Customer Reviews

The Whisperer and Other Voices: Short Stories and a Novella

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I used to be a great fan of Brian Lumley's. The early Necroscope novels were chilling and unique. Lumley's Lovecraft derived tales were always great fun. He showed the kind of imagination and control over his writing that often spelled greatness.

Unfortunately, Lumley seemed to get stuck on mining the Necroscope series for all that it's worth, and I simply grew tired of the them. I can only do so much hideous, other dimensional, alien vampire reading. The last few books in the series moved onto my Someday Isle (as in Someday Isle buy them) list. It was in a moment of weakness that I picked up his latest collection of short(er) stories.

What a relief!! Just when I had almost completely given up hope, The Whisperer saved the day. This is the original, strong writing that I found so entrancing years ago. Readers will find much to enjoy as Lumley dips his pen into wells of humor, terror and pure fantasy. This one is right up there with Fruiting Bodies, and The Compleat Crow.

The Whisperer contains Snarker's Son, Aunt Hester, The Whisperer, No sharks in the Med, Vanessa's Voice, The Statement of Henry Worthy, The Disapproval of Jeremy, Cleave, The Luststone, and the complete novel The Return of the Deep Ones. The last is a fine piece of post-Lovecraftian writing that will delight all us addicts. Among the short stories, The Whisperer and No Sharks in the Med are among my favorites.

Now that the Necroscope series is finally drawing to a close, The Whisperer provides a comforting glance into the future of Lumley's writing. We can look forward to many more years of great Lumley thrills!!

Within Brian Lumley's works is a certain something that oftentimes finds me late at night with my chin pressed to a book, a chill lapping the base of my spine, making me look over my shoulder and wonder because of his visions. Here I find my mind running rampant, dancing through gardens of strange delights that, if I'm luck, bring about some delicately crafted nightmares to lovingly caress me within my sleep. Its as if the words he crafts, working from some primal place that a reader can easily understand, can bring about feelings I had long considered dead and gone in my horror-hardened mind. This is something I find myself coveting more and more as the days press into years and time marches on.

In this installment of short stories, there are many notable pieces that include, among other things, a short novel dealing with some of my favorite Lovecraftian amphibians. There are also pieces here that found me laughing as well, picturing the dread of the characters as they learned valuable lessons on "juju" and the high cost of certain crimes, and pieces that make me remember why eating things I find outside is never a good idea.
Breaking some of these down, they are:

Snarker's Son, a tale involving an oddity at the police station and a policeman who is at first skeptical until being privy to a meeting of the "tubers," ending the tale in something bloodily to my liking and always full of teeth.

Aunt Hester, brimming with Lovecraftian themes that also dart in their own morbid direct, deals with a woman that can, for some strange reason, switch bodies with her twin brother if she wants to. She finds it out quite by accident at first, doing things innocently and then out of anger. Well, this doesn't sit too well with him, and she learns, in a not-so-wonderful manner involving a very valuable life lesson, why she shouldn't play in grounds she's been told to leave alone. The ending to this piece is a very good one, taking the main plot and standing it on its proverbial ear a bit, giving the reader something that they can take with them anytime they find themselves in a dark, silent void within the night.

The Whisperer, perhaps one of my favorites in the book, finds a Mr. Miles Benton communing with a small, rancid dwarf on the train, one that happens to interact with him in the most terrible of fashions. This run-in, not a good one in many respects, is only the beginning of a long nightmare, one he thinks himself mad for dreaming. Again and again the dwarf appears, whispering in the ears of people with horrible repercussions for Mr. Benton in the process, ruining his life and his sanity in the process. So, is it a dream, is it a nightmare, is it Lumley selecting a main character to torment horribly before introducing him to the rubbery undertow of demise? Its a question you'll love yourself for answering.

The Statement of Henry Worthy, dealing with the dark side of botany, is about plants of unknown origin that are discovered by a Germanic explorer, Horst Graumer, before he disappears and the horrors that these things actually hide when another botanist decides to go looking for them. Deciding to voyage into a certain area of marshlands, he finds what he's looking for and more, falling into a cavern of perpetual horror in the process, his dreams meshing with a reality that worsens as the days press on. Here is a very Lovecraftian, very entertaining piece, teaching everyone that eating greens, contrary to what your mother may have said, can be a wretched ordeal!!

The Disapproval of Jeremy Cleave, one of the funnier pieces I've seen produced by Lumley, focuses on the fun one can have if he were to suddenly decide to partake in extracurricular activities with his best friend's wife while that best friend, in his grave in the queerest of circumstances, stretches his juju a bit. Of particular merit is the ending to this one, fueled by a delicious melody of horror and suffering, making any fan smile with pride.

The Return of the Deep Ones, a story hitting novel lengths, touches upon those Lovecraftian tides and the dwellers that seem to always haunt them. After getting a conch from a certain Mr. Marsh of Innsmouth, our main character finds a change being thrust upon himself, one that spins and twists through oceans of plot and mini-stories, ultimately allowing him to press against that brick wall that all characters in stories really need to hit. While this is a bit older in the Lumley craft, it is still impressive and worth reading, letting those cute little men with the huge, unblinking eyes creep into your heart and make you yearn for the sea and immortality once more.

Excluded from description here are a few tales, No Sharks in the Med, Vanessa's Voice, and The Luststone, all worth of a synopsis in and of themselves but all finding and unwilling medium to do so at this time.

This, along with its companion piece Beneath the Moors, offers a wide variety of reading that don't really adhere to one way of recollecting the decrepit underbelly of living, making certain to entertain even the sloppiest of horror consumers. It makes me long for a house by the ocean, myself.

THE WHISPERER AND OTHER VOICES is an anthology consisting of a long novella (or is that a short novel as advertised by Tor?) and eight short stories. Each of the short stories is well written and for the most part pays homage to Lovecraft. They run the gamut from graveyard serious horror to satirical humor. The amusing tales like "The Lustone" show how talented Brian Lumley is as he provides an amusing twist to top his usual works. The title piece is classic horror that hits the reader in the gut. The novella, "The Return of the Deep Ones" is a journey into the deepest reaches of Lovecraftian environs. Fans of the author and those of Lovecraft will relish this devotion to the great writer while realizing how good Mr. Lumley is even outside his popular series.

Harriet Klausner

Fans of Lovecraft's scenarios will relish this science fiction/horror blend which includes many elements of Lovecraft's horror tales, with the focus on racial memory and a concluding story of the Deep Ones based on Lovecraft's classic. Just as haunting is No Sharks In The Med, a short story about a vacation to Greece which turns into a deadly struggle for survival.

Of course, Lumley has written many short stories that are not in any way Lovecraftian. But when he began to write, he was heavily into H. P. Lovecraft, and thus it was fitting that his first publisher was Arkham House, the publishing company that was formed specifically to publish Lovecraft's weird fiction in hardcover. Arkham House also published the first books of Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, and so many others. Lumley's first Arkham House book, THE CALLER OF THE BLACK, remains for me his finest collection of weird fiction. THE WHISPERER AND OTHER VOICES collects a variety of tales and one short novel. The contents of the book is:
Introduction
Snarker's Son
Aunt Hester
The Whisperer
No Sharks in the Med
Vanessa's Voice
The Statement of Henry Worthy
The Disappearance of Jeremy Cleave
The Luststone
The Return of the Deep Ones

The book's introduction is exactly what a good introduction should be: a pleasant description of the origin of the stories contained within the book. Brian is extremely adept at this kind of thing, and one wishes that he would pen a wee biography of his life as an author. What I like about Brian Lumley's fiction is that it is very very British. He handles dialogue extremely well, and his characters serve their tales in admirable fashion. He is wonderful when it comes to the English country, of which his simple descriptions are quite evocative. He is also gifted with the ability to create some of the queerest creatures in weird fiction. "Aunt Hester" is a prime example of this:

"There was a humped-up, frenetically mobile and babbling old chap, ninety if he were a day; a frumpish fat woman with many quivering chins; a skeletally thin, incredible tall, ridiculously wrapped-up man in a scarf, pencil-slim overcoat, and fur gloves; and finally, a perfectly delicate old lady with a walking-stick and ear-trumpet. They were shepherded by my Aunt Hester, no different it seemed than when I had last seen her, to the gate and out the street."

Almost seems like some macabre tea-party gathering in a twisted Agatha Christie. The conversation between aunt and narrator soon touches upon Lumley's own version of the NECRONOMICON:

"I don't suppose you've read Joachim Feery on the NECRONOMICON?"
"No," I answered. "I don't think so."
"Well, Feery was the illegitimate son of Baron Kant, the German 'witch-hunter.' He died quite mysteriously in 1934 while still a comparatively young man. He wrote a number of occult limited editions -- the vast majority of which religious and other authorities bought up and destroyed as fast as they appeared. Unquestionably--though it has never been discovered where he saw or read them--Feery's source books were very rare and sinister volumes; among them the CTHAAT AQUADINGEN, the NECRONOMICON, von Junzt's UNSPEAKABLE CULTS, Prinn's DE VERMIS MYSTERIIS and other of that sort."

Thus we know that we are in a Mythos tales -- yet Brian's Cthulhu fiction is very much his own, however much it is influenced by HPL's own tales and the Mythos writings of August Derleth. Lumley had certainly caught the Mythos "fefver," and this story comes with a lengthy quote from Alhazred, The Lovecraftian sources to this tale, misty and obscure though they be, seem plentiful. I sense that "The Thing on the Doorstep" was a major inspiration, and this seems right when we consider Lumley's own comments on the tale in his introduction: "Though inspired by HPL, 'Aunt Hester' hasn't the feel of a Lovecraftian story. The closest it comes is in its theme or motif, which... But no, rather than offend any Lovecraft purists out there, I won't darken HPL's doorstep by making comparisons..." I point to Brian's use of the word "doorstep" as an obvious clue. And despite his disavowal of a Lovecraftian feel in the story, his use of the gnarly antient grimoire theme is decidedly HPLish.

"The Whisperer" is a non-Lovecraftian weird tale, and it is very odd indeed, with a queerness that is distinctly that of its author. It is Lumley to the core, clever, haunting, and very strange. In his introductory notes on "The Statement of Henry Worthy," Brian writes, "It's scarely surprising that the story is blatantly Lovecraftian; written in 1967, it was one of the first handful of stories I ever attempted, and I was heavily under the influence of HPL." And yet the tale is quite good for one written so early in his career, and it lacks many of the typical Mythos cliches with which so many young Lovecraftians mar their early writings.

I had to buy this collection in hardcover because I wanted THE RETURN OF THE DEEP ONES in a hardback edition. When I was a young Lovecraftian I was a huge Lumley fan, interviewed him for my Lovecraft fanzine, and began a regular correspondence. One day I received a letter that astounded me:

"10 Feb '77
Dear Puggers---
I've recently finished a couple of tales,...and now I'm about to start on something else. Well, really, I'm WANTING to start on something else, but in fact the story is yours, so I need your permission. The thing is only a germ at present, but it's been in the back of my mind ever since you suggested it. If it's OK with you, I'll name one of the characters, oh, 'William P. Marsh,' I think, as in BORN OF THE WINDS I split my agent's name...It's my way of saying thanks for the idea...
What idea? The one about the shell, in which the hero hears the Deep Ones singing their hymns to Cthulhu."

This shews what an absolute professional and gentleman Lumley is. He didn't have to ask my permission, he could have used my idea in any number of ways without asking me and thrilling me by naming one of his minor characters after me. But he is a total professional and a kind gent. I was astounded to hear that the wee idea had grown into a small novel. Unfortunately, the editor at Arkham House at this time was a rather strange fellow who had grown weary of the Cthulhu Mythos and was working to transform Arkham House from being a publisher of weird fiction to a house of science fiction. He rejected Brian's novel. Happily, TOR included it in this handsome hardcover edition. I am proud to have been, in some small way, responsible for one of Brian's major works of the Cthulhu Mythos.

We can be grateful to TOR for bringing us the majority of Lumley's Mythos fiction back into print. I loved THE BURROWERS BENERATH when it first came out -- indeed, I bought lots of extra copies and sent them out to various Mythos pen-pals -- and I was happy to be able to buy it in hardcover in Vol. I of the Titus Crow volumes. I grew disenchanted with the direction Lumley took Titus Crow -- I didn't like this way cool weird fiction character become a hero figure in novels of fantasy adventure -- but it's always nice to have the old stories to read over again and again. How happy I would be if Brian would, now, write a new collection of Titus Crow weird tales that take place BEFORE the events of THE BURROWERS BENEATH. There is still much that could be done with that charming, enchanting character.

Lumley ranks among the very best horror writers influenced by Lovecraft arounf today. A collection of 9 tales that are dark, humorous, and bone chilling; especially such classics as "No Sharks In The Med", "The Luststone", and the title story. Bar none, Lumley succeeds where others have only managed to imitate. Gary S. Potter Author/Poet.

I wont go through all the book stories in here and write a full review...

Just to say that, well Lumley did it again in every story I read. This is a great book, as all others... Not too much mythos by time and still pretty neat.

My 2 best stories in this book

- "The Whisperer"
That damned little hunchback... freaky story with just a tip of sexuality to make even better... I wish Lumley would use this character again to make a sequel!

Same for :

- "No sharks in the Med"
Reminds me of the set up in the same Greek Islands in "Silent Scream" that can be found in his other book -Beneath the Moors.

Great read, and even better if you can easily put images in your mind as you go... and better keep your wife even closer to you..!

Let me start by saying that, as others have said many times, Lumley's stories are a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft; some intentional, others not. His stories are written in a prose that seems to come from a somewhat gentler time, perhaps 60 years ago. The writing itself is beautifully done -- and wonderfully enough without lots of four letter words and overt sexuality. There's not anything wrong with foul language or sex used in a book per se, but it seems to have become the staple form of communication in the horror genre nowadays. It's nice to see a master at ratcheting up the tension level rely on subtleties instead of broad swaths of blood, gore and sex.

That said, Lumley's tales are not for everyone. For those who prefer King's bluntness, Hamilton's sexiness or just plain quick and dirty writing may not appreciate the style of these stories. Also, some may find the plots trite and older than dirt. A fine example of a story that every horror writer has written in some form is the opening tale, "Snarker's Son", where a stolid cop finds himself in an alternate reality and thus comes to grief. However tired the plots may seem in some cases, Lumley has that certain skill that few possess -- the ability to make the old seem fresh and riveting to boot.

My favorite stories are "Aunt Hester" and "No Sharks in the Med". The first tale is about a beloved aunt with a terrifying and ghastly power that she exercises without taking the proper precautions. It makes one consider anew the old and odd family spinster! "No Sharks in the Med" is a tale of terror that builds slowly to an exciting and horrible end. It plays on the meaning of the word shark. Two of the more raucously amusing tales are the title story,wherein a man is destroyed by a demented and grotesque little man who takes over his existence, and "The Disapproval of Jeremy Cleave" which chronicles a dead husband's way of getting revenge on his cheating wife and friend. The novela "Return of the Deep Ones", is one of the more Lovecraftian works chronicling the last days of a scientist driven to madness by his discovery of a new and strange species.

This collection of stories brings together many years of Lumley's work into a book well worth reading. The fact that it is also wonderful writing in and of itself is a bonus. Anyone who is a fan of horror should give it a try, even if it seems not to be of their usual, favorite style. "The Whisperer and Other Voices" is excellent reading!

This is only a review of the Kindle content aspect of this book. It appears that no or very limited editing was attempted prior to release. The Kindle version is full of typos, misspellings, wrong words and just plain missing words. The font size changes several times a page. Over all it just was not worth the effort to read. This is the first and hopefully the last Kindle version that I will return for such gross formating errors. The publisher really needs to put just a little effort into reviewing its product prior to trying to sell it. I was very disapointed in the production of this edition as I am a huge Lumley fan. I suppose that I will have to buy the DTB version to read it as the Kindle version is totally unreadable.