Customer Reviews

Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Despite there being a few just plain awful stories in this collection, overall, Gaslight Arcanum was a very enjoyable, readable, and at times thrilling set of stories ranging from the uncanny, to supernatural to pulpy sci-fi. But the good ones here were FANTASTICALLY chilling and make this volume more than worthwhile. Because there was such a discrepancy in quality I've done a brief review of the individual stories.

'THE COMFORT OF THE SIENE' by Stephen Volk - 5 stars
The premise was not only fantastic, but the Victorian writing was authentic and from the pen of an exceptionally talented author. Not to give away spoilers, but if you love Poe's Dupin (who Sherlock Holmes was based on), you are going to find this one fascinating. I do have to mention some of Holmes' behaviour was remarkably OOC, though.

'THE ADVENTURE OF LUCIFER'S FOOTPRINTS' by Christopher Fowler - 1 star
Uninteresting, failed attempt at a pastiche or anything resembling a mystery. Seemed rushed and scraped together, as scenes jumped erratically, situations were poorly described and sometimes a bit confusing, to where I'd need to re-read passages. The only redeeming factor here was its brevity.

'THE DEADLY SIN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES' by Tom English - 5 stars
Eerily good fun, reminded me a bit of ACD's 'The Silver Hatchet'. This is one to get caught up in, and will send the shivers down your spine. Made all the better for it capturing the essence of Sherlock Holmes - my favourite line? "Fascinating," said Holmes, yawning. Investigation played out the way Holmes of Canon would have done, down to the last letter. Supernatural or no, this was a genuinely well done pastiche.

'THE COLOR THAT CAME TO CHISWICK' by William Meikle - 3 stars
This was a so-so, almost pulpy tale and mediocre story. While suspension of disbelief is mandatory for any uncanny type story, this sometimes bordered on ridiculous not from the plot, but the freely used anachronisms. It could have had an H.G. Wells Vitcorian sci-fi feel to it were it not for the mentions of ectoplasm/protoplasm, or the fact that mustard gas was not experimented with in 1887 or used by any military until WW1, took this from "what if" to "oh, please".

'FROM THE TREE OF TIME' by Fred Saberhagen - 4 stars
I was surprisingly impressed with Saberhagen's Dracula meets Holmes story, which could have been a dozen different types of cliché, but managed to be fresh and original. A little slow paced, yet his Holmes voice and deductions were spot on, with a clever little twist for an ending.

'THE EXECUTIONER' by Lawrence C. Connelly - 3 stars
While this was a very interesting and original take on what happened after the struggle at Reichenbach Falls, it was slow moving and was just okay. Nothing special here, though not a badly written or told story.

'A COUNTRY DEATH' by Simon Kurt Unsworth - 1 star
I'm not even sure what this was supposed to be. Personally speaking, I read pastiches for the characters more than anything else, and not it's that I'm averse to character death when done well, but this was just a disgusting mess, all around. The mystery was so see-through as to be irritating, it was too long - the solution was obvious but the story kept on going, and this was the only one in this collection I eventually skimmed through and then skipped to the end. It deserves zero stars.

'SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE GREAT GAME' by Kevin Cockle - 2.5 stars
Not bad at all for all the premise was a bit out there. Fast moving, a decent attempt at characterization, and I especially enjoyed the attention paid to Watson in this one.

'SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE DIVING BELL' by Simon Clark - 5 stars
AH.MA.ZING!!! One of the best supernatural tales in the entire compilation, this was especially chilling, suspenseful and a definite page turner. I could not put this down and had actual goosebumps when it ended. Was also done in an authentic Watson voice - I could see it being one of those cases the doctor teasingly alludes to but never writes down. INCREDIBLY good.

'THE GREATEST MYSTERY' by Paul Kane - 4.5 stars
An excellent story, one of the few in here that can be enthusiastically called a true horror. There were no end to the anachronisms of speech, however, and that was so jarring it did detract from the atmosphere of the tale. This is one that will stay with you, though.

'THE HOUSE OF BLOOD' by Tony Richards - 4 stars
While Sherlock Holmes in the modern era is best left in the competent hands of the BBC (and Benedict Cumberbatch), this tale of an immortal Holmes was much better and more entertaining than I thought it might be.

'THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIX MALEDICTIONS' by Kim Newman - 2 stars
Having nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes himself, this one was based around Professor Moriarity and Col. Moran in some odd alternate universe-ish setting. Admittedly, I could not finish this one, as it wasn't a bad story per se, but failed to hold my interest at all. That could be because I prefer horror/supernatural to sci-fi or the blatant lack of Holmes in a pastiche.

In the "Gaslight...." series, this third offering appears to be the weakest, despite a few bright spots. Its contents, and my personal thoughts concerning them, are:

(*) Introduction by Charles Prepolec: a candid view of the origin of this series of Holmes-dealing with-supernatural books, and some thoughts.

1) The Comfort of the Seine by Stephen Volk: a sad piece that suggests why & how Sherlock Holmes might have caught the fever (addiction?) of solving mysteries. Very gothic, very Poe-esque. "A".
2) The Adventure of Lucifer's Footprints by Christopher Fowler: good mystery, but not even an ambiguous solution, only a few scattered thoughts. "B"
3) The Deadly Sin of Sherlock Holmes by Tom English: a chilling & succinctly told tale of Holmes pursuing a deadly grimoire. "A"
4) The Colour that Came to Chiswick by William Meikle: an adventure that belongs to the "X-Files" genre unabashedly, and is a 'fun' read. "A"
5) A Country Death by Simon K. Unsworth: another grim & unrelenting story that is well told, but which uses Holmes only for his name, and in connection with bees. This is more sci-fi horror than a mystery as such. "A"
6) From the Tree of Time by Fred Saberhagen: a short, compact, muted and beautiful piece, from the pen of a master. "A+"
7) Sherlock Holmes and the Diving Bell by Simon Clark: a superb mystery squarely fitting the "X-Files" genre. As a matter of fact, the publishers should seriously rechristen the series as "Holmes-meets-X Files" rather than "uncanny tales of Holmes", if these stories are going to be staple in future (since even in the previous volume Niel Jackson's "Celeste" was one of the high-points). "A+"
8) The Executioner by Lawrence C. Connolly: a gentle, serious, somewhat philosophical story dealing with "what might have happened if Holmes had indeed fallen down at the Reichenbach falls". "A"
9) Sherlock Holmes and the Great Game by Kevin Cockle: an incompetent piece of mystic hotchpotch that undermines this volume substantially. "B-"
10) The Greatest Mystery by Paul Kane: another mystic piece with too many open ends. Not good. "B"
11) The House of Blood by Tony Richards: a proper gothic horror story that surprisingly manages to blend Sherlock Holmes into present-day Vegas rather neatly. Good pastiche, good horror. "A+"
12) The Adventure of the Six Maledictions by Kim Newman: the best piece in the entire collection, without a single mention of Sherlock Holmes, but with lots of 'arcane' stuff thrown around for pure fun & adventure. If you feel tempted by this piece to read more Moriarty & Moran adventures, then I would like to recommend Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the DUrbervilles (Professor Moriarty Novels). "A+"

So, if "A+" is 5, "A" is 4, "B" is 3 and "B-" is 2, then what is the weighted average score of this book? 4.0 out of 5! Recommended, obviously.

This collection is the fifth by this pair of editors and it is, perhaps, their best yet. The first two collections consisted mostly of more conventional writings that told some of the Untold Tales. The three later collections lean strongly toward the eerie and outré. A few of the tales in this book can be explained by modern science and rational circumstances, but even that is not always comforting. All are interesting, some are exceptional and a few are unpleasant.

"The Comfort of the Seine" is a novella by Stephen Volk. In it we watch a painfully young Sherlock Holmes take a vacation from his studies at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (where I have always believed he studied) to visit Paris with friends. There Sherlock falls in love, acquires a mentor and selects a profession, all with a large dose of adolescent angst. Strict Sherlockians may disagree with the author's premise, as do I, but it is still an interesting and insightful tale. "The Adventure of Lucifer's Footprints" is a short story by Christopher Fowler that tells of an evil done during the Crimean war and its ghastly punishment in Devon. "The Deadly Sin of Sherlock Holmes" is a imaginative novella by Tom English that provides an alternative cause for "The Great Hiatus" and a name source for the "Napoleon of Crime."

"The Color That Came to Chiswick" is a short story by William Meikle that tells about sabotage in a brewery, or of something in a brewery. What is really going on or growing up in Chiswick is open to question. "From the Tree of Time" is a short story by Fred Saberhagen that tells an incident in his `life of Dracula' series. The Count is asked by Holmes to lend his expertise to an investigation and his comments lead to a quick solution. "The Executioner" is a short story by Lawrence C. Connolly that takes place following events in "The Final Problem." There seems to be an unnamed book by the original Dr. Frankenstein, known to Sherlock but not to the reviewer, that explains much about the central character in this tale. In the end, Sherlock sets out on "The Great Hiatus" for far different reasons than those given in "The Adventure of the Empty House."

"A Country Death" is a short Novella by Simon Curt Unsworth that describes the death of Holmes and its investigation by some unfortunate policemen. Sadly, a countryman or a biologist would find serious problems with the evidence and events as presented. "Sherlock Holmes and the Great Game" is a short story by Kevin Cockle that tells of a mission by Holmes and Watson to the Canadian Arctic at the behest of the Crown, or of some higher Authority. "Sherlock Holmes and the Diving Bell" is a short story by Simon Clark that is a bit confusing and disjoint.

"The Greatest Mystery" is a short story by Paul Kane that pits Holmes and Watson against their greatest opponent. While final victory is unsure, a small battle is won. "The House of Blood" is a short story by Tony Richards. It presents Holmes in 21st Century Las Vegas and is a more interesting story than one would expect from the premise. "The Adventure of the Six Maledictions" is a novella by Kim Newman that is worth the price of the entire book. It is an even more hilarious narrative by the Colonel Moran of "A Volume in Vermillion" that tells the problems he and Professor Moriarty encounter dealing with the minions of `a one-eyed yellow idol.'

This compilation is certainly worth the price. If all of the stories are not to your taste, some certainly will be. The variety of tales is wide, with something (or things) for everyone's tastes.

Reviewed by: Philip K. Jones, November 2011

This collection of stories puts the great detective in several bizarre situations that test the limits of his logic and skills. Several memorable and imaginative stories here with lots of plot twists and surprises! My only reservation is that the last story was a bit too long considering it didn't actually feature the hero. Otherwise, this is a good, fun read that's generally faithful to the spirit of Conan Doyles's original tales. Highly recommended!

At the time of purchase for my Kindle "Gaslight Arcanum" was $2.99. I am not a huge fan of myth science fiction - and some of these stories are truly grotesque and horrible. But I liked it. They were disturbing stories - yucky but really - truly -interesting. Holmes and Watson remaining true to character helped make the stories.

Worth the purchase and then some.

This is an unusual and interesting collection of strange stories dealing with Sherlock Holmes and other literary characters. The cover art has to do with the story From the Tree of Time by Fred Saberhagen in which Dracula and Sherlock Holmes team up to solve a case. This is not the first time Fred Saberhagen has written a book with Sherlock and Dracula together. The first time was in his book The Dracula-Holmes file. The other one was Seance for a vampire. Both are books in Fred Saberhagen's The Dracula Sequence. I highly recommend this book for any fan of Sherlock Holmes or of Fred Saberhagen's The Dracula Sequence.

This is the third in a series of "uncanny" tales of Sherlock Holmes. While I have enjoyed all three volumes, this is my favorite of them. While a couple of stories miss the mark Sherlock-wise, they are all entertaining.
Word of warning, avoid the bee story if you have a phobia concerning bees!!! It is rather disturbing.

I read the Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes, the third in the anthology series by Campbell and Prepolec. I really enjoyed the first exercise in speculative fiction, "The Comfort of the Seine" by Stephen Volk. Here we meet Holmes as a romantic young man, not at all as we have come to know him. I am skeptical at first, as this young man does not seem particularly clever or disciplined, and is even vulnerable "love at first sight", a condition that Holmes would probably find ludicrous and repulsive. This is not the Sherlock others have imagined, who, as a young man, would play games of deduction with his older brother. As the story develops, we see Holmes slowly but relentlessly transformed, by a man calling himself Dupin, into the man know today. Both the mystery of Holmes' transformation, and the mystery of the death of Edgar Allen Poe, is put into a well-considered if fantastic hypothesis, to the delight of this reader.

It helps a lot that this Volk fellow is clearly an excellent storyteller, with an ear for prose. I enjoyed these revelations of philosophy, which reflect not on Holmes himself, as much as the man who would apprentice him. "I can think of no higher endeavor than to banish hurt and pain from people's lives by the application of logic." The importance of freeing oneself from emotion to apply logic effectively is a powerful theme of the story.

In this seminal moment in the life of The Great Detective. Holmes is prompted to begin a scientific examination of a corpse of a woman he thought he might love. His master instructs him thusly.

"We are going to stay here, like Gericault, for however many hours it takes until your tears run dry. Then we will be done." He lifted the cloth cover from a microscope on a desk. "You shall grow to know her as only God knows her. And then your wisdom will have outgrown your pain, and you will be free." He walked over to me and placed an object in my hand.
It was a magnifying glass.

I also liked this description. "He knew the machineries of life and mind and held them in his head like railway timetables."

A great view of Holmes as we have seldom seen him, as a disciple of another who leads him to the man he was destined to be.

"The Adventure of Lucifer's Footprints" by Christopher Fowler is well written and suitably dramatic, though it reminded me of the higher standard of prose and plotting these tales require. His story, at first, seemed to be reminiscent of The Hound of the Baskervilles without the benefit of a natural solution and motive. At first glance this seems to be a bit of an easy out for some writers, who can give us a strange story of ghostly revenge and unexplainable footprints, without having to come up with a logical explanation for fantastic seeming events. Isaac Asimov, a writer of several mysteries taking place in a Science Fiction setting, once remarked the challenge of such a mystery is not to provide a solution that is dependent on a fantastic explanation, like solving a locked room mystery with an unknown invention that allows the murderer to walk through walls. In a way, this applies to a Sherlock Holmes horror mystery as well, and the solution has a further burden of being interesting and even surprising. The dramatic solution of a soldier's wartime sins did fit the bill here, but just barely.

The next story, "The Deadly Sin of Sherlock Holmes" by Tom English, was somewhat better. Tom English's story of a book containing a list of horrific sins that needs to be read an acted upon to be redeemed was a great idea. I particularly liked the use of the priest's role in the process at the end, absolving the book of its sins, like he would a person. A clever twist that was both imaginative and chilling. I found it an excellent read.

"Take a closer look, Watson. We may never see its like again." A dramatic quote, from he next tale in the Gaslight Arcanum collection. Without a doubt "The Color That Came to Cheswick" by William Meikle was creepy enough, a tale of alien slime that seems to grow and destroy earthly life. It has a bit of a Lovecraft feel to it, undoubtedly intentional. If you must imitate, imitate the best, I say.

And speaking of Van Helsing, Fred Saberhagen was writing about Dracula and the vampire legends long before Buffy, Sookie, or the Twilight books became part of pop culture. Having nothing particular to prove, Saberhagen gives us an amusing supernatural mystery, in which the infamous Count consults the Great Detective. The tale boils down to this question; How can a rock kill a vampire? You'll have to read the story to get the solution, but it's an admittedly clever one that I will long remember.

And if Dracula isn't enough for you, we have Frankenstein's Monster for you in the next story. What if the real solution to Holmes' post Reichenbach resurrection was more along the lines of reanimation, as Mary Shelley once envisioned it? "The Executioner" by Lawrence C. Connolly shows respect to both the Shelley and Doyle source material, and part of the surprise is what character the story title refers to. Suitably both clever and creepy, as stories of horror that include The Great Detective should be, or else why include him at all?

"A Country Death" by Simon Kurt Unsworth, the next tale, presupposes a retired Holmes, while working on improving the strain Western Honey Bee, creates a deadly breed of predatory monster bees, who seem to glorify on feeding on more mammalian animals. I have to say, this is a very scary tale. It reminds me of A Taste For Honey by H. F. Heard, the original classic Sherlock Holmes scary bee story. This Unsworth's tale is more heavy handed, kind of like a Universal horror movie, while Heard's story was more like Alfred Hitchcock. Still, the device Unsworth uses, of having the detective (not Holmes this time) trapped in a house surrounded by deadly bees as he reads the breeder's notes and begins to realize his true situation, is very suspenseful and horrific. A very skillful execution of an idea.

"Sherlock Holmes and the Great Game" by Kevin Cockle is unfortunately named, as this is at least the third similarly titled pastiche that I have read this year, and the title does not fit the story well at all. Still, Mr. Cockle, in imagining Holmes ina supernatural world, re-defines him as a powerful magic user, using a myth of his incredible facility for "observation and deduction" to explain things that he can't possibly know, with his friend Watson providing both assistance and cover. As Watson asks in the tale, "Why the charade?" Holmes responds,"Nothing holds the line like the imposition of pure reason. The heard me make order out of chaos, and were becalmed." This Holmes wields a "sorcerous artifact" Watson was mystically compelled to bring to him from Afghanistan, when his life was saved by it when wielded by his orderly Murray.

What follows is a true tale of horror in the wilds of Northern Canada, and a battle with a supernatural force dating back to the proto-Siberians that first crossed the land bridge into North America. It also involves the Aztecs and the other lost Mexican civilizations, and the attempt by the Spanish to steal their fabled treasure. Considering the story was only 14 pages, there was a lot of plot and mythology packed in there. This includes the altered legend of Sherlock Holmes, which is always of interest. A well-crafted tale of horror and fantasy.

"Sherlock Holmes and the Diving Bell" by Simon Clark produced for me what the previous tales, as entertaining and creative as they may have been, failed so far to provide; an actually chilling moment. Five years after a diving bell is lost, the original team, and then sole occupant's wife and sister-in-law return to recover it, so the body can be buried. However, when they reconnect the telephone line to the thing, they are surprises to find something may still be alive within...and trying to speak. Here's a sample of a memorable Holmes/Watson exchange.

"No, Holmes," I whispered to my friend. "That's impossible. No mortal man could survive five years underwater without air."
"Survive? Or evolve? As environment demands? Remember Darwin."

This tale was chilling. It evokes the true potential of the horror that a disembodied voice at the other end of a telephone can produce, reminding me of the classic "The Statement of Randolph Carter" by H.P. Lovecraft.

The next story "The Greatest Mystery" by Paul Kane is less subtle, but altogether as bloody and daring as any thriller, this one reminiscent of the old TV program, Rod Serling's Night Gallery. Here Holmes takes on the very force of entropy itself, whom Holmes begins to suspect is overstepping its bounds. The climax involves a battle between spectral figures at night in an old cemetery on Halloween, no less. The author succeeds concocting a fairly convincing telling of this improbable tale.

"The House of Blood" by Tony Richards, is the story of a weird blood cult in which the unlucky prey on the lucky is quite inventive, and suitably set in modern Las Vegas. Mr. Richard's quixotic depiction of an immortal Holmes is quite amusing, if you are the type to find humor in such things. This is a Holmes who, ever since he survived Reichenbach, has had to live with the knowledge that he will never age or die, and has now outlived Watson and the Victorian world he looks back on with nostalgia. On a world where such a thing is possible, Holmes cannot go on denying the supernatural world, a truth he must confront in this story. The idea of Holmes being a Star Trek fan (he came to Vegas to attend The Star Trek Experience) with a particular interest in the logical Mr. Spock is another example of the writer's mischievous approach to the character.

HAVE READ THE FIRST THREE STORIES - TERRIBLE AT BEST. NO REAL ENDING OR ENDING THAT WERE'NT VERY SATISFYING. HOPE THE REST ARE BETTER.