Other Kingdoms (edition 2011)

A passably nice story. Although, how can you expect any less of Richard Matheson. His skill is unparalleled, and he writes with an ease that is easy to overlook. However, all that talent is brought to bear on a fairly inconsequential story.

An 18-year old leaves the trenches of Europe and moves to the British Isles, much of this driven because of a father that he hates. He visits and moves to the small town of one of his trench-mates where he is introduced to witches, fairies, and the strange world of the Middle Kingdoms.

Matheson has done his research – it is evidenced throughout. And, as I’ve already indicated, he brings his considerable talents to bear on the story. However, there just isn’t that much story to be had here. In addition, the scenes that are meant to strike horror do no more than ruffle the reader’s feathers. (One other problem, the contrivance of having an 80-year old author of potboiler horror write this memoir gets old relatively quickly.)

What keeps the reader going is the way Matheson skillfully keeps us guessing about where the truth lies – who is good and who is bad. And there is a sweetness about one of the love stories that does ring of some truth.

Which all leads to a story that is not bad, but is not great. A quick read. An easy read. But a read that, I have a feeling, will disappear as quickly as the memory of some of the stories protagonists. ( )

Other Kingdoms starts off strong. A young soldier makes an unusual friend in the trenches, who dies and leaves behind a mystery. The soldier goes off to his late friend's hometown in England. This had real promise, but then the story degenerates into a Mary-Sue-ish romp as beautiful supernatural women throw themselves at our protagonist.
Women are portrayed as either insane and cruel or vapid and one-dimensional, things happen for no apparent reason, the romance in the story is unbelievable, and the depressing ending feels forced.
This book gets two stars instead of one for its interesting and unusual writing style. ( )

This is a strange book, defined by what it's not more than what it is, the paths it could have gone down but didn't.

I'll step lightly here. As usual, Matheson is brief and the cover blurb covers the first third of this short novel.

We start out with the narrator detailing his horrible home life under the oppressive rule of Captain White, United States Navy. But Alex flees home to serve in WWI. There he meets the charming Harold, an English soldier in the trenches. And Harold dies but, with his dying breath, he urges Alex to go to Gatford, his hometown. He also urges him to avoid "the middle" - a warning Alex thinks about a lot in the first half of the book and not so much in the second because, like much else here, things shift in importance and emphasis frequently. The war shifts from immediate to background horror. This is not a horror of war novel.

Alex's welcome in Gatford, particularly after showing around a lump of gold inherited from Harold, is not what he expects. There is dark talk about the source of the gold, the faeries in the nearby wood. But this is not a mystery about whether the woods are haunted by little people.

And, when the beautiful Magda saves Alex from an invisible menace in that wood, the book doesn't go down the paths the reader expects.

And it's not just the twisting plot that is unexpected. It's the tone. White's narration breaks up any sustained tone of horror. He frequently points out the errors of his eighteen year old, callow, lying self. He can't help pointing out those "Arthur Black touches" - frequent alliteration - in his oral history-like account. He lays on the foreshadowing thickly, quite consciously, but, at novel's end, the horrors he predicted may not be those we anticipated. Despite all the terrors and magic and talk of astral bodies and scrying and psychic projections and wiccanism, this book is, at its core, the sad reminisces of a man in his 80s talking about his life's one great, pure love.

Was I disappointed? Not really because I didn't really want to go to any of those places I thought I was being taken to, and Matheson is always concise enough a writer that even his missteps don't feel like a waste of time. ( )

Book Review - Other Kingdoms by Richard Matheson

Other Kingdoms
Richard Matheson
Trade Paperback
287 Pages
Publisher: Tor/Forge Books
Publication Date: March 1st, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0765327686

Other Kingdoms by Richard Matheson is a darkly entertaining and gripping fantasy and while not his usual bill-of-fare the story is both enjoyable and interesting from many perspectives. Matheson’s stories, usually filled with aspects of fear and horror, have been captivating fans for decades and while Other Kingdoms does come off very dissimilar than most of his past accomplishments it tells a wonderful story, nonetheless. Other Kingdoms is quite definitely a fantasy novel, it contains witches and fairies and things that go bump in the forest for instance, and while not a horror novel per se it contains characteristics of fear and dread that lurk uncomfortably subtle below the surface of almost every page. What sets this particular work apart is that Matheson proves he can write in any genre or style and still be an effective storyteller.

Other Kingdoms is the nostalgic retelling by an elderly author of his experiences as a young man in the years right after his release from World War I. After the death of a comrade in the trenches of France and the discovery of a large lump of pure gold in his belongings he decides to travel to his friends homeland in England in an effort to understand how and why the precious metal came into his possession. It becomes a story of the Fae or Fairy Folk living in the woods of central England and one man’s encounter and interaction with the dark and supernatural creatures of the forest he finds there. Matheson takes on the affectations and prose of a writer born at the turn of the twentieth century (i.e. in the style of H.P. Lovecraft or A. A. Merritt) and it works. When the internal author tells us of his experiences in the trenches during World War I we are spirited away to that time and place. When he interacts with the Faye we are chilled, suffer at the thought of losing our souls, and are distraught by the creatures that dwell in the land of Fairy. Alex, the main character, soon becomes embroiled in a love/hate relationship as the third point of a triangle that also includes a witch and a fairy. Not sure whom to trust and whom to love Alex struggles first, with the fact that the Faye actually exist and second, that he could become involved with them let alone fall in love with one of them.

I'd like to say a few words about the many reviews I've seen of this book and to refute one often repeated critique that has been perpetuated ad infinitum. There are NOT too many parenthesis (asides) in this book, period. There are many, to be sure but Matheson uses them to let the reader hear what the main character is thinking (from his older, wiser perspective), to let us in on his internal jokes, and to give us a better insight into the character’s mental state both through the experiences of the young man and the memory of the elderly one telling the story. That this minor, structural literary device bothered so many readers is puzzling to me. In my opinion, it did not distract from but enhanced the story. The elderly, more jaded, man became more understandable through the parenthetical asides. Mr. Matheson? If you are listening (reading this) please continue to write as you see fit. Your devices have yet to fail you and haven’t this time either. I, for one, will continue to purchase your work and I suspect many, many others will, as well.

Recommended for fans of urban and/or pastoral fantasy, witchcraft, mystery, Victorian fantasy, Fairies, or just plain well-written literature.

Disclaimer: Review copy provided free as part of the Amazon.com Vine Program.

4 stars out of 5

The Alternative
Southeast Wisconsin

Richard Matheson Biography

Richard Matheson is The New York Times bestselling author of I Am Legend, Hell House, Somewhere in Time, The Incredible Shrinking Man, A Stir of Echoes, The Beardless Warriors, The Path, Seven Steps to Midnight, Now You See It…, and What Dreams May Come, among others. He was named a Grand Master of Horror by the World Horror Convention, and received the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement. He has also won the Edgar, the Spur, and the Writer's Guild awards. In 2010, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. In addition to his novels, Matheson wrote screenplays, and he wrote for several Twilight Zone episodes, including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” based on his short story. He was born in New Jersey and raised in Brooklyn, and fought in the infantry in World War II. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He lives in Calabasas, California.

Richard Matheson’s Novels*

Fury on Sunday (1953)
Someone Is Bleeding (1953)
I Am Legend (1954) aka The Omega Man
Woman (1954)
The Shrinking Man (1956) aka Incredible Shrinking Man
A Stir of Echoes (1958)
Ride the Nightmare (1959)
The Beardless Warriors (1960)
Comedy of Terrors (1964) (with Elsie Lee)
Hell House (1971)
The Night Stalker (1972) (with Jeff Rice)
The Night Strangler (1973)
Somewhere in Time (1975) aka Bid Time Return
What Dreams May Come (1978)
Earthbound (1982) (writing as Logan Swanson)
Journal of the Gun Years (1991)
The Gun Fight (1993)
The Path: A New Look at Reality (1993)
7 Steps to Midnight (1993)
Shadow on the Sun (1994)
Now You See It.... (1995)
The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok (1996)
Hunger and Thirst (2000)
Passion Play (2000)
Camp Pleasant (2001)
Hunted Past Reason (2002)
Abu and the 7 Marvels (2002)
Come Fygures, Come Shadowes (2003)
The Link (2006)
Richard Matheson's Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (2011)
Other Kingdoms (2011)

* Source: Fantastic Fiction (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/) ( )

My first reading experience of Richard Matheson was 'I Am Legend', a piece of work that deserves all of the praise it has received. I loved that story and, although I did not read anything else by Matheson for a few years, I was under the assumption that he was a masterful storyteller of horror and strange happenings.
Then I read "Earthbound." That was about a man who cheats on his wife with the ghost of a young woman. That book is full of what I imagine an older man perceives as pervy sex while having not much plot. I thought that this was a fluke on Matheson's part, one bad story.
Recently I read this book, "Other Kingdoms." Once again, it's about a man who is seduced by a wicked woman (a witch rather than a ghost), way too much sex, and bad plot. The character types of women in these last two books I've read by Matheson have left a bad taste with me. I've seen two stereotypes for his women: evil and loose or child-like and innocent.
If you're thinking of picking this up because you liked 'I Am Legend', I have one word for you: Don't. ( )