Plantation Pan: Eddie Generous
Reviewed By Steve Stred
Billed as a sequel to Arthur Machen’s classic book ‘The Great God Pan,’ Eddie Generous takes that thought and completely runs with it.
Last year, I dove into The Great God Pan and while the bare bones of the mythology was fantastic, the story itself, I found boring and slow as molasses. At first, I was a bit hesitant to take this on, but Eddie has always been supportive of me and Omnium Gatherum puts out some amazing stuff – so I decided to take the journey and boy was I glad I did.
KR: You can read the Kendall Review for The Great God Pan HERE
Generous weaves three different stories together to come to a stunning finale in ‘Plantation Pan.’ The main story or main narrative is set in the future. Earth became uninhabitable – pollution and construction making it so that humans had to leave and form living pods in outer space. Each of these new living spaces are referred to as Plantations – new places for food and life. We then get introduced to a worker who is tasked with returning to Earth or Plantation Earth. Things have progressed to the point that the surface may be habitable again.
The second story we are introduced to is regarding a doctor and a homeless girl. The homeless girl sees the doctor frequenting areas with prostitutes, so when he approaches her, she is guarded. Soon, she discovers he is looking for a housekeeper. Someone to attend to the daily chores and prepare food while he hides in his laboratory and tries to unlock the secrets stored within an ancient tome.
The third narrative that Generous weaves into here is the journal of a man who has come to the end of the road. He is leaving bits and pieces for his estranged wife. For the most part I actually hated these little interludes, but I knew they were going somewhere, so I made sure to keep a keen eye when they popped up.
Generous does a great job of creating interpersonal drama with a small cast, while also keeping a prolonged sense of dread along the way. We know things won’t go well once they return to Earth, but why? He keeps that guarded until the very end.
The ending to this thing is stunning and when all three of the storylines connect and you see what Eddie has pulled off, you’ll be smiling from ear to ear. Just a deft piece of writing and a masterwork of plotting out details.
If you’ve not read ‘… Pan,’ I wouldn’t worry too much. Generous fills in the back details and frankly, you may be better off having not read it, as the glacier pace and narrative-based story that Machen told may turn you away from this.
But I highly, highly recommend this.
Generous completely delivered with this one. This will be on my end of year best list easily. Just so good.
Plantation Pan
A cosmic horror and science fiction sequel to Arthur Machen’s masterpiece, The Great God Pan.
Centuries after Earth has become uninhabitable, the planet has rejuvenated. The Union, the organization governing the diaspora, sends a team to the mother planet with hopes of resuming life on the homeland.
For months, activity on Plantation Earth has been irregular and The Union has been receiving strange transmissions, until finally, they’ve lost contact altogether.
The Union recruits Lay Watt to be a member of the second team to go the planet’s surface. Lay finds that the close-knit crew considers her an outsider. This is a dangerous state of affairs as the team wades through humanity’s ruins to seek out the ancient source of the current disaster. As they explore, a figure on the periphery of their dreams stalks the edges of their reality and threatens to destroy all they know to be true.
You can buy Plantation Pan from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Steve Stred
Steve Stred writes dark, bleak horror fiction.
Steve is the author of three novels, a number of novellas and four collections.
He is proud to work with the Ladies of Horror Fiction to facilitate the Annual LOHF Writers Grant.
Steve is also a voracious reader, reviewing everything he reads and submitting the majority of his reviews to be featured on Kendall Reviews.
Steve Stred is based in Edmonton, AB, Canada and lives with his wife, his son and their dog OJ.
You can follow Steve on Twitter @stevestred
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You can visit Steve’s Official website here
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