By Anthony Nanson
Chrissy Derbyshire is a master of style – lyrical and accessible, archly ironic, and yet at the same time charged with the sensual feyness of Faerie. The eight stories in Mysteries take tropes from myth and fairy tale and animate them, through the alembic of lived experience, with a potent contemporary spark. The ten poems also included in this collection do the same, in a more focused epiphanic way. In the literary cosmos, Chrissy’s work fits somewhere between Tanith Lee, only with more sense of humour, and Storm Constantine, only more lyrical. Ten years after this book’s first publication, Awen is pleased to release a second edition, including an additional story and three extra poems, with a foreword by fantasy author Kim Huggens and stunning cover art by Tom Brown. You can order Mysteries, like all our books, from the website.
Here’s the information from the back of the book:
This enchanting and exquisitely crafted collection by Chrissy Derbyshire will whet your appetite for more from this superbly talented wordsmith. Her short stories interlaced with poems depict chimeras, femmes fatales, mountebanks, absinthe addicts, changelings, derelict warlocks, and persons foolhardy enough to stray into the beguiling world of Faerie. Let the sirens’ song seduce you into the Underworld.
‘All of the pieces in Mysteries are entertaining. But they also speak twice. Each one has layers of meaning that touch on the ultimate that cannot be put into words and speak to our inner landscapes that are so full of desire for meaning. Chrissy’s journey, elaborately retold in the arena of mythology, is our own journey.’ Kim Huggens