Diabolical Plots #117, November 2024

“Song for a Star-Whale’s Ghost” by Devin Miller

“The Lighthouse Keeper” by Melinda Brasher

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

Two stories inspired by the ocean, but in very different ways, appear in this issue.

“Song for a Star-Whale’s Ghost” by Devin Miller combines space opera with fantasy. The dead bodies of space-dwelling whales are used as starships, but only when they are accompanied by the ghosts of the creatures. Human crews direct them through music.

The plot deals with a team of humans struggling to carry stolen medicine to the dying grandchildren of the dead whale in which they travel. When spaceships of the authorities arrive to arrest them, they must ask the fading ghost of the whale to perform a difficult task.

The premise is appealing, particularly to those who admire whales. The story supplies all the fast-paced action one would expect from space opera. However, the climax depends on an ability of the ghost that had not been revealed until that point, making it something of a deus ex machina.

The title narrator of “The Lighthouse Keeper” by Melinda Brasher accepts that difficult and lonely job in order to support herself after escaping a tragic life. After a powerful gale puts out the light, leading to a shipwreck, she undergoes an extraordinary transformation.

The speculative content does not appear until the conclusion. Up to that point, the story can be read as historical fiction. The change from realism to fantasy is very sudden. The descriptions of sea and storm are vivid, and flashbacks to the narrator’s sufferings are powerful. The climax can be interpreted as a sort of rough justice for the narrator’s abuse by men. Even so, the work may have worked better as mainstream fiction.

Victoria Silverwolf has seen two oceans; which are, of course, just two parts of a single ocean.