Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons edition by Raymond St Elmo Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons edition by Raymond St Elmo Literature Fiction eBooks 
A research team and a blind old sailor slyly spar over the truth of a long-ago shipwreck, a mad island of dead gods and the mystery of a lost manuscript. Neither sailor nor interviewer is what they seem; and both must learn to work together to find what they seek.
Seemingly, Clarence St. Elmo sits old and blind in the Sailor's Safe Harbor Home. A patient interviewer sifts his wandering memories for details of the wreck of the Unicorn, a cargo schooner lost long ago in the South Pacific.
But Clarence St. Elmo is also a young man who finds himself on a cursed ship with a cargo of dead gods destined to be sunk in the Sea of Time. His love waits for his return, while mad voices in his head slyly pry for clues to a lost book. And always beyond the words and the memories, the dreadful storm circles closer.
A romance of memory, across the sea of time.
From the book
Describe the dance in the moonlight.
The girl stopped dancing at the first bird chirp of dawn. The ruined walls pooled the remainder of night like a hollow on a beach when the tide draws away. Exhausted, I stared up at a patch of coloring on a tree-top. My heart beat for a drum. The girl looked at the sky, then regretfully towards the dark entrance to the crumbled house. She wasn't a bit tired. But she intended to retire for the day, no doubt taking me and Cut-Throat with her. She could do it, too. In the faint light her face was hungry and pretty and determined as a tiger’s. If I bolted she would be on me before I made the archway. I crossed looks with Cut-Throat. He shook his head slightly, telling me the same. I tried not to look at the other fellow, who had no eyes to meet. He just stood there in rotting sea-man's clothes listening for the clap of her hands.
But our Cut-Throat had taken the girl's measure. He’d noted what rhythm and time made her feet stamp, made her toss her ropes of hair. Now he began a slow sad dirge for the dying night. She turned to him, hands raised to clap an order. But I took her left hand and bowed and stepped forward my right foot and she had no choice in her perfection of movement but to step back and then half turn as I did and we stepped forwards together two steps, then turned together as I placed my left hand on the small of her back and we skipped left three steps as the fiddle slyly slipped from dirge to a laughing tune that ran faster and faster till we were whirling and turning over the cold stones.
Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons edition by Raymond St Elmo Literature Fiction eBooks
How to do this book justice?It’s a struggle I haven’t yet resolved. Oh sure, I could take the easy route and say this reads as if Sam Clemens was alive and well, sharing digs with Elvis and Jim Morrison, and writing under a new nom-de-plume, but like I said—too easy. And frankly much more probable than the fact that this brilliant, funny, wise, and above all else, romantic novel is self-published. And yet, that’s the very truth of it. The world is an odd, odd place.
Yet, not as odd as the cargo and the crew of the good ship Unicorn as it sails upon the Sea of Suns and Moons. The story of that voyage and the subsequent shipwreck, as narrated by an ancient sailor named Clarence St. Elmo, is the tallest of tall tales. It’s also a love story. Not just a romance about true love parted, although there is that and it’s done with beauty and eloquence, but a delightful infatuation with stories themselves. And it’s funny. Constant smirk, frequent giggle, and occasional snort funny.
Mythology, fantasy, satire, humor, romance—it’s all there. Step aboard. You’re in for the ride of your life.
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Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons edition by Raymond St Elmo Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
This writer is consistent in his strangely mesmerizing writing style. This story has as perfect an ending as it possibly could, but to get there, you have to read through unbelievably fun scenes, unusual phrases and just plain perfectly turned storytelling.
DESCRIBE THE BOOK.
I used to be a poet, until I found out it didn't pay. Then I became a novelist. The remuneration in that field turned out to be pretty much the same. After that I went to sea, and finally found a paying job. True, the wages were pain, madness and, as a special bonus, death.
But they were paid out as regular as clockwork.
TRY AGAIN. DESCRIBE THE STORY.
Lightning. Shipwreck. Then I woke up on an island with a cat and some other...entities...less furry, with much larger claws. It all seems like a dream now. Either that, or this is the dream.
What story? Whose story?
WHAT DID YOU LIKE ABOUT THE STORY?
Okay, I can tell you, but there might be a few mild spoilers.
DESCRIBE THE SPOILERS.
I liked the ship voyaging on a strange ocean, with a cargo of dead gods who are perhaps not as dead as everyone believes. I like the poet-turned-sailor who scatters verses across his narrative like grains of Paradise. I liked the island they shipwreck on, with its haunted cemetery and volcanic exit from the Underworld. I liked it much better, of course, after the resident vivisectors of deities and torturers of men are cleared out. I'm thinking of moving there.
And last, I like how true love wins a final victory over space and time. It makes sense. What do space and time know about truth, anyway? Or love?
WERE THERE ANY THINGS YOU DIDN'T LIKE?
Well, it seems petty to complain when an author has illuminated a whole new magical world for you with the lightning of Typhon. But then, people are petty, aren't they?
SOME ARE. DESCRIBE WHAT YOU DIDN'T LIKE.
Well, I couldn't see why Ganesh was included in the cargo of dead gods. He's worshipped by hundreds of millions of people today, and that seems to me to be about as alive as a god can get.
Then there's that Blake poem the poet keeps ranting about. The tiger is a symbol, man! It's not a real tiger! The poem is about the existence of evil.
THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL? ISN'T IT ABOUT THE DEVIL?
Did you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?
EXCUSE ME?
Not sure where that came from. There are so many voices in my head. Never mind.
SO CAN WE CONCLUDE THAT YOU THINK EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?
Isn't that what I've been telling you, at some length? Do you want me to start all over again? Because I really don't mind if--
SPOILERS, REMEMBER? RESET.
If there were a holiday especially for authors called, say, “Wordsgiving” that included a traditional feast, Raymond St. Elmo would have a seat at the grownups’ table. Now, if he would be so kind as to carve the bird, that will provide me with a good segue into the next, um, course of this review.
To describe "Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons" as a story about a sailor shipwrecked on a fantastical island would be like describing a club sandwich as a slice of cooked poultry. It's terribly incomplete and inaccurate, but it's a place to start.
The protagonist of the novel, Clarence St. Elmo (possibly some distant relative of the author), isn’t much of a sailor, having been a poet before his first venture out to sea. Unfortunately for him and the ship he’s sailing on (The Unicorn), hardly anyone else on board is a sailor either. And then there’s the extraordinarily dangerous (and ever-whispering), cargo.
A shipwreck is the natural result of a most unnatural storm, and Clarence St. Elmo finds himself washed up on an island inhabited by all sorts of mythological terrors, and some pretty unpleasant people, too. But of all the horrible, fantastical critters that Clarence must deal with, none are as terrifying and intractable as the one he boarded The Unicorn to escape Nope, not even going to speak its name.
The thing about this book is the writing. Sure, there’s an interesting, complex, and relatable protagonist, and humor that is gentle, dry, literary, and insightful, but really, it’s the prose that makes it hum—prose that compares favorably to the best I’ve ever read. There’s great stuff like a seashell “delicate as a porcelain orchid” and the mayor of the Island of Theodosia (Theodosia) who is “an old book of a woman” (aside how come spell-check doesn’t waggly line Theodosia? . . . Oh!), but what is important is that no matter how fantastic and other-worldly the scene, Raymond St. Elmo creates a beautiful, vivid, and detailed tableau in the reader’s head.
You ought to read this book. If you need a more specific recommendation, then I would say, if you liked Mervyn Peake’s “Gormenghast” books, you would like this novel—though I think "Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons" is better. Both writers do a phenomenal job of fantastical scene and world building, but Peake tends to give a whole lot of love to details that then sail over the horizon never to be seen again. Raymond St. Elmo, on the other hand, brings the details back around, giving the reader a satisfaction akin to an unexpected encounter with an old friend. If you liked (one of my all-time favorites) Patrick Dewitt’s “Undermajordomo Minor” you would like this novel.
Can I think of even one thing to gripe about? Sure. I thought the second layer of reality in the story was an unnecessary gilding of the porcelain orchid. Sometimes a reality just wants to be alone. But you know, you eat the parsley or you don’t eat the parsley. No big whoop.
There’s a nice line in the novel I’m going to comment on here just to show what a smart and attentive reader I am. Clarence says, at one point “Imagine Hamlet grown up enough to just walk out of Elsinore.” That’s a really neat trick for a writer to pull off, to have a character say something that reveals some aspect of their (the character’s) nature to the reader that even the character doesn’t understand (not yet, anyway). Not only would a passive-aggressive Hamlet be a lot less interesting than the neurotic Hamlet we know and love (and the play would be over before it started), but, as Clarence ought to know, there are some things you can’t run away from (cough cough true love cough).
“Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons” is a big read in more ways than one, and asks for (and deserves) some dedicated reading time. So don’t fill up on the appetizers. Okay, that was lame. Sometimes I should just walk away from the extended metaphor.
How to do this book justice?
It’s a struggle I haven’t yet resolved. Oh sure, I could take the easy route and say this reads as if Sam Clemens was alive and well, sharing digs with Elvis and Jim Morrison, and writing under a new nom-de-plume, but like I said—too easy. And frankly much more probable than the fact that this brilliant, funny, wise, and above all else, romantic novel is self-published. And yet, that’s the very truth of it. The world is an odd, odd place.
Yet, not as odd as the cargo and the crew of the good ship Unicorn as it sails upon the Sea of Suns and Moons. The story of that voyage and the subsequent shipwreck, as narrated by an ancient sailor named Clarence St. Elmo, is the tallest of tall tales. It’s also a love story. Not just a romance about true love parted, although there is that and it’s done with beauty and eloquence, but a delightful infatuation with stories themselves. And it’s funny. Constant smirk, frequent giggle, and occasional snort funny.
Mythology, fantasy, satire, humor, romance—it’s all there. Step aboard. You’re in for the ride of your life.
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