About the book…
William Day should be an acclaimed Arctic explorer. But after a failed expedition to find the fabled Open Polar Sea, in which his men only survived by eating their comrades, he returned in disgrace. A cannibal. A murderer.
Thirteen years later, his second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has gone missing in the same waters. Perhaps this is Day’s chance to restore his tarnished reputation by bringing Stevens – the man who’s haunted his whole life – back home. But when the rescue mission into the frozen wastes becomes an uncanny journey into his own past, Day must face up to the things he’s done.
Aboard ship, Day must also contend with unwanted passengers: a reporter obsessively digging up the truth about the first expedition, and Stevens’s wife, a spiritualist whose séances both fascinate and frighten. Following a trail of cryptic messages, gaunt bodies, and old bones, their search becomes more and more unnerving, as it becomes clear that – for Day – the restless dead are never far behind.
Hugest of thanks to the wonderful folks at Titan Books for my gifted review copy of ‘Where The Dead Wait’ for the accompanying Instagram book tour, a formidable and unforgettable journey into the center of identity, wrapped in an external voyage for the truth, no matter where it lies.
A 5 star read, this is a genuine pleasure to read-which sounds odd as it is about isolation, grief, suffering, and much, much more besides..-and so immersive it’s insane. My poor kids were grateful of the break of me talking, but quickly became fed up of me yelling ‘where is my book?!’ 50 times a day because I could not put it down, then spent the next frantic half an hour looking for it when I had feed them or do other grownup stuff.
Ally Wilkes takes a horror story of exploration gone hideously, horribly, wrong, a feat of hubris shot to shreds, manly men doing manly things, and creates a moving, pathos threaded narrative of love, loss and grief.
All is frozen there, in the ice, waiting for Day to return and claim it.
He is a walking emblem on his return to ‘civilization’ of man gone wrong, a living example of what not to do to uphold the British Empire and it’s patriarchal constructs. Tormented, internally and externally by being literally frozen out of his profession, he wanders like an albatross, shunned and reviled by society.
Until they need him.
With no regard to his personal suffering, and to be used as a redemptive arc by his employers, he is asked to set sail once more, to retake his fateful journey in the hopes of finding another surviving crew member who has gone missing .
There is so much depth and resonance in the tale of William Day, who has been thrust into a riole he was uniquely unqualified to take, by dint of the deaths of those who outranked him.
Has he harpooned this redemptive voyage by bringing along the wife of the missing sailor, herself a psychic, and her enigmatic native companion , Qila?
Will he be able to claim back his name, and his identity that he fears lost along with the dead who he carries with him?
This extraordinary voyage of a man to the heart of himself , his masculinity, his identity, is truly wonderful, as well as horrific. It drives such a wedge into your conscious that it is impossible to shake.
I really loved the motif of cannibalism as an act of self destruction and toxic self loathing for not being like other men, especially as it applies to gender non conformity which would not have been recognised, nor talked about in this era.
Please PLEASE read this book, preferably like I did, swaddled in a huge patchwork quilt with the biggest mug of coffee.
Once you set sail on the Reckoning, and sister ship the Louisa, you won’t be turning back.
About the author…
I write supernatural, cosmic, and weird horror, and I’m particularly fascinated by Polar stories and the exploration Gothic, despite suffering from seasickness and loathing the cold!
My debut novel ,‘All The White Spaces’ set in the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, was published January 2022 (UK) / March 2022 (US).
My short fiction has been published in Nightmare Magazine, Three Crows Magazine, and I’m also the Book Reviews Editor for Horrified Magazine, the British horror website. I live in Greenwich, London, with an anatomical human skeleton and far too many books about Polar exploration…
Author
bridgeman.lenny@gmail.com