The Dark King Swallows the World
In this beautifully crafted fantasy thriller, twelve-year-old Nora returns from America to join the household where her mother has taken refuge from the Blitz in London with her latest lover, an artist named Charles. But no sooner is Nora introduced to her three-year-old half-brother Sam, than he dies in a car crash. In despair, Nora’s mother turns to Olaf Winter, a louche necromancer modeled on the real-life Aleister Crowley, who also fled to Cornwall during WWII. Both parents blame themselves for the accident, but Nora believes Winter is the one responsible, in a mad attempt to trade her half-brother’s life for a homunculus. In order to save her family, Nora embarks on an epic journey to the land of the dead to ransom her brother from the dark king who rules that realm.
As the novel progresses, what begins as a deft portrait of Bohemian refugees fleeing the terrible reality of WWII London becomes increasingly fantastic. Penner’s dark realm is populated by wondrously imagined creatures that could have risen straight from the Celtic imagination, including a horse named Motorcycle, a Drosselmeyer-like inventor, and a half mad itinerant preacher determined to save the soul of a giantess. But Penner succeeds in maintaining a balance between historical realism and mythopoeic excess, and his elegant writing serves the real world and the fantastic one equally well. A fine atmospheric historical fantasy.
