Beneath Ceaseless Skies #388, August 10, 2023

“The Naming of Knots” by M.A. Carrick

“The Angel Azrael Battles a Dead God Among the Heretics” by Peter Darbyshire

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

Two tales of morally ambiguous protagonists facing dangerous situations appear in this issue.

The main character in “The Naming of Knots” by M.A. Carrick (a shared pen name for the writing team of Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms) is a thief. While robbing the chambers of a member of the oppressive upper class, a mysterious figure known only as the Rook takes his loot, leaving a message behind to meet at a certain place. The Rook, a legendary righter of wrongs, enlists the thief’s aid in breaking into the records office of the elites, in order to obtain evidence of criminal negligence.

This synopsis fails to mention the story’s fantasy content. Magic is used to secure locks, and the Rook may or may not be an immortal spirit. The background is an imaginary world, described in great detail. Despite these fantastic trappings, in essence this is an account of a roguish antihero and a heroic adventurer in the tradition of Robin Hood. As such, it can be enjoyed as an adventure story, although the narrative skips a major scene of conflict entirely and simply tells what happened afterward.

“The Angel Azrael Battles a Dead God Among the Heretics” by Peter Darbyshire is one of a series of Weird West stories about the title character, a fallen angel who wanders through a desert wasteland on a dead horse. In this tale, he returns to the place where he and other angels destroyed a city inhabited by the worshippers of a snake god, to find an even worse situation.

This is an extremely violent, gruesome tale, full of explicit scenes of torture. (The fact that the characters remain laconic and speak with grim irony even while undergoing extraordinarily painful ordeals is difficult to accept.) Readers looking for an experience similar to the viewing of the most blood-soaked Italian Western movie imaginable will best appreciate this apocalyptic horror story.

Victoria Silverwolf has read works by these authors before.