Haunting, beautiful, and moving.
Creative Staff
Story & Art: Ray Fawkes
What They Say
To catch a glimpse of the Spectral Engine is to face the moment of your own death. In Ray Fawkes’s stunning new book, the Spectral Engine is the unearthly envoy that brings together thirteen historically documented ghost stories—from across the country and throughout the centuries—to tell a timeless narrative of life, death, and redemption. A ghostly white horse is a heartbreaking reminder of the clash between two warring First Nations tribes. Decades after the luxury liner the Empress of Ireland vanishes into the St. Lawrence River, its wreckage continues to claim lives. A hunter’s encounter with the Wendigo of the North leaves him with a terrible hunger. The triumphant completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway brings only tragedy to a Chinese railway worker. And in a poignant story of urban isolation, a young woman discovers that loneliness transcends death. By turns chilling and moving, this breathtaking book is a powerful reminder of the deeply human desire to be remembered.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I don’t think I quite understood what Ray Fawkes was trying to do with this work until the last three pages where he writes: “Even as the years pass the world turns, even as the living do not know or speak your name…Here you are known. Here you are loved….Here, you are….” Whether you believe in them or not, ghosts are essentially memories: the imprint left on camera film, or the bit of data that remains in the hard drive long after deletion. To be a ghost must be a lonely and frightening experience, and yet we love ghost stories because they give us hope of life after death, and that is a comfort. “Here you are known. Here you are loved….Here, you are” could very well be written for the reader as well as the phantoms that roam the spectral engine, and in both cases the message is the same: you are here, you are remembered, and you are not alone.
Until I reached that realization I would have written off The Spectral Engine as pretty, sometimes haunting, but overall thin. The book takes thirteen ghost stories from Canada and links them together with the eponymous train. It runs through the stories, defying time, space, and reason, picking up the dead and taking them on an endless circle where they die, board, and debark. The book (and the train) link Canada’s true history with the history of its folklore. Like the rails on a train track, they run parallel to each other, only occasionally meeting.
The stories vary in length and detail and some of them are quite short. They build on one another towards the end to create a larger tapestry, but some of the stories are definitely stronger than others, which at times makes for an inconsistent reading experience. What bolsters the book during those moments, though, is the strength of the art. The story is drawn in black and white, with heavy, leaden black lines and excellent use of negative space. Fawkes’ spectral engine doesn’t move as much as it rolls like a ribbon of the darkest ink tumbling down a page. The art gives the train a fluid, protean quality that is matched by the lyric descriptions given about it.
In Summary
The Spectral Engine is a haunting, beautiful, poignant piece whose sum is greater than its parts. It weaves Canadian history and folklore together into a black protean beast of a train that travels through time and space, and while some of the stories told were too short or underdeveloped, the overall experience and excellent art make it a worthwhile read. Recommended.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A+
Packaging Grade: A
Age Rating: N/A
Released By: McClelland & Stewart
Release Date: October 15, 2013
MSRP: $27.95
