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Revenge of the Old Gods

Author: Tim McGregor

In the chapel of a lonesome fishing village, the bones of a monster hang over the beleaguered worshipers. In this place, the chapel is not popular, and the tithes that keep the priest and his children alive rarely come in. The villagers themselves are hardly doing better, eking out an existence at the behest of the tremulous waves. They think their luck has changed, however, when a luremaid (mermaid) appears offshore one day, and the men of the town decide to hunt, capture, and imprison the creature. And their luck does change . . . just not in the way that they had expected.

Lure by Tim McGregor is half folktale, half horror. The luremaids are seen as gods, as descendants of the monster skeleton suspended within the church, but the gods aren’t here to play, and the scaley, vicious creature seems to loath men and mind-control women. What unfolds is a bizarre fever dream of revenge and longing, told through the perspective of one of the priest’s children, Kaspar, who sees the despair of the village women and longs to be able to help. His help, however, is not enough . . . or perhaps it is exactly enough to propel the mermaid’s vision of brine and blood to fruition.

We’re accustomed to seeing mermaids as either luscious sirens, using sexuality and song to lure men to their deaths, or otherwise as innocent maidens, Disney style. What McGregor gives us is something entirely different. This mermaid has clawed, webbed hands, sharp scales that cut anyone who touches her, and green, sea-weed hair. She does not communicate, but she is deeply sentient, looking out of reptilian eyes, and she is evidently on a mysterious mission. Whether she is a god or creature, or something in between, is left to the missing notes of legend, and the ignorant, cruel townsfolk engineer their own destruction.

The mermaid is also unstoppable, a killing machine that churns the grey oceans into foamy red, mutilated limbs of brave seamen floating onto shore. Her horror is both psychological and deeply physical, and as the story progresses, the folk tale element comes into play as sea creatures join the mermaid’s assault.

Adding to the atmosphere and horror, we have Kaspar. His mother is dead, and his is sister promised to wed to a man she hates, instead of her longtime suitor. His father is broken, having lost his faith and his hope. And Kaspar’s love – she’s been forced into a brutal marriage where she is beaten and mistreated. In this constant misery, Kaspar grows from a boy into a man, and he is intimidated. Every move he makes to help is one of innocence and ignorance, making the situation go from bad to worse. But there is a certain humanity in him. He is the only man in the story with a heart, the only man who sees women’s suffering, even though it is also through his own lens of having lost the woman he wanted to marry.

With the horror and imagination going strong and Kaspar having drawn us into his own warring emotions, we have both heart and viscera. We’re ready for the end to come to fruition, and we know it won’t be happy . . . although we do see Kaspar starting to take a more active stand against the brutality of the men around him.

That’s when we get the final reveal about the mermaid’s full plot, and this is where the novel escapes into a Lovecraftian type ending that doesn’t entirely make sense. What does it mean? What is the message here, especially with Kaspar’s fate? Is there a message, or just a story of sadness and weirdness carved against a brutal, ancient feeling background? Was the mermaid a god? Was she there to avenge the women, or was she simply a creature of the sea, like the ancient bones, who ran across an isolated people and did her thing? This was the only point in Lure where I wanted the narrative to slow and be explicit. The dreamy, old-timey bloodbath story element worked until then, but as the last page rustled closed, I was at a loss. What did it all mean? Why did Kaspar end as he did? What was the message, if there was one, and where did it all go from there?

Still, despite being dissatisfied with the ending, Lure was so atmospheric and original that I will have to return to reading more of Tim McGregor’s stories. Recommended.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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