It's also been plausibly suggested that the story is better appreciated if it's just experienced on its own terms, letting oneself go with the flow of the narrative and language, rather than made to stand detailed analysis. (Some references, like the idea of the Ship of the Dead and Odin's role as psychopomp, are new to me, but that's because I'm not as erudite in the lore as the author clearly is.) Indeed, the world view of the story seems more cast in terms of Viking myth, conceived as real, than in Christian terms, though there's some Christian terminology too.) A quibble that could be made is that the ending -and no spoilers here!- depends on a deus ex machina (literally) but not all readers may take it that way. Here she also draws on a serious background of Viking mythology, with references to Odin's hanging on the world-tree Yggdrasil for 9 days (derived from the Old Norse poen "Havamni," or "Sayings of the High One" -it doesn't specify Yggdrasil as the tree, but scholars agree that's what is meant), his eight-legged steed Sleipnir, the malevolence of Loki, Odin's association with rune-craft. The story is difficult to discuss without spoilers.Ĭappa's prose here is beautiful, appealing wonderfully to the senses considered strictly in terms of style, she writes with a grace and felicity pretty much unequaled among other contemporary writers since Tanith Lee's untimely death. This will be, to put it mildly, a very unconventional consultation, which builds up to an extremely surprising ending. (According to Wikipedia, the latter actually did survive, in the parts of Europe settled by the Germanic/Scandinavian peoples, into the 19th century.) In this story, she's visited early on by a seafaring man who wants her to read the runes for him. Title character Hildie is an aged woman who weaves fine lace but she's also a widely known reader of runes, inscribed on smooth stones for purposes of divination, a practice handed down from the Vikings, as is the folk veneration of Odin. Our setting here is a village on the North Sea coast of Flanders (the titular "ghost shore") in what is probably the 19th century -no date is specified, but the material culture and social conditions have that feel. (Frankly, I often question the desirability of attaching "ratings" to reviews I reviewed books for serious journals, and read reviews in the same venues, for many years without ever encountering the practice or feeling any need for it.)
It definitely deserves a review, but I ultimately decided not to rate it. Eventually, I read it a second time, with the benefit of some gracious explanation by the author as to the underlying premise. But the review proved challenging to write it's a tale with a great deal of ambiguity and many unanswered questions. Originally, I'd proposed to review it a few days ago. This short e-story, written by one of my Goodreads friends, is one I picked up when it was offered for free. Paula Cappa is Co-Chair of the Pound Ridge Authors Society in Pound Ridge, NY. She is a freelance copy editor and writes a short story blog, Reading Fiction, at. Cappa’s short fiction has appeared in ParABnormal Magazine, Coffin Bell Literary Journal, Unfading Daydream, Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine, Whistling Shade Literary Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, Sirens Call Ezine, Every Day Fiction, Fiction365, Twilight Times Ezine, and in anthologies Journals of Horror: Found Fiction, Mystery Time, and Human Writes Literary Journal. Night Sea Journey was featured as an on-air reading at Riverwest Radio, Fearless Reader Radio in Wisconsin. She is the author of Greylock, The Dazzling Darkness, and Night Sea Journey-print editions published by Crispin Books, Milwaukee WI.
She also earned the prestigious Eric Hoffer Book Award, The Silver Medal at Global Book Awards, The Readers' Favorite International Bronze Medal for Supernatural Suspense, and is a Gothic Readers Book Club Award Winner in Outstanding Fiction. Paula Cappa is the recipient of the Gold Medal at Global Book Awards, the Chanticleer Book Award, and American Book Fest’s Best Books Award Finalist for her novel Greylock.
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