Review: Mike Ashley (ed.) – From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea

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4 stars, books, first time read, From the Depth and Other Strange Tales of the Sea, Mike Ashley, own book, read in 2019, reading, review, short stories

Title: From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea
Author: Mike Ashley (editor)
First published: 2018
Dates read: 25. 08. – 11. 09. 2019
Category: first time read, own book
Rating: 4/5
The book in five words or less: a solid and entertaining collection

My thoughts:

From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea is a collection of some fifteen short stories originally published between 1891 and 1932 and now reissued as part of the British Library Tales of the Weird series. I came across this collection by accident in a bookstore in Bristol during my trip to the UK in May and was mostly drawn in by the cover. However, it was the description – ‘a selection of early 20th century maritime ghost stories’ – that convinced me to pick up this book. Being used to – and a fan of – the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne, I hoped to find something along those lines but from a later date, and I’m happy to say that I was not disappointed.

All the short stories in From the Depths are decidedly nautical, and most of them are mysteries and ghost stories with a touch of science fiction. Topics range from encounters with deep sea creatures and ghost ships, messages from the dead transmitted in Morse code, piracy, murder and revenge, mysterious floating islands, and the Sargasso Sea. The Titanic is mentioned more than once, and so are other famous shipwrecks and a variety of ocean locations. Most of the tales rely on mystery and narrative slow reveals rather than psychological horror, but they can all be described as a good yarn well told.

As with all short story collections – especially those that contain works by different authors – the quality, length, and topics of the stories vary, but the collection as a whole is still solid and very entertaining. I also appreciated the short introductions to the respective authors the editor, Mike Ashley, has prefaced the individual stories with. These introductions both give a little more insight into the context the stories were written and published in, as well as the themes that connect them.

Overall, the collection reads like the strange lovechild of Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells, and if those happen to be authors you like, I heartily recommend picking up From the Depths – if only to get an insight into the development of the maritime ghost story in the early 20th century.

My favourites: The Ship of Silence (Albert R. Wetjen), From the Darkness and the Depths (Morgan Robertson), Held by the Sargasso Sea (Frank H. Shaw), The Mystery of the Water-Logged Ship (William Hope Hodgson), The High Seas (Elinor Mordaunt), No Ships Pass (Lady Eleanor Smith)

 

Read if you like: ghost ships, early science fiction and gothic fiction, Edgar Allan Poe (especially The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, William Wilson, Message in a Bottle), Jules Verne, a good mystery tale