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juushikaTitle: The House on the Borderland
Author: William Hope Hodgson
Published:: London: Chapman and Hall, 1908
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 141,922
Text Number: 417
Read Because: recommended byrushthatspeaks, e-book from Project Gutenberg
Review: Two campers discover a vast chasm and a discarded journal that records the unusual, supernatural events of the house which used to reside there. The House on the Borderland is composed of fantastic disparate parts sewn together by perhaps too tenuous a thread. The individual parts are on their own evocative, from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house besieged by monsters to the the dreamlike exploration of the house's long-distant fate; they're creative, striking, and vast in content although the atmosphere and language are both unremarkable. The plot which unites these episodes is sketchy at best, and while this prompts meaningful questions in the reader—how are these aspects connected, what themes unite them?—it also makes one long for coherency and perhaps a stronger sense of purpose. Otherwise the book has aged well; fans of its successors (Lovecraft noted Hodgson as an inspiration, but almost all speculative horror fiction draws from these roots) will find it accessible and resonant, despite the lack of coherent plot and some archaic stylistic trappings. It's a flawed book—or perhaps just an early one—but fascinating, and I recommend it.
Author: William Hope Hodgson
Published:: London: Chapman and Hall, 1908
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 141,922
Text Number: 417
Read Because: recommended by
rushthatspeaks, e-book from Project GutenbergReview: Two campers discover a vast chasm and a discarded journal that records the unusual, supernatural events of the house which used to reside there. The House on the Borderland is composed of fantastic disparate parts sewn together by perhaps too tenuous a thread. The individual parts are on their own evocative, from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house besieged by monsters to the the dreamlike exploration of the house's long-distant fate; they're creative, striking, and vast in content although the atmosphere and language are both unremarkable. The plot which unites these episodes is sketchy at best, and while this prompts meaningful questions in the reader—how are these aspects connected, what themes unite them?—it also makes one long for coherency and perhaps a stronger sense of purpose. Otherwise the book has aged well; fans of its successors (Lovecraft noted Hodgson as an inspiration, but almost all speculative horror fiction draws from these roots) will find it accessible and resonant, despite the lack of coherent plot and some archaic stylistic trappings. It's a flawed book—or perhaps just an early one—but fascinating, and I recommend it.
