"We're All Monsters...One Way or Another." - A Review of Winter Tide

Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Since last year, I have noticed something interesting going on in the world of speculative fiction, and the way it approaches H.P. Lovecraft and his oeuvre. As I point out in my review of Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country, it seems that there’s been a sea change in the way writers approach the Cthulhu Mythos: instead of remaining silent upon Lovecraft’s racism, misogyny, and classism, all of which are deeply embedded in his oeuvre, writers are, instead, using that same oeuvre to question and criticise Lovecraft’s disgusting politics.

I am glad to say that the trend continues with Ruthanna Emrys’ Winter Tide, the first book in The Innsmouth Legacy series. In 1928, the town of Innsmouth was destroyed by government forces, its surviving residents interred in desert camps far away from all they know. Amongst those survivors were Aphra and Caleb Marsh, who managed to survive the harshness of their desert interment and left the camps at the end of World War II, facing an uncertain future now that the only home they’ve ever known is gone for good.

( Read more... )