The Talosite by Rebecca Campbell

I would like to thank Michael from Undertow Publications for an advance copy of this novella in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Undertow Publications

Published – Out Now

Price – £10.99 paperback £4.23 Kindle eBook

It's 1916, during the First World War, in an alternate world where resurrection is possible. Anne Markham, the daughter of a celebrated neurologist, is reusing the bodies of the dead, combining them into new forms and sending them back into combat, building creatures so complex, and so enormous, that they can encompass all of the fallen.

It's not life as you or I live it. It's not pain or thought as we know it. It's a different order of existence, and what arises is no longer man. They're all dead, but dead doesn't always mean what it used to. All flesh has an afterlife. And from that perspective, are we not angels, ushering them from one form to the next?

He was made of copper wire and electrical sparks and aethereal fluid and hyphae ... emerging in the mist of dawn.

War brings us death; war makes us do horrible things and war can on occasion speed up technical revolutions to a scale we never heard of. People remove obstacles (or morals and safeguards) when their survival is on the line. In Rebecca Campbell’s darkly beautiful and disturbing novella The Talosite we get an alternate WW1 where one woman pushes what can e done with life after death to possibly help the war effort or just push her own knowledge of what is possible.

Anne Markham is the daughter of a famous scientist who has been fixated with the idea of automata the very real quasi-science where the dead can be made into a composite being for various tasks – often defending a people. Known for helping the Battle of Thermopylae, aiding various Jewish groups and more for centuries only now is the science behind this magic is being understood. But Anne’s father passes away in the course of his experiments and she herself has been injured after an accident at a war munitions factory. Now she aids the Allies on the front line of WW1 not just creating new automata for her side but exploring the more advanced made by the German forces and attempting to understand how her own work can improve. A young Canadian soldier named Ned grows closer after becoming part of a stretcher team that specialises in retrieving these creatures and now he wonders if Anne is too focused on life after death than having one of her own.

This is a dark poetical nightmare of a tale where in the never-ending nightmare of WW1 feels suitable that dark experiments with using dead soldiers to fight one more time should come apparent. This though is not simply zombie re-animation, but strange composites of multiple soldiers fused together sometimes with animal parts to create something undead, inhuman and purposed. Campbell’s descriptions of these creatures is both elegant and disturbing fixated on medical terms and small observations like one saying via a punctured throat ‘nein’ all the time. The creatures Anne names Telosites are getting more ornate and powerful not just one body but by the end many many are being used in ever more imaginative and horrific ways. It feels fitting that WW1 is creating a sausage machine of the dead to create even more daily horrors and the story’s atmosphere is one of people being corrupted by what they feel around them.

With Anne we have a main character very much in the role of Frankenstein. Brilliant but with her many scars (physical and mental); green hair caused by the fire and her many horror experienced in her own life she is fixated on bringing the dead back to life. She sees beauty where most see something inhuman. Alongside Anne we have Ned, a soldier who wants to save people even those who have died once already; and that perhaps explains his attraction to Anne. But is their love for each other enough? This grim tale suggests war and destruction will be the end result. I really liked how despite all of this grimness we hope that just for a moment of joy and hope in the tale that life will find a way. But there is a lot in the way of it happening. Campbell’s plotting makes us understand both character’s motivations and the likely outcomes of what will eventually happen as peace descends (for now).

The Talosite is a grim, dark, and unnerving tale where obsession drives people to ever more disturbing ideas and creations. The tone is oppressive, troubling, and yet darkly beautiful as we see these creatures in various guises. A suitably nightmarish walkthrough war to remind us no one ever leaves it unscathed. Well worth a read!