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Carthage Scunthorpe is the narrator for both of the provided stories, as Whitaker states in his preface. He seems to be a caricatured crusty sailor, one who apparently has a collection of random stuff that represents his adventures. I am guessing that each story is meant to be connected to something from Scunthorpe's collection, though this is far from clear in the stories I read. I suppose the titles indicate the objects around which the stories are being related, but I expected these objects to then be a bit more important to the stories.
In "The Map in the Bottle", the captain of a soon-to-be sunk ship has a map in a bottle, which turns up again at the end of the story, but at no time in the story did it ever become important. This story ends loosely, and no doubt there is another chapter, or even a whole novella of adventure surrounding the bottle, but as I have only read this very brief story I can't comment on the intentions of the author or the quality of writing of the rest of this longer tale that may be forthcoming. As is, I found the ending dull, and was not interested in what happened to the characters, let alone the bottle.
In "Nettleweaver" I was even less enthused. First, how does one weave nettles? Are they the actual seed pods with the spines, or is the old woman weaving the plant stalks on which the nettle pods remain? If they are woven into a sweater that Scunthorpe receives from her, can't he tell just by looking at it whether it has lumps where nettles are woven into it? And, what would be the point in an old woman weaving such a shirt, naked or not? I'm sure this scene is drawing on some particular superstitions, but they are never addressed in the story, leaving it a rather flat tale. I'm guessing that Scunthorpe has this shirt the woman gave him as part of his collection, but so what?
Added to these complaints, I also found Whitaker's writing unenticingly lacking in style. His stories need to be better paragraphed, and especially if he is telling readers to leave good reviews if they liked his stories and to go away otherwise, a very confrontational statement with which to end a manuscript, his writing needs to justify such arrogance. His book title has such lovely lettering, and promises such an entertaining, well-crafted book that the dull, uninspired writing feels especially frustrating, even before one reads the bit tacked on at the end telling unsatisfied readers to go away.
So, while there is certainly a lot of promise in Simon Whitaker's Carthage Scunthorpe project, I could not rate what I read very highly. I think Whitaker might do better with at least the map in the bottle tale if he writes a longer-format narrative, a novella perhaps, where his writing style might be more effective. There is certainly enough promise for his stories to be worth a second read once this project is more complete, but as is I gave this book a 2 out of 4 stars rating. I'd probably go for 1.6 stars if fractional stars were an option, but rounding down to a 1 seems too harsh for this book, even with its problems.
***
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