.

A somewhat reluctant four stars. The first half is definitely worth the price of admission and overall the collection is pretty solid.

My favorite poem is In the Night Garden.

In the Yaddith Time is a book of sonnets by Ann K. Schwader published by Mythos Books in 2007. List price is ony $10.00, but then there are only 54 pages. Each of the 36 sonnets gets its own page (the same number of sonnets in Fungi from Yuggoth). The cover art is by Steve Lines of Rainfall Books (he has one painting appear in the wonderful A Lovecraft Retrospective from Centipede Press). who also provides a fair number of interior drawings, most of them next to the sonnet they are illustrating. I didn't particularly get jazzed by the cover although I liked all of his interior drawings. The introduction was by Richard Tierney and I thought it was a very good introduction. Ms. Schwader is a very accomplished mythos author; her collection Strange Stars and Alien Shadows from Lindisfarne Press is an excellent read (remember the good old days when Lindisfarne Press was going to publish so many anthologies?). I like good poetry but I basically have only read the best the English language has to offer, guided by college literature classes. When I read the tidbits in mythos books they tend to be pretty lame by comparison. Nonetheless, I like Ms. Schwader's fiction so much I had to give In the Yaddith Time a try.

The inclusion of 36 sonnets is a direct nod to Fungi from Yuggoth (BTW some day Hippocampus Press is publishing an annotated Fungi from Yuggoth; can't wait for that!). She uses Shakespeare's model of 14 lines of iambic pentameter. I counted three different rhyme schemes:

ababcdcdefefgg
abbacddceffegg
abbacddcefgfge

One thing that is very difficult is to avoid a dog trot kind of feel to iambic pentameter; Ms. Schwader is too skilled to fall into that trap. In fact these poems work better when read aloud (mind you I felt a little goofy reading poetry to myself, but I got over it). The sonnet cycle is really one long telling of the story of mankind's demise as humans are enticed beyond the boundaries of what we know. I didn't really have a favorite although I liked some of the imagery:

from [The Will of Yaddith]

As Earth's first masters harnessed shoggoth-kind
to raise aquatic citadels of stone

As I see it, this book's appeal is probably limited to those familiar with Lovecraft, Fungi from Yuggoth and are fans of poetry, a pretty select audience! Read in a single setting (preferably aloud) they tell a compelling story. I enjoyed the experience well enough but I doubt I'll be pulling this book out for another read, at least not until I've read the Hippocampus Yuggoth book when it comes out. The 3 stars are because I much prefer prose fiction to poetry, and because the book is so short. If you want to sample Ms. Schwader's prose buy Strange Stars and Alien Shadows. That will keep you up at night reading!

I quite enjoyed Ann K. Schwader's In the Yaddith Time. To be honest, it was a little too scientifiction and not enough antient Puritanical horror for my personal predilections, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It's billed as "A 36 sonnet narrative sequence inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s famous 'Fungi From Yuggoth' sonnet cycle, combining Cthulhu Mythos horror and science fiction in a haunting -- and haunted -- journey from Mars to the farthest reaches of our universe and its ultimate fate." With that description I was of course intrigued, given my love for Fungi. The basic plot is that astronauts find a trapped Cthulhu Mythos deity on Mars, so of course they set it free. I was impressed at Schwader's ability to stick to strict sonnet form while at the same time not making the writing seem forced; this is something few weird authors since Lovecraft seem to be able to manage, and only Lovecraft succeeds in his best works like Fungi.