Brides In the Dark by Jacob Steven Mohr
I would like to thank Quill & Crow for an advance copy of this novella in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Quill & Crow
Published – Out Now
Price – £12.99 paperback £5.19 ebook
In Wicke, menfolk hunt their wives in the dim forests. On the Burning Coast, they snatch them from the sea. But in Patrick’s mountain village of Blackfrye, lonely boys lure their brides down from the night sky itself. And these, everybody knows—these make the happiest marriages of them all. But when the young shepherd scales the mountain to win a wife of his own, he gets almost more than he can handle with Stella. She’s got bats’ wings, for one—and a tongue far sharper than her yellow fangs. And in exchange for her hand in wedlock, she wants something from Patrick in return…something that, once given, might turn his humble home upside-down forever. Can Patrick and his feral bride-on-the-wing find happiness in the world of men? Or will a silent horror rotting under Blackfrye consume them both?
There is a long tradition of the fairy tale being interrogated for what these cautionary tales are really telling us. Angela Carter most notably explores the feminist aspects hiding in tales of wolves and men with blue beards. The Sourdough novels of AG Slatter create a fascinating world where various myths, folk tales and fairy tales turn into something darker and raise issues for people today. Unsurprisingly and rightly we now have tales with a feminist aspect highlighting how many of the old tales very firmly set the rules for girls and young women to obey…or else. This does sometimes then leave out that men also must make some choices about the world they should want and the steps they themselves need to take to make that world. In Jocob Steven Mohr’s new fantasy novella Brides In The Dark we follow a young man very much being told by his society what to do to be a man and yet realising he and the women in his world always have choices.
Patrick is a young man of Blackfrye and has reached the age all such young men need to find a wife. His father Old Matthew has given him the benefit of his years of experience as to how best to find and capture the woman who will be at his side for the rest of his life ad to use a knife is she does not agree t that. The women of Blackfrye as always just look on and say nothing. They never speak. Patrick will soon ascend the mountains and find he spot that the harpies gather at and then the tradition will be followed but this time Patrick has had some ideas from his mother that will perhaps leas to a great change.
Initially I came into this story not knowing quite what to expect. The opening scene has Patrick protecting his flock from a wolf and we see he is prepared to do hard and bloody things is he believes this is the right thing to do. I was not expecting to find Blackrye so sinister and yet when you first notice all the women do not talk it sets an early signal that things are not right and yet for the men this is normality. We find out Patrick has never heard his mother’s voice at all. Mohr very cleverly starts to show us that this world is not a good one. We then find out that the focus is on harpies and that raises all kinds of interesting questions. Patrick is tasked with lulling one to him, cutting her wings and changing her to a beautiful woman to become his obedient wife.
In some ways this feels a spin on the old selkie myths and indeed there is reference to a nearby community doing something similar with the creatures of the sea. Here Mohr gets to create something new and uses a fantastically loaded term in the process to power the tale. Harpies are mythical creatures that have human and bird-like features known for tearing men to part. These days you’ll hear it still sometimes as a loaded insult to women. Patrick effectively taking a harpy to obey him creates all sorts of interesting metaphors for how the men of some communities see women as a force to be controlled and this story really interrogates that idea.
What I really liked was that Patrick unusually has still learned to ‘listen’ to his mother and understand her even without hearing her voice. That bond of love and respect is quite key to how this story then pans out. His mother has different suggestions as to how he should act and when he meets a harpy known as Stella, they find things are not going the way that either have believed the other side would act. This then sets up the story’s final act as Patrick and Stella return to Blackfrye. The focus though is on Patrick. Realising he has his own choices, having to weigh his parent’s behaviours and most crucially understanding he is currently a part of a pattern of control that has gone back generations. Going against that is not going to be easy but it may be the right thing. That this sets up conflict with his own traditionalist father puts some powerful stakes into the story
The story is dark and Mohr who I often have known through their horror work knows just the right about of shadow, and also blood, to help create a sense of menace and threat to this story which is decidedly for adults but I also liked that the ultimate message is a hopeful one that men can make better decisions and that itself creates a kind of freedom we don’t often realise that our own patriarchal society can stop us from having for ourselves.
Brides In The Dark is a fast flowing and very smart novella with an intriguing spin on the old tales creating a relevant message for men today. I highly recommend it to fantasy fans.
