Ruthanna Emrys joins contemporary authors such as Kij Johnson, Victor LaValle and Matt Ruff in taking up the ideas and storylines of H.P. Lovecraft’s tales of cosmic horror, looking at them with twenty-first-century eyes and writing tales that wind up in very different places. Who would worship the inhuman and often malevolent gods from Lovecraft’s stories? What kind of people consort with what appear to be monsters?
Emrys gave partial answers to these questions in her novella, The Litany of Earth, which I would recommend reading before embarking on Winter Tide. Not only does Litany introduce the most important characters of Winter Tide and give crucial background, it sets the tone of the novel that follows. Readers who enjoy Litany will almost certainly like the longer and deeper treatment that Emrys provides in Winter Tide.
Aphra Marsh, the protagonist of both stories, is one of the few survivors from Innsmouth, a town on the New England coast that was raided by the federal government in 1928. In Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the town’s inhabitants are depraved cultists who consort with loathsome beings who live in the sea but dream of conquering humanity. Using Prohibition enforcement raids as a cover story, the feds attack the town, killing many and sending the rest to internment camps. Aphra was a child at the time of the raids, and she grew up in the deserts of the southwest, far from the ocean that her people needed to live. She watched their numbers dwindle. By the time that Japanese-American internees arrive at the camp in 1942, the guards had practically forgotten why the Innsmouth people were confined. Aphra and her younger brother Caleb are taken in by the Koto family who enable them to survive the next few years. When the Japanese-Americans are released at the end of the war, the Marsh siblings leave with the Kotos. In The Litany of Earth, Aphra is living in San Francisco with the Kotos and working in a bookstore. Caleb has returned to the area of Innsmouth and is off-stage for most of that story. Over the course of the novella, she forms an uneasy alliance with an FBI agent named Ron Spector.
Winter Tide begins in September 1948 with Aphra and Charlie Day, the owner of the bookstore where she works, going through an estate and finding more esoteric books than they had any reason to expect. In Litany, Aphra had begun to teach Charlie magic and some of the rituals of her people. In Winter Tide she shares with him the rite that gives the book its title, an opening to the sea and the wider world, cast at the solstice. Soon after, they receive another unwelcome visit from agent Spector. The Cold War is getting chillier — the Soviet blockade of West Berlin began in June 1948 at the time of the story’s action, only the airlift is keeping the city fed and heated — and the FBI has reason to believe that a Russian who was at Miskatonic University was trying to learn magic that allows someone to take possession of another person’s body. That could give the Soviets unprecedented and unstoppable access to America’s top leadership. Aphra knows that this magic exists, and while it is deeply taboo among her people, the aeon-spanning Yith use it almost routinely in their role as recorders of all of earth’s ages.
Spector proposes that Aphra come to Miskatonic with him to find out what is in the university’s archives, and what the Russian might have learned. Aphra knows that all of the books — priceless family relics, many of them — taken during the Innsmouth raid are lodged at Miskatonic. Gaining access to them is a large part of what Caleb was trying to do when he returned to New England. The offer is tempting, and furthermore it’s not one that she can really refuse. The rest of Winter Tide is about trying to answer those questions as various things and people get in the way. What is known about the magic? What is in the books at Miskatonic? What might the Russian have learned? What can be done to protect people? Who counts as “people” and what do they mean by “protect”?
Aphra convinces Spector to bring Charlie and her adoptive sister Neko along on the mission — Charlie for his knowledge of the esoteric languages, and Neko to serve as secretary to the group. Once at Miskatonic, they ally with the university’s first woman professor, Catherine Trumbull, who teaches higher mathematics and harbors secrets of heir own. Their paths cross with numerous students, some of whose antics and curiosity cause problems for all concerned. Soon it becomes apparent that Spector is not the only FBI agent on the scene, and the methods pursued by George Barlow’s team are both more direct and potentially more destructive. Finally, Aphra and Caleb make contact with their relatives among the Deep Ones who live offshore from the ruins of Innsmouth. They have their own views about whether helping the Americans is a good idea.
Winter Tide reveals more about the members of its ensemble cast, giving particular depth to Aphra, Charlie and Caleb. Readers experience how magic works in the traditions of Aphra’s people, and how other practitioners do different things with similar ideas. Emrys shows the collision of interests between individuals who believe they are doing what they must to protect their peoples, and the desperate search for solutions by people whose survival depends on bridging those gaps, on finding creative ways to avert or at least minimize any collision. There are lighter moments — Emrys captures the boisterousness of the college aged, and at one point (p. 343) Turnbull riffs on a famous mathematical statement by Fermat — but on the whole Winter Tide is a tense and serious story. It was also one where I felt a conflict between the needs of the tale and the needs of the publisher to have a 370-page book. At times the investigators seemed to be spinning their wheels, and I would have preferred tighter, shorter storytelling. The ending, though, is strong and effective, with some conflicts resolved, others put into abeyance, and many prices paid.
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire