The Seaboard Review of Books October 8, 2025
Volume 2, Issue 42 of The Seaboard Review of Books, October 1, 2025
In this issue:
The Ignis Psalter by Danny Jacobs (Fiction)
Habs Nation: A People’s History of the Montreal Canadiens (Non-Fiction)
Till We Meet Again: A Canadian in the First World War by Brandon Marriott (Non-Fiction)
The Undesirables: A History of Rockhead Prison by Katie Ingram (Non-Fiction)
Goose by Melanie Dennis Unrau (Poetry)
In a Riptide by Ronna Bloom (Poetry)
Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review of Books!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief
Fiction
The Ignis Psalter by Danny Jacobs
In The Ignis Psalter, the eerily compelling debut novel from poet and essayist Danny Jacobs, fire and weirdness are the order of the day.
Non-Fiction
Habs Nation Provides a "People's History" of Storied Team
When I was growing up in Southwestern Ontario, most of my friends were Toronto Maple Leaf fans. That didn’t stop me from cheering for the Montreal Canadiens through my teen years. And why not? The 1970s teams, with players like Yvan Cournoyer, Peter Mahovlich, and Serge Savard, offered a special electricity, winning the Stanley Cup six times between 197…
Till We Meet Again: A Canadian in the First World War by Brandon Marriott
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? — Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), “Anthem for Doomed Youth”
The Undesirables: A History of Rockhead Prison by Katie Ingram
Growing up in Kingston Ontario, I was no stranger to having prisons within (and without) the city limits. We had the infamous Kingston Penitentiary (AKA “The Pen”) and The Prison for Women (P4W) within a stone’s throw of each other. Both are now decommissioned as prisons.
Poetry
Goose by Melanie Dennis Unrau
In beginning her latest collection with a simple visual overture, Melanie Dennis Unrau’s Goose asks us to forget what we’ve been told. Instead, the reader is invited to open their minds to a poetic deconstruction and rebuilding of Fort McMurray history - a history that is an oil sands history, but before and throughout that, a
Micheal Greenstein Reviews
In a Riptide by Ronna Bloom
French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas bases his theory of ethics on the “face of the other,” a recognition of the other person’s soul and individuality in any meaningful dialogue or encounter. Levinas’s ethical sensibility is present in Ronna Bloom’s poetry where the poet repeatedly faces others through a series of masked and unmasked faces. In her latest…
Brief Notes on Books Present & Past
(Note: clicking on the underlined link takes you to the book’s publisher page or Amazon.ca for more information or for purchasing purposes. Support your local bookseller or independent publisher if you can.)
The Witches of Moonshyne Manor by Bianca Marais.
Moonshyne Manor is a distillery and the hereditary home of the Sisterhood—six octogenarian witches, one of whom has been in prison for 33 years for a heist that resulted in the death of another of their number, who lingers as a ghost, communicating through her familiar, a crow named Widget. A mob of angry men want to demolish the manor and build a men’s fantasy retreat. Another man, a relative of Ivy, the ostensible owner of the manor, wants what he believes was stolen from him. Behind on their mortgage payments—the reason the mob is using to validate their destructive scheme—Queenie, has made a dire deal with Charon. The fates of the manor and the Sisterhood hang on the release of Ruby, who knows where the stolen goods are hidden, but when she returns to the manor, she is not the woman she used to be. Enter Persephone, a young feminist who wants to save the manor and the Sisterhood, if she could just understand the web of relationships and betrayals that binds the sisterhood together. (Contributed by Melanie Marttila)
TSR Team News
Melanie Marttila is pleased to announce that her poem “Vasilisa,” originally published by Graeme Cameron in Polar Borealis 30 is in the Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, Volume 3, publishing October 14, 2025.
She is deeply honoured to be among such stellar company.
And….
She will be on two panels at this year’s Can-Con (October 17 to 19, 2025 at the Brookstreet Hotel, Kanata, Ontario)!
The first will be “The Art of Rest” at 8 pm on Friday, October 17, and the second is “The Taste of Sadness: Writing Emotional Dysregulation” at 2:30 pm on Sunday, October 19.
Support Us!
Ko-fi: you can choose from one-time donations to a $5/month membership.
Patreon: memberships from $3/month on up.
PayPal.me/theseaboardreview For one-time payments.
We also appreciate any “likes” and “shares” on social media! @theseaboardreview on most platforms (except X).