Miss Wildthyme Investigates

I had to make a handful of long train journeys earlier in the week.  To some, that would maybe cause a bit of trepidation.  For me, my mind goes mathematic: a lot of time + a lot of train travel = a lot of time to read books.  Given how much I had enjoyed the previous two Iris Wildthyme collections from Obverse Books, I figured that it would be the perfect read when shooting up from Lancing to Norwich: lots of small stories and plenty of time to dip in and out between stops.

     In the second instance, this did not happen as I had read the entire thing by the time I was approaching Peterborough, such was my enjoyment of the collection.  In the first instance, there were not, as before, lots of short stories, but just four of them instead, each approaching fifty pages in length.  This, then, was to prove itself to be a very different beast to the first two anthologies.

     The four stories are all connected by a mysterious perfume bottle, but despite that common connection, they are as different as you can get.

     The first, 'The Found World', takes characters from the world of Sherlock Holmes and throws in a dash of Molly Malone and dinosaurs finding themselves in existence because (to simplify it all) people believe in them.  It's a good introduction to the collection, a solid story that bubbles over with good ideas whilst moving along at a cracking pace.  I would perhaps have liked to hear more from Iris Wildthyme herself, who is restricted to cameo appearances for most of the first three stories, but when she does appear it's gold so no real complaints here.

     We then move onto 'The Irredeemable Love', a story which was heartbreakingly sad and haunting at times, enough to make me have to stop between chapters to clear my head.  It takes good writing to get you involved but excellent writing to move you, so all credit must go to Nick Wallace for doing just that.  At once haunting and tragic, I suspect the story will divide people as it is very emotionally draining (or perhaps that's just me?), especially given the relative hijinks in the last story featuring the Manleigh Halt Irregulars ('The Delightful Bag' in The Panda Book of Horror), but for this reader at least, it worked exceedingly well.  In fact, if there was any criticism, it's that I didn't think Iris needed to feature at all, which says a lot about how successful the story was on its own merits.

     Next up are Mexican shenanigans in 'Elementary, my dear Sheila'.  Shelia herself is a wonderful character, we see the return of Señor 105 from Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus, and we get a story with detachable limbs, murder and The Very Hungry Caterpillar: what more can one possibly desire?  It provides both a total contrast in tone with the preceding story whilst also setting up the light ambience of the final story in the collection.  Again, I found Iris's presence fine but unnecessary to some extent, though it sets up the final story very well indeed and leaves the door open for future adventures to come.  So long as we see these adventures, I'm putting this down as another success and another thumbs up.  If we don't, then it's still bloody good.

     We finish with Iris (and Panda, of course, everyone's favourite sentient stuffed panda) taking the spotlight in Stuart Douglas's 'The Shape of Things', which wraps up the hanging plot threads very nicely whilst also hinting at future developments for the range-- who is Panda? Will we see Iris regenerate? I am looking forward to finding out.  Panda and Iris are both as well written as they have ever been, their dialogue sparking off each other.  Indeed, some of the conversations on the bus actually making me laugh aloud, much to the annoyance of my fellow passengers.  'The Shape of Things' ends the collection very nicely whilst also whetting my appetite for future Obverse releases.

     So there we have it.  Three Iris Wildthyme collections so far, all of which have been to an incredibly high standard.  There was a review quoted a while back claiming how reading Iris Wildthyme stories is like rediscovering Doctor Who all over again, or words to that effect, and I can't help but nod in agreement.  Clever, funny, imaginative, endless with its possibilities for stories and moods, Iris Wildthyme as a concept is at once the equal of Doctor Who and its superior, being free of the circumscribing "rules of time" which bind the good Doctor, often with smashing through them with a drunken wink and cheery wave.  It gives us all a boundless range in which to explore, and Obverse Books pulls no punches in doing just that.  Superb.