Solomon Kane: The Lair of the Mari Lwyd review

eBook by Shaun Hamill

Dedicated to Shaun's father, Rick Hamill

Cover by Guillem H. Pongiluppi

Chapter illustration by Patrick Zircher

From Titan Books and Heroic Signatures

Spoilers! Spoilers!

Solomon Kane is tracking "something" dark and evil from England. The "something" wounds Solomon in the leg and leaves him to die in the woods outside of the village known as Tywyllwch/Darkness in Wales.

It's Yuletide, Christmas eve.

Four children are missing: Tacy (Rees' platonic girlfriend), Matilde, Howell and Philipe.

Rees (an homage to Martin Rees, the fifteenth Astronomer Royal?) finds Solomon in the snow and drags him to his home.

Rees' father, Hughe (a physician who also has a wife (Elys) and a daughter (Judithe)) thinks that Kane is the culprit behind the kidnappings, he threatens to poison the Puritan.

Kane mentions that Puritans do not celebrate Christmas.

Someone masquerading as the Mari Lwyd (the Grey Mare from the South Wales wassailing folk custom, a horse's skull and a white sheet on a pole) arrives at Hughe's door and demands to be let in.

Rees opens the front door and lets the "Mari Lwyd" in. Kane shoots the creature in the shoulder, it starts bleeding, Rees lets it kidnap him.

Rees wakes next to his girlfriend and the other missing children.

Kane and Hughe follow the trail (an homage to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Reese's Pieces? Predator (1987)?) of alien greenish-black blood to a cave... The Lair of the Mari Lwyd.

Kane finds the children asleep mysteriously fastened to the cave's wall.

Kane shoots the "Mari Lwyd" in the chest.

Kane had smeared Hughe's physician poison on his rapier and bullets.

Kane shoots several of the creature's fingers off, it starts shapeshifting.

Kane uses a bulky branch to send the poisoned/dying shapeshifter into the fire that was warming the children.

During the Christmas feast, Rees gives his Welsh Honey Cake to Kane as thanks for saving him and his friends.

What I did like:

Merry Christmas in Welsh is indeed Nadolig Llawen.

What I did not like:

Solomon Kane kills what he doesn't understand. Lame.

Solomon feels no remorse.

The "Mari Lwyd" just wanted to go home. Was it a lost being from another dimension? From a galaxy far, far away? We will never know.

I give it a 6/10. A Solomon Kane Christmas story in short supply of the Christmas spirit. It's the season of giving, not killing. Disappointing.

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