The last book in Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga was published in 1977, either prompted by or coinciding with a reissue of the previous novels that same year. Part of what led to my reading this last book in this series (which, for me, has been increasingly discouraging, and often powered wholly by my difficulty in abandoning something I’ve started), was the thought that, after a gap of a few years, Gaskell might have returned to Atlan with a fresh approach—something that was backed up by knowing this book was narrated not by Cija, but her daughter, Seka. And, early on, Seka (after reading her mother’s capacious but seemingly unloseable diary) in effect reviews the previous novels, calling Cija “a natural observer of life unless forced to be a protagonist, and a coward too”—so, passive, which I’d agree with, though I don’t think of her as cowardly—and concluding that “my cautious, sensible mother was an extremely silly lady”. I was hopeful, then, that Seka might be different.

Aside from the change in narrator (who, I have to say, writes exactly like Cija, so not much change there), there were a few notable differences. Gaskell allows herself more sexually explicit language, though most of it occurs in the first few pages, as though she soon tired of the novelty. Also, she has at last discovered names: we get Soursere, Quar, Ilxtrith, and Quantumex. But not all the time. One key character is referred to as “Beautiful” before being renamed “the Saint”.

But soon enough, it was clear not much had changed. For a start, Seka is a child and tied to her mother—so when Cija gets kidnapped, as she inevitably does (several times), Seka gets kidnapped with her. What’s more, Seka lost her voice in a previous book, so can’t play much of an active role in terms of asking questions, telling people things, etc. She doesn’t even show much initiative in terms of making herself known without the use of her voice. By the time Cija and Seka found themselves part of the Dragon General Zerd’s army train, heading north for another conquest, I began to feel that I might as well be re-reading the first novel. I have to admit I started skim-reading pretty early on, and only finished this novel because I looked up some reviews and criticism and found a few people saying this was the best book of the series (it may be, I had ceased to be able to tell) and that it had a visionary ending.

It did have a more fantastic ending, with Cija, Seka & co. being taken, at last, to Ancient Atlan, which seems to resemble, much more, the faerie-like strangeness of Gaskell’s first novel, the genuinely unique Strange Evil. But we’re only there for a short space, not long enough for things to develop, and for a lot of it the Atlantean Juzd is telling Cija what the deeper spiritual meaning of all her adventures has been. At this point, I tried breaking out of skim-reading mode, but whenever I did, I just couldn’t bring myself to read more than a few sentences. I’d ceased to care about any of the characters, let alone the supposed meaning of their adventures, and was just reading to see how things ended.

But, every so often, Gaskell would throw in an idea you just couldn’t find anywhere else. For instance, as the characters are passing through a funeral chamber, they see a snake, and one of the mourners says that this is the dead man’s “self-regard”, which we all have, in serpent form, wrapped around the base of our spine. It was a moment where the strangeness of this world Gaskell had created seemed to come alive, but it was never mentioned again, and the possibility of a world being created in which such a belief fitted was lost.

Throughout the series, there’s never been an overall sense of direction. Each novel is just a loose bag of episodes, each episode a loose bag of events. There are moments of interest, occasional striking ideas, but just too much drudgery overall, and certainly no sense of a mythic underlying structure, or a coherently created world.

Another thing that has driven my reading of the series has been looking at how it was received in its day, as prior to this instalment the series was coming out in the days before otherworld fantasy was a commercial genre, or even much of an uncommercial one. The initial books were, then, reviewed in the mainstream press (particularly as Gaskell was also writing non-fantasy books at the same time). But with Some Summer Lands, that’s no longer the case. Fantasy was—had just become—a commercial genre, and so perhaps was now considered beneath the dignity of mainstream reviewers. I’ve only been able to find one newspaper review. Michael Unger, writing in the Liverpool Daily Post (3 September 1977), said:

“Miss Gaskell’s writings have been compared with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, so that, plus the fact that she was once a child prodigy with her first book written when she was 14, led me to believe that she must be a formidable writer. Sadly, therefore, I have to report that the book was hugely disappointing. The only connection between Miss Gaskell and Tolkien is that both invented their own fantasy world. Miss Gaskell’s was introduced to us in her Atlantis trilogy, and her latest offering is again set in this imaginary continent. But it is really escapist writing of a style similar to many a science fiction writer.”

Ultimately, the view I most chime with seems to be John Grant’s, from the St James Guide to Fantasy Writers (1996). After calling Some Summer Lands “this fascinatingly bad book”, he goes on to say “Yet there are also sections in which Gaskell seems at last to have become interested in her Atlantean epic” — which makes me realise how one of the things I’ve felt throughout is to wonder why Gaskell was writing this, when she didn’t seem interested in it, except at brief moments.

Oddly, I feel as though I could still read something by Gaskell—her vampire novel, Shiny Narrow Grin, sounds interesting. But, having been aware of the series since my epic-fantasy-reading days began in the 80s, I have to admit it’s just so unlike I expected it to be. I was at least hoping to encounter something with the originality of pre-genre fantasy, combined with the growing air of imaginative and individual freedoms created by the 1960s social revolutions; but the result has been, if anything, more the dreariness of the kitchen sink 60s than the wild imagination of the psychedelic 60s, and dreariness is not what I come to fantasy for.

First published in 1984, The Ceremonies is an expansion of Klein’s 1972 novella “Events at Poroth Farm”. He worked on the novel for about five years (while also editing The Twilight Zone Magazine), and it came out in the midst of the 1980s horror boom. Lauded by Stephen King among others, it sold enough to go through a number of reprints, was nominated for the 1985 World Fantasy Award, and won the 1986 August Derleth Award. So far, it’s Klein’s only novel.

Despite being a massive book (608 pages in its recent PS Publishing edition), The Ceremonies has a small cast and a not-very-complicated plot but, once I’d got used to its steady pace (the supernatural elements build up nice and slowly), it didn’t feel padded—at least, not in terms of character and plot.

The main character is Jeremy Freirs, nearly thirty, divorced, and (in the words of the book’s main antagonist) an “insignificant little academic with no family and no prospects”, “a solitary soul, lonely and suggestible”, who decides to go off on a country retreat (despite the fact he’s never really been much outside New York) to get some reading done for his PhD on “The Gothic Imagination”. To this end, he responds to an ad offering accommodation for the summer at Poroth Farm in New Jersey. The Poroths, it turns out, are a young couple, recently returned to the husband’s birth-town of Gilead, seeking to make a go of this long-abandoned farm. They are also—as is the entire town of Gilead—members of a Amish-like sect, the Brethren of the Redeemer, who believe in doing without electricity and many other mod cons, “living the way the Lord wants us to, living just like the people in the Bible”. But the Poroths are in debt, and in need of Jeremy’s money, so they’re prepared to overlook the fact that he comes from decadent, heathen New York. Just before going away to Gilead, Jeremy meets Carol Conklin, a young woman working as a part-time librarian (and who only recently spent six months in a convent, intending to become a nun), and convinces her to visit him during his stay at Poroth Farm.

What none of them know is they’re being subtly manipulated by an old man, who calls himself Rosie, but whose name was originally Absolom Troet. Born on Poroth Farm in 1868, he encountered, in the woods, an alien creature that had crashed there more than five thousand years before. It had been waiting all that time for a fitting servant to bring it back properly to life, whereupon it will “transform” (or perhaps destroy) the world. One of young Absolom’s first actions as its servant is to murder his entire family and cover it up as an accidental fire. He then makes two attempts at the ceremonies that will bring his master back, both of which involve the grisly murder of a young woman—once in 1890, the other in 1939, both on the rare conjunction when there’s a full moon on Lammas Day. (He seems to have skipped 1901 and 1920.) Both attempts fail. Now—1985, which is the next full moon on Lammas Day—he’s determined to see the ritual all the way through.

One of the book’s real strengths is characterisation. We spend a lot of time with these few characters, and they never seem dull or unconvincing. Sarr Poroth, for instance, despite having strict religious ideas, is prepared to accept others for what they are and not be too judgemental—he himself partially left the Brethren when he sought to become a teacher. One of the high points of the novel is the story he tells of his one and only trip into New York, where he was robbed of the little money he had, and proceeded to walk through the massive city in search of the thieves, a journey that turned, increasingly, into a vision of Hell. His wife, Deborah, though she shares his views, is lively and fun (most of the Brethren view her as “frivolous, high-spirited”, which is, to them, a negative). Even the main antagonist, Rosie, presents himself as a spritely old man with a sense of humour (“Satan? Who’s he?”) and a wide-ranging generosity, while inside he’s seething with judgement and a desire to basically destroy the world. Carol comes across as somewhat naïve and easily manipulated, but mainly because she likes to see the best in people. (It’s also why Rosie chose her—he needs someone he can lead through a number of arcane ceremonies without her suspecting.) Jeremy, meanwhile, is something of a slob, a man whose attempt to get fit is beset with excuses, and whose main focus actually seems to be trying to get laid—either by Carol or, at times, Deborah, despite her being the wife of his host. Still, despite him being no hero, and certainly not admirable, it feels like a true portrait—he’s not exactly prepared to face the incursion of a cosmic-level horror, but who is?

Of the inspiration behind the novel, Klein said (in a 1985 interview with Douglas E Winter, in Faces of Fear):

“The Ceremonies is, in many ways, an attempt to update Arthur Machen… in that it’s about the same things that pleased me in Machen…”

In particular, he’s talking about Machen’s “The White People” (which he has Jeremy read by moonlight, leading him into a trance-like performance of the first of the ceremonies). And there is certainly that feeling of a magical reality hidden just behind the day-to-day world, accessible by obscure and traditional rites, songs, games, and rituals. (As Rosie knows: “The keys to the rites that will transform the world are neither hidden nor rare nor expensive. They are available to anyone.”) But whereas “The White People” is all about the horror of this other world of strange magic simply existing, The Ceremonies takes things in an apocalyptic direction which Machen never did. The novel is much more like Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”, with its rural setting, black magic rituals, and the coming of a cosmic entity that intends to wipe humankind off the Earth.

But, whereas Lovecraft links his black magic rituals to advanced science, Klein never really questions why there’s a need for these ceremonies in order to resurrect his alien monster. If the creature is alien, why are the ceremonies linked to it so rooted in traditional world cultures? (It arrived five thousand years ago, yes, but in a remote part of the world.) Why does the magic work on it at all? But, really, it doesn’t matter—this novel isn’t about presenting a worldview in which magical ceremonies make some sort of modern sense. The ceremonies are just things you have to do. As Rosie ponders at one point:

“There are always steps to follow, rules to be observed. Funny, that he of all people should have to play by the rules.”

The Brethren have ceremonies, too. Most of them are obvious religious rituals (getting together to pray and sing, for instance), but some have a more folk-horror air to them, such as a planting ceremony that ends in the baking of a star-shaped loaf of bread, which everyone eats. This, it turns out, is a vestige of a far older ceremony where the loaf would have been man-shaped, and before that might well have been an actual human being who was consumed as part of a savage earth-fertility ritual. The feeling is, then, that the civilised world we all live in and know is underpinned by something far more savage and dark. Jeremy, with his New York ways, is clearly the most “civilised” in terms of his being divorced from nature and its life-cycles; but the Brethren, though they work with the land, are still not fully in touch with its genuine savageness. (As indicated by Deborah’s futile attempts to stop her many cats from killing tiny creatures.)

In a way, it’s nature that’s the real cosmic-level reality of The Ceremonies: its insects and snakes and tangled woods. The alien thing itself is described as “outside nature and alone”, and the random processes of nature play a role in the foiling of its plan, too—just as nature foils the Poroths’ plan to make the farm a working concern. Like the alien, Jeremy is “outside nature”—he hates the bugs that constantly invade his living space, and is allergic to cats. Both the alien and Jeremy are described as “alone”, and it could even be said that, in his sometimes singleminded attempts to bed Carol, he’s a little like the alien, which needs Carol as a virgin sacrifice in its final ritual. The difference is, Jeremy’s desire turns to love (maybe not entirely convincingly), which the alien’s would never do.

Despite its length, I didn’t think The Ceremonies really engaged with its own themes enough to make them stand out and be analysed too much. It also had a few loose ends (like, what happened to Sarr Poroth’s mother, the only character to be aware of what Rosie was trying to do?). But its strength lies in its characterisation, and the slow, subtle build of the supernatural horror element to a grand conclusion. I certainly enjoyed reading it, I just don’t know if it left me with anything that would make me return to it, as a novel.

The original novella, “The Events at Poroth Farm”, works better as weird fiction—and even better on a re-read, when you can spot the subtle early signs of things going wrong. The characterisation is still there, and the compression and unanswered questions make it work much better. Klein is certainly good at this longish short form (see also his collection of four novellas, Dark Gods), and it’s a pity he hasn’t written more.

Like Atlan, the previous volume in the saga of Cija’s constant imperilment, The City (1966) was published simultaneously with a realistic novel from Gaskell, this time All Neat in Black Stockings, the tale of an innocent young woman who falls for a womanising window-cleaner (filmed in 1969 as an Alfie-like comedy that left the darker aspects out). Cija’s adventures, on the other hand, are basically a continuation of the previous books. First, there’s that disparaging tone which always clamps onto something to complain about, as the book opens with Cija finding herself on “The dirtiest quay I’ve ever been on. And a scum of dirty ice over almost everything…” Almost immediately, she’s sold into a brothel, but escapes that for a life of domestic drudgery. It’s only then she realises where she is: back in the city of her birth, in the realm of her Dictatress mother and High Priest father, who are vying for control of the land. Her father, of course, wants Cija dead, because he’s supposed to be celibate, so can’t have a daughter walking around. If that weren’t imperilment enough, she’s kidnapped by a tribe of ape-men, who seem to be intent on fattening her up to feed to their children, until one of the tribe, Ung-g, becomes protective of her and is forced to flee with her into the surrounding jungles. The two witness a pair of Tyrannosaurs mating, concluding in the female eating the male. It’s a savage moment that could well be Gaskell’s ultimate vision of the relationship between the sexes, if it didn’t turn out that Ung-g, despite not being human, is the most ideal mate Cija has yet encountered:

“It has taken primaeval man, an animal of the forests, to show me how tender tenderness can be.”

But the idyll doesn’t last. Cija is found by her father’s men and taken to his volcano fortress where, she’s told, she is to be sacrificed. (Her father, it turns out, has got round the demand for celibacy by taking a bejewelled crocodile as a consort—a crocodile that, despite being a reptile, has breasts.) Needless to say, Cija is once again rescued from her peril, reunited with her mother, and, just as she realises she’s pregnant with Ung-g’s baby, is told her husband Zerd is due to arrive any moment…

Although this was the last volume in the Atlan saga for just over ten years, it doesn’t show any signs that this was meant to be a conclusion. (The story of the four books has, for me, shown no overall shape, despite this being the volume where Cija comes home.) All the same, there’s something of a thematic resolution in Cija being faced by two of the most extreme examples of maleness so far—and the series has, really, been all about Cija’s very difficult relationships with men. On the one hand we have Ung-g, an almost wordless semi-human who’s nevertheless protective of Cija and tender towards her; on the other, there’s her father, who wants to kill her. Mother-figures don’t fare much better, either. There’s the brothel-madam Rubila, then the woman who takes Cija in as a servant of sorts, whom Cija actually refers to as Mother (and whose actual daughters say they know she hates them), and then her Dictatress mother, right at the end, who we know has already used her quite coldly in her own plots. The Atlan saga is, frankly, a nightmare of personal relationships.

One of the things that’s kept me reading these books—apart from the difficulty I have in not finishing something I’ve started—is learning how this bizarre series (which must have seemed even more bizarre at the time it was published) was received, in the days before fantasy became a publishing phenomenon. How did the reviewers understand it? As literature or schlock? Well, there was this kind of review, from Patricia Hodgart in the Illustrated London News:

“The City, third in a series of horror-comic Gothic romances, has the same kind of sick jokiness as Pop art. Here be dragons, but her heroine, Cija, survives them all—alligators, octopuses, sadistic priests, the lot—only to become pregnant by an almost human ape who has rescued her. Crudely written indigestible stuff, for monster-lovers only.”

But also this kind, from Wendy Monk at the Birmingham Daily Post:

“The richness of the author’s imagination comes into its own when the outcast empress goes into the jungle with an ape… Miss Gaskell’s sleight-of-hand just manages to deceive until the end of the game; only it is not the end, for we shall meet Cija again.”

But overall, I’m more inclined to agree with Susan Hill (who I’m assuming is the same Susan Hill who wrote The Woman in Black), in the Coventry Evening Telegraph:

“Miss Gaskell writes with her imagination in full flood, but I’m beginning to find Cija rather a bore.”

Nevertheless, with only one volume left, I’ve got this feeling I’m going to end up finishing this saga anyway, if only to see what a gap of ten years might make of Gaskell’s fantasy world. The final volume, Some Summer Lands, came out in 1977.