In the forward to his short story collection In the Lair of the Kraken, Christopher Butt cites a handful of musicians as part of his inspiration, including Stan Rogers. I live in Halifax now, and so naturally, I started singing all of my favourite Stan Rogers songs in my head as I read Butt’s stories. Perhaps that’s why I most closely align the image of the ocean and a sailing ship in my mind when I think about this book. To be fair to me, this is not a totally false image to have when exploring the worlds of In the Lair of the Kraken – Butt opens the collection with “Grand Bank,” a tragic and gruesome story set on a ship trawling the New World.
This collection moves from colonial times to the future: “The Greeter,” which was possibly my favourite story in the collection, details the life of a robot greeter at an abandoned visitor centre on a formerly colonized ice planet. It’s deeply touching, in a lonely and haunted way. Butt’s prose is often simple and straight-forward, but his images are vivid. I flew through the collection, but had spent endless time in so many different places once I reached the end. Butt’s stories are short, some closer to vignettes than short stories, but all clearly plotted and full stories.
This was a remarkably pleasant set of stories to read, despite the range of scifi, horror, and general unsettling tones Butt cultivates on the page. Circling back to the folk tales and songs he mentions as inspiration in the forward, this really did feel like a set of folk stories, and I think would be one of the few times I’d have rather listened to an audiobook of these stories than read them on a page. They felt most suited to the oral tradition, and I kept thinking about sitting around a campfire, listening to them. In the Lair of the Kraken is a collection for anyone who wants a mix of traditional and modern, and wants a fresh collection of short stories.
Publisher: DarkWinter Press (Jan 5 2024)
Paperback 6″ x 9″ | 273 pages
ISBN: 978-1739042585
Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
