The Naming of the Islands chronicles the journey of a ship of convicts who have been sent out to sea in lieu of serving prison time. The story is written in the form of a ship’s log. The crew aboard the ship have found themselves in a strange chain of islands, which they name according to what they find on each one. Despite keeping these records, they discover that the islands seem to be rearranging themselves so that the ship never gets to the same island twice.
The circumstances on each island vary from a hideous island-coating swarm of rats to an island that contained a beating heart at its center. The men are starving and running low on water. Their tempers are fraying and the hellish circumstances seem to be exacerbating the situations. However, each time it seems that the tensions must come to a head, another island appears, so they put aside their disagreements in order to explore them
The story carries a feeling of both hopeless despair and impending doom. The men in the story have done horrible things (there aren’t really specifics, but there are a couple of very brief explanations given) and they, in turn, are witnessing unimaginable horrors. It’s definitely a fantasy that’s both very dark and very claustrophobic. It also feels like it ends just before some extraordinary breaking point is going to be reached.
While the story was good, it seems like it could be much more. In fact, it feels, most of all, as if it’s the germ of an idea for a novel. Personally, if it ever became a novel, it’s most certainly the kind of novel that I’d want to read, just as long as I could keep the lights on after I was finished and I didn’t have sea voyages of any kind planned.
This is part of the BookSpot Central Short Fiction Round Table spotlight on stories that will be included in Best American Fantasy 2008 edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and forthcoming from Prime Books. Please see the intro to the spotlight.
