A.C. Wise

I accidentally read this series out of order; this book does not suffer from being read before book 1 (Wendy, Darling) but I've not yet read book one, so don't know whether the reverse is true.

There are many inexplicable happenings, and the story carefully steps around explaining many things. One can make assumptions about how the story got from here to there, but there is also the possibility that the author has another book planned in the set. Although, as there is a somewhat happilly ever after epilogue, this might not be the case.

James/Captain Hook is never redeemed in the 'real' world, and I like that. Getting out of Neverland and the malign influence of Peter Pan did not make James a nice person. And he never quite gets out of the trauma responses.

Setting this in London in 1939, and including a character who came back from The Great War very damaged allowed the author to draw some fascinating parallels between war and Neverland, and explore themes of trauma and maladaptive responses. All five of the characters who get significant plot time are dealing with past events that impact negativelyon their present.

This is not a hopeful book, and despite the epilogue, I would say it does not end in a happy way.

content warnings: Drug abuse and Addiction, Death, Violence, Mental illness, War, Body horror, and Ableism… (mere)

I was personally never a fan of Peter Pan. I always found him to be too fickle, spoilt, controlling and sometimes downright abusive to romanticise him or Neverland, so I tend to really enjoy any retelling where Peter Pan is not portrayed as a hero. Wendy, Darling fit right into that category, but at the same time did so much more by giving Wendy a voice and allowing her to tell her story - and this time it is not a bedtime story for children.

Wendy, Darling was beautifully structured, alternating between Wendy's first time in Neverland, her experience of life in London after returning from Neverland, and her return to Neverland to rescue her daughter Jane, whom Peter has kidnapped to become a new mother for the Lost Boys. We also get to see things from Jane's POV, as she tries to make sense of what is happening to her and work out how to survive Neverland and return home. I really liked this structure, and I thought it worked very well to really show all that Wendy endured while slowly peeling off layers of Wendy's memories to reach the truth of Neverland, Peter and the darkness lurking within.

This book takes some really dark turns, and I think after reading this no one will be able to look at Peter Pan or the Lost Boys in quite the same way again. Together with Wendy, we readers are brought to questioning everything we thought was true. But what is real and what is fantasy?

Wendy was a fantastic character. She is a survivor, having experienced suffering and abuse for years following her return from Neverland. Unlike her brothers, Wendy has not forgotten their time in Neverland, but she is disbelieved by everyone until she is finally committed to an asylum where treatments are brutal and dehumanising. The chapters recounting Wendy's time in the asylum were particularly harrowing, especially because of all the bullying and abuse she suffered at the hands of the staff so maybe be cautious in approaching this if that might be triggering for you. Knowing her pain gives so much more weight to Wendy's decision to go back to Neverland as a grown woman to save her daughter and is a testament to her strength.

Even though Wendy, as the main character, carried the show, all the characters felt really well developed, including the minor ones. I am all about the characters, and these ones really delivered! From Wendy's brothers to the Lost Boys, and from old Neverland friends to her new family, everyone has something to offer and I was totally here for it! Peter is of course a key character in this, and I really liked the author's take on him.

There were times when I got a bit frustrated as things seemed to be moving too slowly, but it somehow didn't feel as though there was an issue with pacing. The slower passages felt very deliberate, and especially in certain sections I could feel the characters' frustration, which I think was the point? The book takes its time, building a picture of all the characters bit by bit until we think we can see the whole of them... but can anyone ever do that?

Overall, Wendy, Darling is a wonderfully dark retelling that takes on a life of its own, almost independently from the original story, to explore very real and modern issues around misogyny, mental health, trauma and survivorship, family and many, many more.


I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.… (mere)

Originally posted on Just Geeking by.

The Ghost Sequences is A.C. Wise’s collection of short stories. Most of these have been published somewhere previously, such as magazines or anthologies (there is a complete list at the end of the book), but they all have one thing in common; they’re all based on the theme of “ghost”. When I went into this book I was expecting a certain type of collection, namely hauntings because after all that is what a ghost story is, right? By the time you’ve finished The Ghost Sequences you’ll realise like me that there is so much more to that theme, to the word ghost that we already know, yet we don’t really consider.

Wise has considered it, at great length and the title of this short story collection, “The Ghost Sequences” is perfect. If I was reviewing this book simply based on literally and creative licence I would give this a five-star rating, however, I’m not reviewing it in a critical or academic way. I’m reading it as a reader, and from that perspective I felt that some of the stories missed their mark for me personally. On the one hand, I loved the ways Wise was experimenting with writing, on the other I just didn’t connect with it as a reader.

For example, ‘The Last Sailing of the “Henry Charles Morgan” in Six Pieces of Scrimshaw (1841)’ is a story told through museum pieces that have been curated. As the daughter and granddaughter of two men who loved nautical history, this brought back a lot of great memories of walking through nautical museums with them. Likewise, as an Art History, and Information and Library graduate, I appreciated the way Wise chose to use history and information to tell her story. However, something fell flat in the actual story telling. A for effort and imagination, but in execution there was just something missing.

In comparison, a later story in The Ghost Sequences, ‘How to Host a Haunted House Murder Mystery Party‘ is another unconventional piece by Wise and hit the spot perfectly for me. The thing about short story collections and anthologies is that not everything will resonate with every reader, and that’s ok. There are some fantastic stories in here, and the way that Wise draws out the true meaning of what “ghost” means, of what being “haunted” means, will keep you thinking for a long time. The Ghost Sequences is a lot like the cover of this book; you won’t look at it the same way once you’ve seen it.


For more of my reviews please visit my blog!
… (mere)

Michael Kelly at Undertow Publications certainly has an eye for authors of speculative fiction whose short stories make for great collections. Elsewhere on this blog I have reviewed I Would Haunt Youif I Could by Seán Padraic Birnie and To Drown in Dark Water by Steve Toase, both of which were published by Undertow and made a lasting impact on me. To these must now be added The Ghost Sequences by A.C. Wise, a volume of sixteen tales which run the gamut of speculative fiction, from fantasy to horror (folk and otherwise) with echoes of classic ghost stories.
The title piece which closes the collection, is a good example of A.C. Wise’s style, which reinterprets common tropes and presents them to the reader anew in beautiful language and unusual formal structures. For instance, this story is, in essence, an art gallery’s description of a themed exhibition prepared by four artists, alternating with their personal account of the events leading up to the exhibition. Through their respective media, the artists express the theme of ghosts and hauntings. This turns out to be an unexpectedly dangerous subject when dark forces are unleashed by the unwitting artists.

There are other pieces in this volume which rework tropes of classic Gothic tales, for instance The Stories We Tell About Ghosts and How to Host a Haunted House Murder Mystery Party, a semi-comic meta-fictional set of instructions on how to organise (or, perhaps, write a story about) a party meeting all the genre elements which horror fiction and film have accustomed us to.

Indeed, in Wise we often sense a preoccupation both with other artforms (particularly visual ones) as well as popular culture. The title story is a case in point, but one could also mention Exhalation #10, (originally published in Ellen Datlow’s Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles) about a gruesome snufffilm of sorts and Excerpts from a Film (1942-1987). In the End, It Always Turns Out the Same is a dark Scooby-doo send-up. The Secret of Flight combines extracts from an imaginary play with epistolary exchanges about the mysterious disappearance of a leading actress. I Dress My Lover in Yellow concerns a cursed work of art, and although originally published in a volume of Lovecraftian tributes, its fevered imaginings reminded me particularly of the atmosphere of Chambers’ The King in Yellow (perhaps the reference to the colour in the title is no coincidence).

How the Trick is Done and The Men in From Narrow Houses both deal with the world of magic shows and magicians. Unfortunately, I’m not really into their more fantastical, surreal style and, given that the volume opens with the former story, I was initially concerned that this collection was not for me. If, like yours truly, you are more into mainstream supernatural fiction, albeit presented in novel and original ways, fear not and read on – there are plenty of stories which fit that description, including the brilliantly creepy folk-horror piece The Nag Bride, which is original to this collection.

I haven’t mentioned all the stories in The Ghost Sequences, nor can I do justice to them in this brief review. But I must find some space to also credit the amazing cover design by Vince Haig, and the cover art by Olga Beliaeva, based on a photograph by Serge N. Kozintsev, which stunningly complements this set of eerie tales.



Here is the full list of featured stories:



How the Trick is Done

The Stories We Tell About Ghosts

The Last Sailing of the “Henry Charles Morgan” in Six Pieces of Scrimshaw (1841)

Harvest Song, Gathering Song

The Secret of Flight

Crossing

How to Host a Haunted House Murder Mystery Party

In the End, It Always Turns Out the Same

Exhalation #10

Excerpts from a Film (1942-1987)

Lesser Creek: A Love Story, A Ghost Story

I Dress My Lover in Yellow

The Nag Bride

Tekeli-li, They Cry

The Men From Narrow Houses

The Ghost Sequences

4.5*

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