Evangeline Walton

I see that Centipede Press will be releasing an edition of Witch House by Evangeline Walton. Has anyone read this novel? I don't think I've read anything of hers to date. This particular book was the first volume in “The Library of Arkham House Novels of Fantasy and Terror” series.

Her Wikipedia entry contains this interesting bit:

Treated as a child with silver nitrate tincture for frequent bronchitis and severe sinus infections, Walton, who had extremely fair skin, absorbed the pigment of the tincture causing her skin to turn gray and darken as she aged. When she became well known in the fantasy world in the 1970s, her blue-gray skin made her appearance exotic, much like a benevolent deity from Etruscan tomb frescos."

Any WT opinions on Ms. Walton's fiction?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangeline_Walton

I've only read "They That Have Wings", which was included in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23.

It would be rash to base an opinion on just one story, but it was pretty effective, I thought. I don't want to give too much away, as the collection should still be fairly easy to get hold of.

I've read her Mabinogion Tetralogy in the seventies, and remember liked it well enough back then. (But long time ago - who knows what I would think of them now).

It's hard to find a decent review of the novel itself, but I like these covers!







ETA

The middle one is the cover pictured by Centipede on their web page.

Nice that it's getting reprinted. My wife likes her Mabinogion books. This one only popped up on my radar last year when I found it at a con, not read it though. Since I'm now Officially an Arkham House Collector the Arkham copy is on my longlist ;-)

Haven't read her. A Reader's Guide to Fantasy doesn't have much on her fiction generally, but calls her Mabinogion retelling (mentioned by BarkingMatt in #3) "delightful".

Her Mabinogion was very well done - very readable (& 3 were in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series) - There is an omnibus hardcover cheaply available from Overlook. Witch House was picked as a "333 novel" which is a good recommendation, and Bleiler calls it "effective" while dissing the beginning as slow and the characters as poorly developed. I enjoyed Witch House (and no doubt have cheap paperback copies laying around.) A collection of some short pieces appeared recently as Above Ker-Is and Other Stories and Sword is Forged started a trilogy about Theseus that I think was never completed. Fine writer with a historical bent - only Witch House would really be considered "weird."

Here http://www.evangelinewalton.com/ is an Evangeline Walton page with some information on forthcoming and recent publications. The well-known Tolkien scholar and fantasy editor Douglas A. Anderson is working with Walton's estate to bring to light some of the best of the many unpublished works she left behind.

As it happens, I just recently acquired a copy of Witch House. I may try to squeeze it into my queue and read along.

Thanks for the info, everyone. I'm intrigued enough to at least consider that Centipede edition.

> 8
Oops, I was thinking the group was reading this, but I guess we were just talking about EW.

>10 Crypto-Willobie:

The weekly DEEP ONES short story discussions have been pretty successful, but we haven't attempted a novel to date! Still, if you get to it, I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts on Witch House.

>7 bookstopshere: Bookstopshere, (by the way, what a great user name), I'd say that the stories in ABOVE KER-IS could also be considered weird, and in my opinion they are pretty good.

Walton was not very aggressive about getting published in her lifetime, and so let me assure potential buyers of this book that the unpublished material that Doug Anderson is bringing out is not dregs from the vaults, but actually quite worthwhile.

Tachyon has published She Walks in Darkness a previously unpublished Gothic and, based on the introduction, it sounds like more is on the way.

>13 agmlll:

I liked the production on the Centipede edition, but the overall story, featuring what amounts to a more romantically-inclined John Silence/John Thunderstone-type, goes on a bit too long. The cursed family's background which provides the fulcrum for the ongoing events involving a child under supernatural attack is pretty inspired, though. I've enjoyed a couple of Walton short stories I've read recently very much. Might have to look for one of those Tachyon editions.