Some books allow you to be entertained. Some books broaden your sphere of knowledge & understanding. Some books make you realise your limitations. The book under discussion, which I managed to finish over several days & nights, belong to the last category. But whatever limitations of my feeble mind got exposed during the course of my reading would come later. First, let me describe the contents of this book (strictly fulfilling the superior standards set by Sarob Press, with a slight change from their routine in the sense that the dust-jacket and signature-page design hasn’t been done by the great Paul Lowe, but by another famed artist Santiago Caruso).

After mentioning the sources (of those pieces that had got published earlier, and occasionally in a quite different shape & size) and acknowledgements, we come across the stories, which are: -
1. D’ Arca
2. The World Entire
3. The Counsels of Night
4. Suburbs of the Black Lyre
5. Now Feel That Pulse No More
6. The Mouth of the Medusa
7. An Image of Truth
8. The Four Strengths of Shadow
9. The Tears of the Gods
10. Into the Mysteries (an excerpt)
The final piece is an ‘Afterword’ that describes the imaginative-source of the stories, with hints regarding things to come.

This sumptuous book, which has been justifiably prized by the connoisseurs of bibliophilic weird-fiction lovers, turned out to be quite an eye-opener for me, as it taught me two things: -

(I) These stories, dealing with books, rituals, claustrophobia-inducing sculptures, and mysticism, were some of the most soporific works that I have EVER read. I have read works of several Jamesian authors, who are considered brilliant disciples of the great M.R. James, and Ron Weighell was described as one of the masters of such tales. But he seems to have lost his touch in the past decade, since his two stories published in 1997 & 2000 were the only readable pieces here. I would still wait for a reprint of his fabled collection “The White Road”, which is supposed to contain all his works published in Rosemary Pardoe’s “Ghosts & Scholars” magazine (cradle of the finest Jamesian ghost stories) and I would continue to enjoy his fantastic “The Irregular Casebook of Sherlock Holmes”, but anything else written by him, especially the sort published by Ex Occidente Press, would have to be eschewed.
(II) In a world ravaged by terrorists and fundamentalists of all sorts, who try to stake their claim onto various pieces of hell by torturing & killing women & children, I don’t think I can read this type of stories any more. I am taking myself off the Sarob Press list, and would henceforth confine myself to other sorts of mindless literature that rather accurately describe our world full of blood, hormone-driven teenagers, and pizza.6 s Chrysostomos TsaprailisAuthor 9 books155

A refreshing dose of occult fiction that shies away from the opulent introspection, decadence, and the obsession with human condition that seem to be the purview of a large part of today’s weird fiction, and instead focuses (for the most part) on plot and lore. It’s the first time that I read something from the late Ron Weighell and I was thrilled (alas I am some years late to his twice out-of-print major collection, The White Road).

Weighell’s prose is practically structured and pretty easy to tread through, without lacking in the literary department. The stories move from the M.R. Jamesian ("Now Feel that Pulse No More") to the occult epic (the novella-long "The Tears of the Gods") and everything in between. The paranormal takes many faces and is touched upon with the proper awe and reverence. There is a love for the trappings of the occult, which at some points becomes obsession ("Into the Mysteries (an excerpt)"), and at certain parts the writer tends to get lost in atmosphere and stylized form ("Suburbs of the Black Lyre"), but most of the stories of this collection are gold.

D’Arca: 4/5 (A mansion in Venice and the lure of magic, now and then)
The World Entire: 5/5 (Where three boys enter the house of an old Jewish gentleman)
The Counsels of Night: 4/5 (Garden renovations reveal a buried folly built according to some very specific instructions)
Suburbs of the Black Lyre: 2.5/5 (Of different types of divination)
Now Feel that Pulse No More: 5/5 (A church boy infiltrates a derelict house. Really touching and atmospheric ghost fiction)
The Mouth of the Medusa: 4/5 (Droughts reveal Roman ruins with a grotesque font)
An Image of Truth: 3/5 (A light-hearted short story inspired from Machen, concerning a tobacco cult)
The Four Strengths of Shadow: 3.5/5 (Investigating the library of a Rennaisance architect in Venice)
The Tears of the Gods: 4.5/5 (Following a secret society from the Rennaisance to mid-20th century)
Into the Mysteries (an excerpt): 2/5 (An alternate history piece based on an interesting idea but the execution is tedious)
Afterword (Loved it. I wish more writers commented on their stories)horror reviewed weird2 s Des Lewis1,071 80

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