This November, Flame Tree are publishing Ancestral, the new novel by horror supremo Ramsey Campbell, and - disclaimer- they were kind enough to send me an advance copy to review.
Normally after this brief intro I'd describe the plot of a book I was recommending, but maybe that isn't the right approach here. Certainly when I think back about previous Campbell stories and novels I've loved (and there's many) the story, important as it is, isn't what I most remember. Isn't what made me love them. What I most remember is the mastery with which Campbells marshals mood, language, character, atmosphere, and theme to achieve his effects.
So, to misquote EM Forster, oh dear yes Ancestral has a plot (and a good one) about two families the Bystones and Stantons, once obscure enemies but generations later intertwined by marriage and the birth of Tim, inheritor of the two bloodstreams... and possibly of their old and sinister feud. Tim is drawn to places he's never been before (but his ancestors have), isolated hills and deserted beaches. But maybe not so deserted, because when he leaves, things seem to follow him back...
There's a Stephen King quote from Dance Macabre along the lines of all fantasy fiction being about power, and great fantasy fiction being about the cost of power... and that idea was at the forefront of my mind as Tim learnt more about who his ancestors were.
But as ever with Campbell, it's the unique atmosphere I most remember, the fragmentary imagery that sticks in my mind long after closing the covers:
- Silent woods where the trees seem to pluck birds bloodily from the sky
- The tides of something like a sea washing onto the shore, a source not of life but of creeping death
- The darkness of a cave, seeming not just to fill the underground space but to expand it, to push at its borders until your lost somewhere much bigger than you'd thought
- The similar blindness of a grey and sudden mountain mist making every footstep uncertain
- Beings vast and roach-like crawling unseen over people's houses while they sleep
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