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Western Lights #5
Anchorwick
FEAR HAUNTS THE TURRET ROOM . . . It is hard to say just what sort of noise it was. I swung the lamp round and scanned the darkened chamber. I saw no one, of course, and nothing. It was then that my ears caught hold of it -- a faint, energetic whispering, as of a voice struggling to make itself heard. My scalp tingled with a sudden sense of impending danger. All in an instant I spied a glimmer of movement, and was struck cold to see a strange, ghostly shape swimming in the air before me. The words it was whispering were but two, louder now, and repeated several times over in a desperate, pleading tone -- HELP ME! A vanished professor, an outbreak of graffiti, and a heretic saint are but a few of the elements in this new fifth volume of author Jeffrey E. Barlough's acclaimed Western Lights series!
387 pages, Paperback
First published October 31, 2008
About the author
Jeffrey E. Barlough
16 books21 followersAuthor, veterinarian and research scientist, Author Jeffrey E. Barlough has been publishing scientific journal articles, novels, and non-fiction books on a variety of subjects since the 1970's.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 16, 2022
Eugene Stanley has been sent from Muttonchester to the auspicious University of Salthead to help his uncle organize a treatise on Aegean cultures and to get an up-close look at university life. This will help him to decide whether he'd like to stay in his rustic hometown to join his father's glazing business or if he'd prefer to follow a more intellectual path. And experience the university he does: making new friends, getting tipsy at "wine parties," bantering with various domestics, exploring the streets of quaint and ancient Salthead, taking weekend trips to his uncle's manor, being a part of various high-spirited shenanigans, solving mysteries, and of course getting sucked into Purgatory via a demonic clock. Where he proceeds to float around, gaze agog at a range of monstrous entities, meet a demented sorcerer, and witness the sad plight of various tormented souls who are being punished in this grey and hellish realm. That all sounds like a pretty standard student experience, as far as my foggy recollection of college days go. Go Tritons!
That middle part in Purgatory was wild. It is bookended by the fun and immersive time described above and then by a trip to the countryside, where our protagonist and his compatriots take a mastodon train to the mountains and find themselves having to deal with prehistoric beasties, a village of ghosts, and secrets buried in a crypt. All of this is unspooled in Barlough's wonderfully old-fashioned prose, with a host of Dickensian characters, dashes of sardonic wit, and the occasional delightful animal. And above all, heaps and heaps of cozy, wintry Atmosphere. The book is very suitable for cold and windy days best spent indoors, like say summer here in San Francisco.
I love this author and his strange but always cozy tales within this Western Lights series. Pure pleasure!
That middle part in Purgatory was wild. It is bookended by the fun and immersive time described above and then by a trip to the countryside, where our protagonist and his compatriots take a mastodon train to the mountains and find themselves having to deal with prehistoric beasties, a village of ghosts, and secrets buried in a crypt. All of this is unspooled in Barlough's wonderfully old-fashioned prose, with a host of Dickensian characters, dashes of sardonic wit, and the occasional delightful animal. And above all, heaps and heaps of cozy, wintry Atmosphere. The book is very suitable for cold and windy days best spent indoors, like say summer here in San Francisco.
I love this author and his strange but always cozy tales within this Western Lights series. Pure pleasure!
January 11, 2010
Anchorwick is the latest installment in Jeffrey Barlough’s Western Lights series. As with previous volumes, the book stands alone and a reader doesn’t have to have read other entries to understand or enjoy this one. We do, however, get to meet the younger incarnations of Prof. Titus Tiggs and Dr. Daniel Dampe, who featured in the first book of the series, The Dark Sleeper, when they were just starting out on their careers as metaphysician and physician, respectively.
And, as with most of the other works in the series, the novel is narrated from a single point of view. In this case that of Eugene Stanley, the nephew of Prof. Christopher (Kit) Greenshields, don of Antrobus College, Salthead University, and noted expert in Aegean civilizations. Eugene is the son of a glazier who has come to the university to help his uncle organize the notes for his magnum opus (ah, to live in the days before “publish or perish” became the norm!), and to determine if he will matriculate there. While ordering his uncle’s notes one night, Eugene stumbles upon an odd lamp filled with the legendary oleum lumeriorum - the oil of the lumerii, a mythic race of magical beings. The oil allows mortals to pierce the veil between our world and a realm of the spirits. Eugene spies a vague figure who begs him to “open the portal” and set him free. Spooked, Eugene drops the lamp and the vision disappears, but he and his uncle undertake to discover the secrets of the odd oil. Their investigations lead them to the mysterious disappearance two years previous of Prof. Haygarth, who also had been pursuing investigations in this regard also. Attempting to discover Haygarth’s whereabouts and possibly track him down, Eugene is swept through the veil and finds himself trapped on the other side. There he meets a stranger who may or may not be the figure he saw in his original vision, and finds Prof. Haygarth. One of the aspects of the bleak limbo our narrator finds himself in is that time doesn’t pass, so the professor hasn’t realized that two years have passed in the mortal world. He does, though, have a possible way out of limbo, and he and Eugene manage to reopen the gate to Earth and return unharmed.
Barlough likes to have several story threads running through his novels and Anchorwick is no exception. The Hulkes of Ruffolk, earls of Anchorwick, were an ancient family that got involved in a feud with the Easterbrooks. Cursed by their enemies, the direct line died out with the unfortunate and much maligned last earl, Jeffrey, Lord Bale. Bale was reputed to be a black wizard allied with dark powers. He disappeared under mysterious circumstances two centuries earlier but it is to him that the original source of the lumerii’s oil can be traced. A surviving relative of the family, Balthasar Timothy, is encouraged by Eugene’s and Haygarth’s adventures to seek out the real story behind his ancestor’s vanishing, and it is this quest (which sweeps up Eugene after his return) that occupies the rest of the book.
Anchorwick is a good entry in the Western Lights series though I would rank it below Dark Sleeper and Strange Cargo. And for sheer creepiness and menace, The House in the High Wood surpasses them all. I don’t often feel truly horrified by what happens in a book but THitHW’s ending continues to “creep me out” every time I consider it. If you read no other Barlough book, The House is the one to peruse. As to the current book: Recommended to Barlough fans, definitely. To get Barlough at his best for newcomers, though, I’d start with one of the three books just mentioned.
And, as with most of the other works in the series, the novel is narrated from a single point of view. In this case that of Eugene Stanley, the nephew of Prof. Christopher (Kit) Greenshields, don of Antrobus College, Salthead University, and noted expert in Aegean civilizations. Eugene is the son of a glazier who has come to the university to help his uncle organize the notes for his magnum opus (ah, to live in the days before “publish or perish” became the norm!), and to determine if he will matriculate there. While ordering his uncle’s notes one night, Eugene stumbles upon an odd lamp filled with the legendary oleum lumeriorum - the oil of the lumerii, a mythic race of magical beings. The oil allows mortals to pierce the veil between our world and a realm of the spirits. Eugene spies a vague figure who begs him to “open the portal” and set him free. Spooked, Eugene drops the lamp and the vision disappears, but he and his uncle undertake to discover the secrets of the odd oil. Their investigations lead them to the mysterious disappearance two years previous of Prof. Haygarth, who also had been pursuing investigations in this regard also. Attempting to discover Haygarth’s whereabouts and possibly track him down, Eugene is swept through the veil and finds himself trapped on the other side. There he meets a stranger who may or may not be the figure he saw in his original vision, and finds Prof. Haygarth. One of the aspects of the bleak limbo our narrator finds himself in is that time doesn’t pass, so the professor hasn’t realized that two years have passed in the mortal world. He does, though, have a possible way out of limbo, and he and Eugene manage to reopen the gate to Earth and return unharmed.
Barlough likes to have several story threads running through his novels and Anchorwick is no exception. The Hulkes of Ruffolk, earls of Anchorwick, were an ancient family that got involved in a feud with the Easterbrooks. Cursed by their enemies, the direct line died out with the unfortunate and much maligned last earl, Jeffrey, Lord Bale. Bale was reputed to be a black wizard allied with dark powers. He disappeared under mysterious circumstances two centuries earlier but it is to him that the original source of the lumerii’s oil can be traced. A surviving relative of the family, Balthasar Timothy, is encouraged by Eugene’s and Haygarth’s adventures to seek out the real story behind his ancestor’s vanishing, and it is this quest (which sweeps up Eugene after his return) that occupies the rest of the book.
Anchorwick is a good entry in the Western Lights series though I would rank it below Dark Sleeper and Strange Cargo. And for sheer creepiness and menace, The House in the High Wood surpasses them all. I don’t often feel truly horrified by what happens in a book but THitHW’s ending continues to “creep me out” every time I consider it. If you read no other Barlough book, The House is the one to peruse. As to the current book: Recommended to Barlough fans, definitely. To get Barlough at his best for newcomers, though, I’d start with one of the three books just mentioned.
January 21, 2014
Again, this is an excellent series and I highly recommend it. Full of colorful characters and places, these novels are a guilty pleasure. They are like sitting in front of a roaring fire listening to your grandfather and grandmother telling stories of old family friends.
April 16, 2010
I love this series of books. Love the time period, the suspense. Have read all of his books.
June 4, 2024
Good book. A little strange that there was a conclusion, and then like an epilogue that was essentially another conclusion. Still, good stuff.
And a plea to any of the other readers out there, make some sort of blog or message board.
Of course, the reality is reality is we will probably just be voices on Goodreads. Reading this series is a lonely journey.
And a plea to any of the other readers out there, make some sort of blog or message board.
Of course, the reality is reality is we will probably just be voices on Goodreads. Reading this series is a lonely journey.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews