By Rjurik Davidson

I'd not heard of Rjurik Davidson before coming across 'The Library Of Forgotten Books' but what little I had managed to glean from the press release and a bit of web research meant I knew couldn't afford to ignore him. This volume of six short stories is essentially a showcase of his work brought to you by the awfully nice folk at PS Publishing. The opening two stories, 'The Cinema of Coming Attractions' and 'Int. Morgue. Night.' have relatively contemporary settings, In the first, a 60's beat-era French coastal resort town is home to a cinema running newsreels that give glimpses of the future, and occasionally patrons can see their own future on the screen. Enter a local gang of petty criminals with an ambitious leader, mugging tourists and running crooked three-card monty for a living and a vengeful and corrupt policeman determined to see them gone. Into the mix add an actress who so entrances the gang leader that they both spend too much time in 'The Cinema...' than is healthy for either of them and we end up with a slow-burning noir story that is quiet in tone and both engaging and intriguing, a really fresh start to proceedings.

The second tale is a hard-boiled private-eye story set in an alternate-history Melbourne, a dark and massively sprawling city in a version of 1951 Australia where a huge inland sea has made it one of the worlds great superpowers. Post World War II and the allies are searching for communist spies to head off a war with China. Against this backdrop our sleuth searches for the men who murdered his Chinese lover and we find ourselves drawn into a dystopian cold war thriller, laced with crooks and crooked officials amidst a broody atmosphere of suspicion and intrigue. Both of these short stories stand alone and both are an excellent introduction to Davidson's writing style but it is in the next four stories, Tales Of Caeli-Amur, that things really come to life.

The first is 'Lovers of Caeli-Amur' and features the philosopher-assassin Anton Moreau, a renowned gratificationist - he lives his life purely for pleasure - and long-term hire of the House Arbour, one of the great Houses of the city. Anton seduces a young woman at a House Arbour ball who turns out to be his employers wife. Despite the obvious danger to his health, Anton embarks on a torrid affair with her, but when her husband suspects that she is having an affair with someone from rival House Technis and they are stealing business secrets from him, he tasks Anton with finding the lover putting them both in the middle of an unwinable situation. This is superb story telling; the characters are nicely drawn and distinct, the ideas are fresh, I particularly liked the idea of a philosopher/assassin/gratificationist and the plot twists and turns, relentlessly putting the knife into our erstwhile hero right up to the terrific and unexpected ending while at the same time building a lush world that we want to spend more time in. First class.

Following on is the shortest of the four Caeli-Amur stories 'Twilight in Caeli-Amur' and concerns a young thaumaturgist sent to recover the notebooks that belonged to a long-since-dead and supremely talented predecessor so that others may study them and hopefully learn some of the things he discovered. When he gets to the dusty and decaying house he finds the widow living there alone and she insists on giving him a tour of the place before handing the books over. This is a tight short story, concise and clever and easily holding the attention until another neat ending and building on top of what we know of Caeli-Amur society and science.

The third of the four is 'The Passing Of The Minotaurs', a slightly disturbing tale of Minotaurs returning to the city after a decade away to help celebrate The Festival Of The Bull. Feted as Gods by some and protected from harm by city laws, they expect to drink and party and have a good time and Kata, a young woman working in a local bar, sees in them a way of extricating herself from a long-term debt and out of the thrall of House Technis. This is the quiet horror story in the bunch, powerful and a little disquieting that uncovers a whole new layer of Caeli-Amur treachery and betrayal. if you're interested to know more, The Passing Of The Minotaurs can be read online here.

The last of the bunch is 'Lost In The Library Of Forgotten Books' and is set outside of Caeli-Amur, in a town called Varenis where books classified as 'aesthetically bereft, unreadable' are gathered by the local authorities and hoarded away in the Library where they, and their authors, will fade away and be forgotten. To be sure they never again see the light of day, the library is patrolled by The Guardians, ghostly apparitions that stop the books from being read. One day, a young librarian, Alisa, who feels sorry for the authors and their books and harbours ambitions to publish books one day, is engaged in conversation by one of the Guardians who shows her a secret place in the building and encourages her to visit often and read the book it contains telling her it can unlock a doorway to anywhere she wants to go. Reading it inevitably leads to revelations in her personal and work life and we get another twisting, turning story leading to very satisfying conclusion.

It may be short, less than 200 pages total, but this is an excellent collection and well worth the investment. If there is a thread that runs through each story, it concerns love and the troubles we all have with it whether trapped by it, searching for it or desperate to get away from it, but there is also a recurring theme of layers and of things hidden beneath layers, whether it is feelings, or personality, or bureaucracy or relationships, each has multiple layers and we reveal or cover them to suit. Each of these stories is worth reading but in particular the world of Caeli-Amur, intriguing and very absorbing does stand out and I'm hoping to see some full length works in that world very soon.

The Library Of Forgotten Books is published by PS Publishing and is available directly from their website.

No surprise that Rjurik Davidson has a blog.