Tales from Tantamount

Tales from Tantamount is a project by Merry Debonnaire that frankly isn’t easy to describe. It’s made of words, and is charming and funny.

Tantamount is a town that doesn’t stay put, and during the book it goes on holiday, gets in the river and visits a swamp. The life of the town comes to us through found objects and ephemera, and while there are stories, they aren’t told in conventional ways. Tantamount has an array of supernatural beings, and a goat on the council. No one seems to know how the various local councils work.

Fans of Nightvale are going to find this is just their sort of thing. If you enjoyed my Wherefore series I rate the chances of you also enjoying this. It made me chortle a lot.

You can get Tales from Tantamount from Merry’s ko-fi store https://ko-fi.com/s/c8cbd9a609

Tales from Tantamount – a review

Tales from Tantamount started life on Meredith Debonnaire’s blog. It’s now available (with extras) as both an ebook and paperback.

Tantamount is a small, inherently unstable town somewhere in the vicinity of the Severn River. Where exactly it is, varies. History does not quite work the same way here either. History in Tantamount is a dangerous thing.

During The Year of The Sad Plastic Bag we get a glimpse of town life, most of it through found items, notices, and other ephemera. I like this kind of storytelling because it requires you, as a reader, to get in there and do a fair amount of the work, threading your own stories together from what’s available. There’s a lot of fun to be had here, because the fragments you get to play with are charming, evocative, provocative…

The whole project is laced with humour and satire, and things to think about, and weirdness and whimsy and unexpected voices. It’s a charming thing. If you like my fiction it’s highly likely you’ll also like what Merry does.

Start here if you want to read it on the blog – https://meredithdebonnaire.wordpress.com/tales-from-tantamount/

And yes, if the cover art seems somehow familiar, that would be because Tom drew it, and I did the colouring.