DNF at 20%. This is a personal reflection more than a review.

I fully respect the history and influence of this book and absolutely cannot imagine what it must have been like for HP Lovecraft and others to have read this at the time, as well as the more recent effect on a young and impressionable Terry Pratchett.

This is one of those books I want to love, but just can't. It falls perfectly in that period that has moved out of the verbose and decadent gothic sensibility into the weird and cosmic I genuinely love the descendents of, but can't find the enjoyment in the strangely long-winded in text, yet terse of emotion and description of the time. Saying pale pig faced people are coming to get me is a scary concept and the idea must have been wild at the time, but when the writing of it happening is not conveying the character's feelings in a way that is accessible for me and the events of the action ate bracing, while the manner it is described is dry and instructional it just doesn't move me.

I understand that this is vastly a me problem and I DNF'd early, so maybe it gets wild and visceral later, but I don't care. I want to and personally feeling it is a failing of myself that there is so much are out there that I can intellectually enjoy the idea of and respect, but utterly fail to be moved by. The neurodivergences play their part, but I'm just a fussy bugger. It's funny, I read a book I don't enjoy and I question whether I even know how to read or whether I even enjoy reading, but then I find something I like and I'm up in the wee hours reading and then reaching for that book first thing upon waking.

Ultimately, for historians of fantasy and horror, especially cosmic and weird tales this is essential reading. Many thoroughly enjoy this, from the virulently racist Lovecraft to the gorgeously progressive and loving Pratchett. If you love Lovecraft and Wells, and their drier offerings still do it for you then I do think you'll love this. If the ponderous and bland of prose, regardless of the excitement and nightmares of the content, fail to keep you entertained maybe you won't. All I know is this wasn't my cup of tea in actuality, despite being a full mug of coffee in theory. Does that work even in the slightest? I truly don't care. ( )

A man is trapped in his home, with his injured dog and a ’mad’ sister, surrounded by Swine-creatures, or “the Things”, as he calls them. His tale is told in his manuscript, which is found by two men on a fishing vacation. And honestly, I think the beginning with those two finding the book may have been the creepiest part of this story!

“…that strange and terrible journey through space and time.” - was not terrible at all, and for me, it was really boring. Unfortunately, it takes up quite a bit of this book. The author of the manuscript is just having visions, or seeing things, and it really does go on and on.

Still it wrapped up well with those odd green wounds! A good, creepy ending to the ‘found’ manuscript!

But, still and all, what was in that enormous pit? ( )

Firstly, I should say that I am not very interested in science fiction and fantasy novels, neither do I like the genre of horror and detective. Nonetheless, I do ocassionally read novels belonging to each of these categories, usually when they are considered classics.

William Hope Hodgson was a prolific writer, mainly of horror, fantastic fiction, and science fiction, and many of his stories involve adventures at sea. He is most widely remembered for two works, The house on the borderland (1908) being one of them.

The house on the borderland has a layered story frame. An introduction to the manuscript precedes the table of contents, followed by chapter 1 describing the discovery of the manuscript. Each of these sections is preceded by a poem, with a footnote saying the second poem was found written in pencil on the fly-leaf of the manuscript. It is the story of two men travelling to an area where they encounter suspicious local. In what appears to be an overgrown garden belonging to a lost estate they discover the manuscript. They read the manuscript aloud.

The landscape of the overgrown garden, the house (unseen) and some other aspects of the landscape appear as echos in the story in the manuscript, in the dreams of the writer of the manuscript, in the dream of the man and in the landscape of the setting of the top frame.

Although the manuscript and the story seem to suggest fact, very little in the story is factual, and it often seems all of it only happens in the imagination of the main character, to the effect that subtle self-doubt makes the reader wonder about the sanity of the main character. Suggestion and suspense are everything.

The story consists of five episodes that seem to be interconnected, but their interconnectedness is possibly just imagined. The presence of the sister and her behavior suggests that all events only exist in the mind of the narrator. One of the episodes (Chapt. 14) breaks up into fragments and has a dreamlike quality. However, among the five episodes, two major parts stand out. The first is the long coherent story of the siege by the swain-things, and the other is the jump to the end of time. Barely traceable story elements suggest these parts are interconnected, but only very faintly, and again much to be imagined. The last part of the travel to the end of time must have been mindboggling to readers a hundred years ago, while now it has been done much more convincingly visually on film and tv.

As an historic fantasy story The house on the borderland remains very readable and exciting. The author cleverly constructs a story in which the imagination is the driving force of the story. ( )

Interesting read. I enjoyed it.

My favorite William Hope Hodgson novel. Really creepy even after so many years. The fact that you never really know what is going on makes it even creepier. ( )