Tuesday, January 19, 2016

#262 A Lunar Labyrinth- Neil Gaiman



#262 A Lunar Labyrinth- Neil Gaiman

In the introduction to his newest short story collection Trigger Warning, Neil Gaiman calls triggers: “those images or words or ideas that drop like trapdoors beneath us, throwing us out of our safe, sane world into a place much more dark, and less welcoming. Our hearts skip a ratatat drumbeat in our chests, and we fights for breath. Blood retreats from our faces and our fingers, leaving us pale and gasping and shocked.”

This is the legendary story telling of Neil Gaiman. A Lunar Labyrinth is an homage to a Gene Wolfe short story relatedly titled A Solar Labyrinth. A man traveling loves to visit local oddities, roadside attractions, or kitschy things people make. When he comes to visit the Lunar Labyrinth he learns that is has been burned down.

He still takes the tour to visit the site, learning of the people that used to walk the labyrinth by the light of the moon. “When the moon waned, they walked the lunar labyrinth with love…As it waxed they walked with desire…”

The rosemary bushes (for remembering) has started to grow back along the path of the maze. It still retains it’s power and mystique: “There is no killing some things.”

This is a beautiful start to this collection. It has all the magic and imagination you would expect from Gaiman.





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