Book 70: "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood" by Alastair MacLeod

Far beyond the harbor's mouth more tiny squalls seem to be forming, moving rapidly across the surface of the sea out there beyond land's end where the blue ocean turns to gray in rain and distance and the strain of eyes. Even farther out, somewhere beyond Cape Spear lies Dublin and the Irish coast, far away but still the nearest land and closer now than is Toronto or Detroit to say nothing of North America's more western cities, seeming almost hazily visible now in imagination's mist.

Twelve short stories set in the remote, Gaelic speaking communities of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The author's interests seem to include lighthouses, dogs and dying fathers and the first few stories are quite down-beat. I was finding it all a bit depressing before the mood lightened (a bit)about half-way through the book. My favourite stories were "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood", "The Road to Rankin's Point" and "The Closing Down of Summer", but overall, I still prefer the author's novel "No Great Mischief".

Nottingham Round the World Reading Challenge - CANADA / NOVA SCOTIA / CAPE BRETON

Book 71: "Dark Universe" by Daniel F. Galouye

The new witness was a young boy whose excited account left no doubt that he had heard the impossible sounds.
"And how would you describe these - sensations?" Elder Averyman completed the question.
"It was like a lot of crazy shouts that kept bouncing against my face. And when I put my hands over my ears I kept on hearing them."

Jared Fenson lives in the Lower Level, and has no concept of light and darkness, since he lives in an underground world of caverns and tunnels and uses sound to perceive his surroundings, as do the inhabitants of the Upper Level. The main living areas have echo-casters that allow people to hear their surroundings without using the click stones that they carry when they move around the tunnels. A third group of humans in this underground world, known as the Zivvers, are descended from an single mutant outcast who was born with the ability to use temperature differences for thermal-imaging. They can protect themselves from the giant soubats with spears and bows and arrow, but none of them are prepared to deal with the monsters with flapping skin folds, who invade the tunnels with silent, screaming sound.

This book has a similar theme to Galouye's "The Last Perception", in which humans are driven mad by re-discovering a lost sixth sense called zylphing. Very interesting indeed.