This was a decent, fairly short story, written as a poem. It reminded me of
The Old Man in the Sea
by Hemingway, another novella that I didn’t care for. I don’t think I’d
call it a fantasy but it does have unreal elements and characters. The
story is told by the Ancient Mariner, who is recounting the tale to
someone attending a wedding. He once was a sailor in the Antarctic and
an albatross appeared and lead the ship to safety away from the ice.
This mariner however had a crossbow, he shot down the albatross; the
crew was mad at him, so he’s forced to wear the dead bird around his
neck as a reminder. Sometime later, another ship comes into sight with
Death and a woman (Life-in-Death) aboard; they are playing dice for the
lives of the crew. Death wins the crew and the woman wins the Mariner.
Eventually he gets home, but is un-dead and he has to live forevermore
to recount his tale to others to make them wiser. Overall is was kind of
weird to me, but made me think of other stories I’ve read that I liked
better such as Beowulf, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and The Call of Cthulhu.
This is out of copyright and is freely available online; I read it at
the Poetry Foundation’s website but they did not have the images or side
notes to summarize what was happening in each segment of the poem, like
the hard copy does. If you are into reading old classics of literature
and or poetry, this may be of interest.
[ Wikipedia page for
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner including links to online versions of the story ] | [
Samuel Taylor Coleridge page at Brittanica.com ]
Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
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