All the Bells on Earth (Ex-Library), Winter Tides, The Rainy
Season, Night Relics, The Paper Grail (Ex-Library), The Last Coin, and Land of
Dreams, by James P. Blaylock.
Hardback copies of Blaylock books I’ve previously catalogued.
I love Blaylock’s work so much I want to have it in more durable form. I regret
that I’ve been unable to locate proper hardbacks of his Balumnian books.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Fantasy. Novels. Hardbacks.
The Man in the Moon, by James P. Blaylock.
An ex-library, Subterranean Press book, with an Introduction
by Tim Powers. The 519th copy in a special signed (by both Blaylock
and Powers) limited edition of 1000 copies. How such a book ever got into a
library and then sold is beyond me. The first draft, as it were, of ‘The Elfin
Ship’, later rewritten and added to and which became the book I love.
Illustrations by Phil Parks, and includes the anomalous first Langdon St. Ives
Story, ‘The Hole in Space’. “The Man in the Moon is the
first draft of Blaylock's book The Elfin Ship, which
editor Lester Del Rey convinced him to re-write and lengthen. The last third of
this version is very different from what was published first (not worse, but
different plot-wise).” – Power of Babel.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.
The Magic Spectacles, by James P. Blaylock.
“I got The Magic Spectacles by James
P. Blaylock, a rather rare little volume that came early
in Blaylock's career and apparently only published in Great Britain.
It is his one avowedly "juvenile" work and is very reminiscent of his
"Balumnia" books like The Elfin Ship and The
Disappearing Dwarf.” – Power of Babel, 2011. “Illustrated by Ferret” (Pseudonym
of the artist and illustrator Tim MacNamara, sometimes referred to as Tim Ferret.
He has connections with K. W. Jeter, another steampunk author). “A suddenly
appearing curiosity shop owned by a small man who might, or might not, be the
Man in the Moon; a pair of strange spectacles buried in a fishbowl full of
marbles; an old window glazed with sea-green glass found beneath a suburban
house; and two adventurous boys who put on the spectacles and climb through the
window into a land of goblins, ghosts and rope ladders that reach to the moon.”
– Google Books.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.
The Knights of the Cornerstone, by James P. Blaylock.
“Calvin Bryson has hidden himself away from the world, losing
himself in his work and his collection of rare and quirky books. He never meant
to let so much time go by without visiting his aunt and uncle in the tiny town
of New Cyprus, California. When he gets there, he'll discover the town's
strange secrets and a mysterious group dedicated to preserving and protecting
holy relics - a modern day incarnation of the legendary Knights Templar.” –
Google Books. Has connections, I think, with “The Paper Grail” or “The Last
Coin”, as the Templars are protecting what is apparently Veronica’s Veil,
another precious relic with unpredictable powers.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.
The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives, by James P. Blaylock.
Gathers together the early shorts stories and the novels
‘Homunculus’ and ‘Lord Kelvin’s Machine’ (for which see separate reviews – or
did I skip them, promising to review this book? Wait a moment while I go and
see – yes, I did review them). An ex-library book put out by Subterranean Press
and illustrated by J. K. Potter. Introduction by Tim Powers.
Ranking: Essential (especially for the short stories).
File Code: Omnibus. Novels. Hardback.
The Ebb Tide, The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs, The Adventure
of the Ring of Stones (#782 out of 1000 signed copies), by James P. Blaylock.
All are “A Langdon St. Ives Adventure”, all are from
Subterranean Press, all are illustrated by J. K. Potter, and all are signed by
James P. Blaylock, though only ‘Ring of Stones’ is numbered. I suppose if I knew
they would all be eventually collected into one volume I could have been spared
the expense of collecting them, but who knew? I probably couldn’t have stood
the suspense of waiting, anyway. I’m always afraid I’ll perish before I get the
next in a series, and I suppose someday it will have to happen.
Ranking: Essential Keepers.
File Code: Steampunk Fantasy. Novellas. Hardbacks.
The Further Adventures of Langdon St. Ives, by James P.
Blaylock.
Gathers together the novellas ‘The Ebb Tide’, ‘The Affair of
the Chalk Cliffs’, ‘The Adventure of the Ring of Stones’, ‘The
Here-and-Therians’, and ‘Earthbound Things.’ The last two were never published
separately. Subterranean Press and illustrated by J. K. Potter (I don’t know
about you, but that name seems to me to invite confusion with Ms. Rowling’s books).
In the Introduction, Blaylock takes a rather interesting look at his early
juvenile reading and how it went into making him the writer he is. Flapjack:
“Adventure!”
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Omnibus. Novellas. Hardback.
The Aylesford Skull; Beneath London, by James P Blaylock.
Two more “A Tale of Langdon St. Ives” novels, this time
published by Titan Books. In ‘Skull’: “It is the summer of 1883 and Professor
Langdon St. Ives – brilliant but eccentric scientist and explorer – is at home
in Aylesford with his family. However, a few miles to the north a steam launch
has been taken by pirates above Egypt Bay; the crew murdered and pitched
overboard. In Aylesford itself a grave is opened and possibly robbed of the
skull. The suspected grave robber, the infamous Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, is an old
nemesis of Langdon St. Ives. When Narbondo returns to kidnap his four-year-old
son Eddie and then vanishes into the night, St. Ives and his factotum Hasbro
race to London in pursuit.”- jamespblaylock.com. In ‘Beneath’: “The collapse of
the Victoria Embankment uncovers a passage to an unknown realm beneath the city
of London. Langdon St. Ives sets out to explore it, not knowing that a
brilliant and wealthy psychopathic murderer is working to keep the underworld’s
secrets hidden for reasons of his own. St. Ives and his stalwart friends
investigate a string of ghastly crimes: the gruesome death of a witch, the
kidnapping of a blind, psychic girl, and the grim horrors of a secret hospital
where experiments in medical electricity and the development of vampiric fungi
serve the strange, murderous ends of St. Ives’s most dangerous nemesis yet.”
-Ibid.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Fantasy. Novels. Softcovers.
River’s Edge, by James P. Blaylock.
The body of a girl washes up on a mud bank along the edge of
the River Medway amid a litter of poisoned fish and sea birds, casting an
accusing shadow upon the deadly secrets of the Majestic Paper Mill and its
wealthy owners. Simple answers to the mystery begin to suggest insidious
secrets, and very quickly Langdon St. Ives and his wife Alice are drawn into a
web of conspiracies involving murder, a suspicious suicide, and ritual
sacrifice at a lonely and ancient cluster of standing stones. Abruptly
St. Ives’s life is complicated beyond the edge of human reason, and he finds
himself battling to save Alice’s life and the ruination of his friends, each
step forward leading him further into the entanglement, a dark labyrinth from
which there is no apparent exit. – Subterranean Press.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Fantasy. Steampunk. Novel.
The Gobblin’ Society, by James P. Blaylock.
Another book about Langdon St. Ives and his family and
friends. When his wife Alice inherits an old house from her uncle, they
suddenly find themselves embroiled in the affairs of The Gobblin’ Society, a
sinister organization of gourmands dedicated to trade in the most tabooed food
of all. Part of my 57th birthday gift.
Ranking: Essential
File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.
Zeuglodon, by James P. Blaylock.
“The True Adventures of Kathleen Perkins, Cryptozoologist”.
What began as a demonstration to his writing class blossomed into Blaylock’s
return to the world of ‘The Digging Leviathan’ and Giles Peach, at long last. I
suppose you could say it is the same world as Landon St. Ives, as his son
Edward links the two. “A skeletal hand clutching an iron key lies hidden
within a mermaid’s wooden sarcophagus; a hand-drawn map is stolen from beneath
the floorboards an old museum; an eccentric sleeping inventor dreams of a
passage to the center of the hollow earth, and by dreaming of the passage,
brings it into being…. Pursued by kidnappers thinking of riches and murder,
Katherine Perkins and her two cousins, junior members of The Guild of St.
George, must descend into the depths of the hollow earth in order to return the
Sleeper to his ancestral home on the shores of Lake Windermere. But to awaken
him might mean the end of his dream, the closing of the Windermere Passage, and
the three intrepid explorers marooned in a savage land forgotten by time
itself….” -jamespblaylock.com. So it has connections with ‘Paper Grail’ and
‘Knights of the Cornerstone’ as well. This book from Subterranean Press is one
of a special signed edition, limited to 250 copies, and includes Exclusive
Signed Limited Edition Features: A short essay by ‘William Hastings’, and an
Afterword by ‘William Ashbless’.
Ranking: Essential.
Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories, by James P. Blaylock.
Collected short stories. The first has a definite connection
with ‘The Digging Leviathan’ through the characters of The Newtonian Society.
There are a handful of St. Ives, of course, and ‘Paper Dragons’, and some
collaborations with Tim Powers (see ‘Strange Itineraries’). But there are many
more stand-alones and rarities.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Short Story Collection. Softcover.
In for a Penny, by James P. Blaylock.
A signed limited (750 copies) edition, the first collection
of (7) new short stories since ’13 Phantasms’. I especially like ‘In His Own
Back Yard’, where a man digs up an old coffee can of ‘treasure’ that he buried
as a kid and is suddenly transported back in time, and the complications that
arise.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Short Stories. Fantasy. Hardback.
The Devils in the Details, by James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers.
A Foreword by Powers, one short story by each author and the
third a collaboration between them, and an Afterword by James P. Blaylock in a
detached pamphlet form. When I got it the pamphlet was missing, but the guy I
ordered it from sent one along when I informed him. From Subterranean press,
signed by Blaylock and Powers, the 558th copy in a run of 1250.
Illustrations by Phil Parks.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Short Stories. Hardback.
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