Re-reading Dwellers in the Mirage. Blended Whisky.

A. Merritt‘s Dwellers in the Mirage is a farrago of elements, blending almost perfectly in a heroic fantasy adventure. I wonder, though, if some of the elements are intended to be taken seriously, or if some were included simply because Merritt was having fun, seeing what he could get away with. I mean we’ve got an octopoid malevolent god from beyond the stars (or another dimension, or something) by the name of Khalk’ru. Ring any bells? We have a lost world, a hidden valley in the Alaskan wilderness hidden beneath a mirage-producing layer of geothermal steam. (Or something like that.) We have the Uighers of western China revealed as the degenerate remnant of a proto-Nordic race, whose unmixed bloodline is later encountered in the lost world. (Note such fantastic cognates as Ayjir for Aesir. Yodin for Odin. A gender-swapped Luka for Loki. Etc. It’s like an Easter Egg hunt hidden within the novel.) Then there are Indian myths, most notably the Little People, also encountered with the mirage-concealed valley.

I won’t say that the combination of elements shouldn’t work. Clearly it does, and works well. Much of the best, most entertaining fiction is a combination of disparate influences. Why shouldn’t it work? I had a wonderful time revisiting this book.

Quibbles: I would have liked a bit more of the relationship of Leif and Jim, if only to provide a deeper motivation for Jim’s action and perhaps a greater emotional payoff. The Little People are never explained. Neither are the river serpents, nor the giant leeches (other than a vague suggestion of a Lost World-type continuation of megafauna from a prior epoch, though this is never developed.) Nor is there a reason proposed for the disproportionate number of women or the lessened height of the men. Merritt flings a few strands of explanation against the wall for Khalk’ru, I suppose leaving it up to the reader to see which one sticks. And it is all right. This is a fantasy. We don’t need an explanation for the Witch-woman’s ability to converse with wolves. We don’t need to know the origin of the Rrrllya, nor in what manner the ancient sentience of Dwayanu comes to merge with that of Leif — ancestral memory, reincarnation, etc. It doesn’t matter if the action of the story and the investment in the fate of the characters carries the reader through.

And here it does, going down like a fine, blended whisky. Not everything needs to be a single malt.

There’s nothing wrong with a six-pack, either. Or a four-pack for that matter. Get yours today.

 

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