Gods of Sen

This book* is the first instalment of David Brookes's imagined mythology for ancient Britain.** I found this an astounding work of imagination. It genuinely reads like real mythology. From the prehistoric origins of the Bone Tree, finally bearing fruit to give birth to the supreme creator god Ah, to Ah's creation of the Old Gods Bet, Gon & Rif - Bet & Gon falling in love with each other & clocking out of conscious existence to become the sky & the land respectively, while Rif proves to be a troublesome character & is exiled but not before they create the beasts & monsters of the world; to the union of Bet & Gon spawning the nine Living Gods, who are nursed by Rif's creatures (these include Mhin-of-the-Mouse, Glim-of-the-Wolf, Ahma-of-the-Deer, etc); to the giants, the immortals, finally the humans; all of which are wrapped up in a nonlinear perplexing web of struggle. I read David's poetry & short stories last year but I sense that this was his magnum opus; I truly wish I'd ever had a chance to talk to him about it when he was alive. But if you like the literary texture of mythology & are interested in the modern capacity for inventing it, you'd love this book. I fully intend to read the next four instalments over the coming week.

* Unfortunately not available anywhere, hence no link. It was never published within David's lifetime & he committed suicide last year, leaving PDFs of all his work on his website, which since, given his death, has tragically been taken down. If you like the sound of what I describe here & would like to read it, comment with your email address & I'll send you the PDF.

** The central conceit of this series is that in the 2010s there was a large earthquake in the English Lake District, which tore open a mountain - within which was discovered the remains of a Bronze Age civilization with advanced literary recording skills; the mythological texts discovered carved into the walls of that city are presented here, the mythos of the Sena people.