Micro-Reviews for the Stories in Reggie Oliver's The Sea of Blood

As I read through Reggie Oliver's The Sea of Blood—a survey anthology of many of his major tales plus a few new ones—I started out with the new stories and posted micro-reviews of them on Twitter, with the hashtag #SeaOfBlood [though obvious, it made for some odd bedfellows since many of the other tweets with that hashtag are either dedicated to the show Hannibal or to real life tragedies]. Then, after finishing those, I went back and read the "older" stories, some of which I have read before, and continued the trend. This worked well up until a dentist appointment gave me a chance to read several stories at once, and my rhythm got off, so I had several backlogged and decided to just get them all out, here, rather than over a week or so on Twitter.

The basic rules of the micro-review are simple. They must fit inside of a single tweet (so, 140 characters) and must include the name of the story, the hashtag #SeaOfBlood, and then whatever idea I felt best encapsulated my feelings about the story. Some are comments. Some are actual reviews. Some are other things. They are presented below in the anthology-order, which is roughly chronological order I believe. I give them to you unedited, so [sics] are appropriate, where appropriate. Those marked with "*" after their hashtag were not posted to Twitter, so therefore show up here for the first time. Footnotes are of course added after the fact, to talk about details.

A fuller review of the collection should hopefully surface in a day or two.

• "Beside the Shrill Sea" is, shockingly, a Reggie Oliver story about a sea-side repertory troupe. Characterizations fine. #SeaOfBlood [Doug's Note: actually the fifth or sixth review in post order, hence why it feels a little in media res.]
• "The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini", I believe R. Oliver's first, is still an effective take on a non-mythos cult. Worth reading. #SeaOfBlood
• R. Oliver's "The Blue Room" is the gentlest comeuppance-for-date-rape tale I have read. Mind-boggingly so. #SeaOfBlood¹
• "Bloody Bill" is interesting as a school yarn, but chief mystery is not the bloody apparition, rather the relationship. #SeaOfBlood
• "Among the Tombs" is one of the rare Reggie Oliver stories that chilled my spine. Quite good. Also a bit much at end. #SeaOfBlood
• "The Skins" is another repertory actor tale, more disturbing for Peggy's desperation (and the costumes) than the actual spook. #SeaOfBlood
• "The Time of Blood" has a great sense of strange with its menstrual revelations, though is perhaps too precise in prophecy. #SeaOfBlood
• "The Constant Rake" would have made a perfectly good story about academic processes and betrayal without the tacked on horror. #SeaOfBlood²
• From the old man's beastly crawling out the window to the infuriating dialogue, "Lapland Nights" is Oliver channeling Cambpell. #SeaOfBlood³
• Though well written, the only thing remarkable about "Puss Cat" is the vague hint of confession at the end. #SeaOfBlood
• The name of "Mr. Poo-Poo" backseats to implications of marital rape. Does not require its vision of hell to chill, but it helps. #SeaOfBlood
• "The Old Silence" is better served by its fractured relationships and odd turns than by its haunting, which is serviceable. #SeaOfBlood
• "A Donkey at the Mysteries" is one of my favorite of Oliver's, strange in the best of ways (and a nod to Aickman's dark wine). #SeaOfBlood*
• Hard to see "Baskerville's Midgets", even with scenes of horror added (one effective), as anything but achondroplasiaphobia. #SeaOfBlood*⁴
• "Mrs. Midnight" continues to be my favorite Oliver, though the conversational tone at the start gives way to narrative, a flaw. #SeaOfBlood*
• "Minos or Rhadamanthus" is a Twilight Zone of a story about the tediums of eternal punishment, though its twist actually works. #SeaOfBlood*
• "Flowers of the Sea" perhaps oversteps at the end, but in doing so becomes the premiere story about the horrors of dementia. #SeaOfBlood*
• "Come Into My Parlour" feels like a story meant to feel like a story (see: cobwebs line). Veg*n librarians make poor villains. #SeaOfBlood*
• "Holiday from Hell" is quite arch by Reggie Oliver standards, but I kind of like it. Not new to the collection, but first I've read it. [Doug's Note: this is the second one reviewed and like the first, "The Rooms are High", below, lacks the hashtag, I tightened up after this in many ways.]
• On another new story from Reggie Oliver's #SeaOfBlood. "Druid's Rest" is like an inverted analog to "The Trains", with a bit of crossover.
• "Absalom" is a epistolatory story that, like the best, hides much of its sting in gentle layers. Cloth is a reference I missed. #SeaOfBlood
• Reggie Oliver's "The Rooms Are High" is an intriguing cipher. Probably about sex. Probably.
• Heh, Reggie Oliver's "Trouble at Botathan" requires homework to fully understand it (have to look up other stories). #SeaOfBlood⁵

If I had to pick five favorites from the collection, it would be "The Dreams of Cardinal Vittrioni", "Among the Tombs", "A Donkey at the Mysteries", "Mrs. Midnight", and "Holiday from Hell". Read those five, and you will see the bits about Reggie Oliver I like the most. Of course, I do not have to pick just five, but life is arbitrary, by and large.

1: I tweeted more details, spoiling the "1-story, 1-tweet" rule [though the review was entirely in the first, above, tweet]: "To explain, going to spoil it for you. Dude has a 'blue room' in his house that makes people real horny from 12am-3am. So he puts these virginal, waifish women in it, and then BAM...freaky sex for three hours while they can't control themselves. Eventually, has an older royal woman + this young sweet thing visiting. Puts YST in the blue room, but the RILF tricks him into torrid sex. So the ending is a little bit, 'Ha, dumbass, you plowed a fat old chick!' But damned if Oliver doesn't almost make it work."

2: There are some stories, with "The Constant Rake" being one, where the human drama is tense enough that little or no supernatural obviousness is required, though Oliver will then work in scenes of spookery which feel tacked-on. In some, like "Mr. Poo-Poo", it is dreamlike enough that it still works, in others, like "The Constant Rake", it actually detracts.

3: It is Ramsey Campbell to which I refer, here. While the story is definitely Oliver, it has touches of Campbell in the dialogue and the descriptions of horror.

4: achondroplasiaphobia = "fear of little people".

5: For one bit of homework, see "The Botathen Ghost" by S.R.Hawker.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: July 2015