Review: The Dark King Swallows the World, by Robert G. Penner

The Dark King Swallows the World
Robert G. Penner
294 pages
Release: October 8, 2024
ISBN 9781998926152
Publisher: Radiant Press

Robert G. Penner lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is represented by John Silbersack of The Bent Agency, a high-profile agent and agency. Penner’s previous novel, Strange Labour, is one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Science Fiction Books of 2020. He is a prolific writer of short fiction under his own name and pseudonyms, and is a former editor at Big Echo, which was a free, online journal of critical science fiction.

Penner’s latest novel, an historical fantasy, releases in October 2024 from Radiant Press.

The marketing blurb:

While isolated and friendless in World War II Cornwall, Nora, a precocious American adolescent, loses her younger half-brother in a car crash. Overwhelmed by grief, Nora’s mother becomes involved with Olaf Winter, the self-professed necromancer Nora believes is responsible for the accident. Desperate to win back her mother’s love from the nefarious Mr. Winter, Nora embarks on an epic journey and is plunged into a world of faeries, giants, and homunculi. Eventually she reaches the land of the dead where she confronts the dark king who rules that realm, attempts to retrieve her half-brother, and heal her mother’s broken heart.

I’m going to review this novel from two perspectives, examining basic plot and style, as well as reliability of research.

Penner’s style is a loose, free-flowing vision, spare on depth of detail and character. He leaves most of the environment and character-building up to the reader. I have noticed this stylistic trend recently, which may be a current literary bent, or may just be lazy writing. Not sure which, if I’m honest. I do have to state it’s not to my taste, preferring the more detailed and evocative styles of writers like McConvey, Ryman, Chinn, Mohamed, and Mehrotra.

The main character in Penner’s novel, Nora, comes across in the early part of the novel as a somewhat spoiled, entitled, selfish individual, which makes it hard to gain any empathy for her, although I will allow that Nora does go through her own coming-of-age, and as a result becomes a far more believable and identifiable character.

Nora’s mother is a flibbertigibbet, her step-father probably the most likeable and tragic character in the story, the remainder either all just peripheral, or stereotypical.

The story arc itself is a somewhat Orphean odyssey on which Nora embarks, a long, dreary trek punctuated periodically by attacks from demonic dogs, and flesh — or zombie — eating homunculi. And when finally Nora meets up with the author of all her woes, the Dark King, it’s a bit Wizard of Oz meets the Night King of the White Walkers. In short, not particularly original, and quite derivative.

For this reviewer, however, the main difficulty I had with the novel was lack of historical credibility, to the point I wondered if Penner had done any research at all regarding WWII England. I must state emphatically that, from my perspective, it’s important for a writer to keep the integrity of the period about which their writing, the science which may be involved, the material and social culture. It’s something about which I bang on over and over again: we have a responsibility as writers to tell the truth, that is, to get our facts right, and to remain true to the culture, the theme, and the characters we create. Fail to do so, and you fail to pass that all-important litmus test every reader experiences: suspension of disbelief. The moment you, as a writer, fail that test, you fail to keep your reader engaged.

So, for me, these were the failed litmus tests:

Commercial trans-Atlantic flights: casual air travel pretty much came to a standstill from Canada and the United States to England and Europe during WWII. So, for Nora and her mother, despite wealth, to have crossed the Atlantic during that time would have been an impossibility. Even commercial ocean travel had ceased because of German U-boat predation.

Throughout Penner’s novel we are met with a very active contingent of men who are artists, poets, the artistic illuminati of London. Even Nora’s stepfather, Charles, is an artist. And all these men are of an age that they would have been under conscription. After September 3, 1939, all men between the ages of 18 and 41 were required to register for service. The only exemptions were those men who were medically unfit, or involved in baking, farming, medicine and engineering. Even then, there were doctors and engineers who were seconded into military service because of their expertise, or who just signed up in order to help in the war effort. So, in Penner’s story, certainly all those artists and writers would not have been present; they would have been conscripted and be off somewhere in Europe.

Rationing: by 1940, the entire country was under rationing. Citizens were issued books of ration cards, which had to be presented before any goods could be purchased. Sugar, meat, fats, bacon and cheese were under rationing, while other goods like tinned food, dried fruit, cereals and biscuits were on a points system. Even milk and eggs were under rationing, with priority being given to children and pregnant women.

A national program undertaken to feed the country was known as Victory Gardens, in which public spaces, even roadside verges, were put under cultivation, and every home-owner or renter with even a modicum of land was encouraged to grow their own veg. Failing to do so came with severe social censure.

As early as 1939, petrol (gasoline) was under severe rationing, thereby curtailing use of automobiles. By 1942 clothes and soap were added to the list, and bread in 1946.

Why do I bring this up? Because in Penner’s wartime England there doesn’t seem to be any rationing of any sort. Bacon and eggs are eaten as a regular thing, cakes seem to be plentiful, as does any type of food. The crowning jewel of this absence of rationing takes place during a fete toward the end of the novel, in what would have been blitz-ravaged London, in which one of the men, who is conspicuously not conscripted, makes pasta with anchovies, capers, and black olives. I’m afraid I burst out laughing at that point. Firstly, the term pasta didn’t come into use outside of Italy until around the 1990s. Prior to that it was referred to as either spaghetti or macaroni, perhaps lasagna, ravioli, or cannelloni if you were a real foodie or liked canned faux Italian food. But the average person: no. And then we have the ingredients of that pasta dish (anchovies, capers, and black olives) which wouldn’t have been available to anyone during WWII unless they were extremely wealthy and had access to all manner of black-market avenues. Even so, fishing in the Mediterranean for anchovies wouldn’t have existed, at least not for export. Capers, another Mediterranean food, would have been difficult to harvest given the war. And olives, well, the major olive groves of Europe are in Spain, Italy, and Greece, and oh, yes, there was a, wait for it, war!

Rationing of petrol doesn’t seem to exist in Penner’s creation. We have people charging off in automobiles and motorcycles at will, without any consideration for how they would have acquired petrol or how much. And what’s more, Penner’s folk drive at night, which brings me to my next point:

Blackout. Right from 1939, the entire country of England was under blackout, which meant all windows had to be covered at night so that no light escaped which could aid enemy bombers. Streetlights were switched off, and vehicle headlights were covered up with only a narrow slit allowing illumination, and generally if you were driving at night, you had better have a good reason or the Blackout Wardens would be on you. Our family has personal knowledge of those wardens, as one of my husband’s aunts was a blackout warden in Gloucester.

And again, I bring up this point of what life was like in England during WWII because one of Penner’s major plot points, the death of Nora’s half-brother during a nighttime vehicle accident, seems to completely disregard the blackout regulation.

There is also another scene in which Nora looks out a window in the house in Cornwall where she’s living and sees the golden glow from the windows of the village. Again, I’m afraid I burst out laughing and commented what a great target that village would have been for any German bombers flying around.

Airfields and military defensive installations in Cornwall: there is no mention whatsoever of the extensive beach defensive equipment deployed not only along Cornwall’s beaches during WWII, but the entire island. There’s also no mention whatsoever of the plethora of airfields there were in Cornwall during that period, of which Cornwall represented only part of the 600 airfields across the entire country. There were also approximately 12 costal gun batteries along the Cornish coast, none of which are mentioned in Penner’s novel.

So, taken as a whole, not what I would call a particularly well-crafted or researched novel. If you don’t care about historical accuracy (although you should, otherwise history is misrepresented and forgotten), or literary spark, if you just want a consumable bit of pulp, by all means knock yourself out. But for me, well, let’s just say I was underwhelmed.