Showing Posts From
This door of the sea
Author: Val McDermidPage Count: UnknownPublication Date: Expected publication 2026 APL The crisp September air smells faintly of decaying oak leaves and the roasted hazelnuts I bought from the cart on the corner. I wrapped my woolen scarf twice around my neck before sitting down at the antique cedar desk to examine the preliminary buzz surrounding Val McDermid and Jo Sharp’s upcoming collaboration, This Door of the Seas. And what a fascinating, albeit thinly outlined, premise we have here. The Weight of Ancient Missteps At the end of the seventeenth century, a hopeful band of Scots dared to dream of empire. They looked toward the jungle-choked coast of Panama, envisioning a bustling trade hub that would rival the ambitions of larger nations. Yet, history tells us how that grand ambition curdled into the catastrophic Darien Scheme—an ill-fated colonial venture that bankrupted an entire populace. McDermid and Sharp frame this tragedy through an epistolary lens, relying on the fictionalized dispatches of expedition scientist Dr. James Wallace. Letters home to a spouse and a Geographer Royal. It is a classic narrative architecture. Epistolary formats require an immense amount of emotional heavy lifting to sustain tension across vast geographical distances. Can a series of written missives truly capture the suffocating humidity of a Central American jungle while maintaining a steady pulse of dramatic irony? I certainly hope so. I am endlessly fascinated by how people communicate their vulnerabilities when they are drowning in circumstances entirely beyond their control. Mutual vulnerability is the bedrock of any enduring bond, after all—whether in a doomed colonial outpost or in a modern partnership where one partner refuses to communicate about their career anxieties. On Structural Fragility Actually, scrap that line of reasoning. The epistolary device is entirely overdone. It feels like a stylistic crutch rather than an organic narrative choice, reminiscent of those insufferable historical dramas where characters constantly narrate their inner turmoils via quill and parchment just so the reader doesn't have to work for their exposition. Wait. Let me rephrase that. The epistolary format is actually brilliant for this specific kind of isolation. Speaking of isolation, my neighbor has been practicing the bass guitar in the apartment above mine for three straight hours, hitting the exact same four-note funk riff with the rhythmic precision of a leaking faucet, and frankly, it is testing my capacity for human grace far more than any seventeenth-century Scottish economic ruin ever could. Why do people insist on inflicting their half-formed artistic projects on the rest of the building? At least McDermid has the decency to collaborate with a literal Geographer Royal, ensuring the historical topography won't read like a badly researched Wikipedia entry. Anticipating the Aftermath Readers should expect something akin to Amitav Ghosh’s sweeping historical critiques or James Robertson’s meticulous explorations of Scottish identity. The synopsis leans heavily on the buzzwords of epic historical fiction—betrayal, anguish, a dream turning into a nightmare. It is a bit generic, I must admit. Publishers love to slap a dramatic quote from Chris Brookmyre on the cover and call it a day, leaving us to guess whether the prose will actually match the grandeur of the historical collapse. But given McDermid’s sharp psychological acuity and Sharp’s geographic expertise, the interpersonal dynamics buried beneath the geopolitical disaster will likely provide the real emotional anchor. Drafting this review with my poorly insulated window rattling against the autumn gusts is making it utterly impossible to type a coherent closing thought.