“Windleroot was permanently a wasps’ nest of rumour and scandal. Gobbets of gossip continually dripped from the awnings of the establishments in Lowe Street. An innocent remark made at the top end became a slanderous accusation by the time it arrived at the horse trough at the bottom. Making the most trivial observation about anyone in the town was like playing hopscotch in a minefield.”
Gordon Strong follows his recent fiction, Doorway into Darkness, with a new novel, Windleroot, which on the surface is a wild tale full of verve and intrique. As an author of serious works on the Arthurian Legends, the Tarot, the Qabalah and Ritual Magic, Strong creates provocative esoteric parallels within the trappings of his fiction and it is up to the reader to deduce any secondary meanings or simply enjoy the story in its own right.
Dick Symes leads a cast of Dickensian characters in this rollicking magic-tinged tale. After cavorting with strange beings from the 27th Dimension and inheriting an empowering object, the hero leads a campy caper to the town of Windleroot and its various peculiar environs such as the Nob, the Isle of Teflon, and the Crumpled Horn. Gordon Strong, a multifarious author, delivers a sumptuous modern phantasmagoria full of dithering magi, musty grimoires, chortling gods and dodgy magic – sprinkled evenly with wit, irony, allegory and pastiche.
Along with Strong’s craftsmanship readers will enjoy the humour with which he liberally sprinkles his fiction. Of his last novel St. Eve made the following observation, which is equally applicable to Windleroot:
“The humour was a bountiful bouillabaisse composed of a pinch of Tom Sharpe, a smidgen of P.G. Wodehouse and the great baskets of fish heads and herbs, the thick stock and the enticing aromas poured in by Gordon Strong himself. I laughed like a drain at times, as I dipped spoon into bowl and sipped.”
After publishing The Way of Magic and The Sacred Stone Circles of Stanton Drew Skylight Press is pleased to offer Windleroot, a tantalising novel that will show a completely different side to Gordon Strong’s writerly persona.
