Wattsian

A wonderful, old-fashioned tale of lost sailors and their horrible discoveries of a weed-covered island in the deeps of the oceans. The dark and frightening continent is home to fantastic, terrifying fungi, tentacled monsters, and worse.

A stunningly original work that suffers somewhat from long strange flights of interdimensional fancy in the last half of the book, but whose strange imagination carries some plodding passages and tensionless moments into success.

The layout of the tale reminds me of H.P. Lovecraft (and he cites this as a big influence), and the lengthy finale is reminiscent of _2001: A Space Odyssey_ in strange astral projection amongst the stars.

I made it 43% of the way through this public-domain book on my Kindle. I'd previously read and enjoyed the imperfect but engaging Carnacki: The Ghost-Finder and The House on the Borderland. But this is just silly. The frame narrative is cool...17th-century man loses his love then finds his memories in the mind of a man in the distant future on an earth whose sun has darkened and whose lands are filled with monstrous creatures and hideous supersized towers trying to destroy the last remnants of… (more)

I made it 43% of the way through this public-domain book on my Kindle. I'd previously read and enjoyed the imperfect but engaging Carnacki: The Ghost-Finder and The House on the Borderland. But this is just silly. The frame narrative is cool...17th-century man loses his love then finds his memories in the mind of a man in the distant future on an earth whose sun has darkened and whose lands are filled with monstrous creatures and hideous supersized towers trying to destroy the last remnants of humanity. Then the hero goes off on a quest through the Night Land, I kid you not, it is 100s of pages of: Walked, Slept, Ate tablets, Drank Water, Saw something, Hid, Fought, Hid again, Slept, I was really tired, Ate ...

It is perhaps one of the most tedious examples of fiction about travel that I have ever seen. I kept reading for page after page after dozens of pages once the hero left the last bastion of humanity, the Great Redoubt, because the tedium of the plot was strangely curious. How could a man write it and expect it to engage readers?

Oh well. I lose.

I don't find Lovecraft's vision of the otherworldly visitors at all at play here. These are strange, dangerous, and ghostly apparitions, but their harm is almost always localized. Hodgson summons great Lovecraftian fear and awe in his excellent novel The House on the Borderland.

I, like Pyrophage, enjoy these tales, though. Hodgson drones on a little too long, but the Carnacki is a likably fallible hero, unlike his relative contemporary Sherlock Holmes.

A great read for fans of early horror, detective… (more)

I don't find Lovecraft's vision of the otherworldly visitors at all at play here. These are strange, dangerous, and ghostly apparitions, but their harm is almost always localized. Hodgson summons great Lovecraftian fear and awe in his excellent novel The House on the Borderland.

I, like Pyrophage, enjoy these tales, though. Hodgson drones on a little too long, but the Carnacki is a likably fallible hero, unlike his relative contemporary Sherlock Holmes.

A great read for fans of early horror, detective fiction, and early speculative fiction.