A.M. Blackmere has said mere violence and gore are not what make something truly terrifying. Rather, it is the quiet disintegration of one’s mental frames of reference and psychological coherence that make something truly horrifying and scary. I would say this is completely correct. Especially in the writings of Blackmere.
Shadows of the Wall is the story of Aelius Corven, an officer on Hadrian’s Wall in the final days of the Roman Empire’s presence in Britain. Haunted by the loss of his own family, he has to wrestle with the reality the Empire is simply leeching away and the Picts are beginning to bring their own mark to a world that has not changed for over 300 years. Corven finds himself north of the wall among the very people of whom his men have long thought bogeymen of unadulterated evil and chaos.
The story can be a bit slow compared to more overtly violent and action-focused horror stories, but that is the plus for Shadows of the Wall. There is violence. After all, the story centres on a fort of soldiers who remain in conflict. However, the violence is not the reason for the horror. That reaches far more deeply into the spirit of the characters themselves, as well as the world in which they work out their own survival. The mental aspect of the characters, most especially Corven himself, is what brings the crawling fear to the reader.
The world itself, imbued with an almost sentient nature, becomes something to be feared in contrast with the security of the Roman world and its identity bestowed upon those who embrace the Empire. However, even those who cling tenaciously to their identities as soldiers of Rome recognise the security in such categories has gone. Some react with a desire to go out in a blaze of glory, while others cling to crutches like useless ossuaries of the past. Corven has no such luxuries.
Every element is brought to highlight the horror as viewed from the perspective of Corven and those around him. Mist is no longer simply a mist, but something imbued with haunting menace. The Picts, considered by the Romans a fearful and vicious people, are imbued with a relentless inevitability that rolls right over the false and failing safety nets of a world in decline.
Blackmere weaves a syrupy, miasmic horror which draws you in and suffocates you in the same mists in which Corven finds himself lost, seeing the past return and harrow his sense of self. The scenes, the world, the mystery, are all enhanced by a careful pacing which avoids gaudy explosions of gore. This is a measured, stable decent into the horror of what once was but is now a foetid corpse. The fear, the creeping fingers of death, is palpable and leaves an aftertaste.
While Shadows of the Wall does explode into action at some point, that is not the main focus of the book. The reader is invited to walk with Corven, and, in some ways, become Corven. Blackmere asks us to imagine the hard-to-feel - the decline and disintegration of everything we have known and found our security in.
What would you do if you were a legionary on Hadrian’s Wall, left after Rome and retreated back to mainland Europe?
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