A review by brucemri
The House Without A Summer by DeAnna Knippling
5.0
This is a Regency gothic horror, something you don't get to say about a lot of books, set in 1816, the year that there was worldwide bad weather, unusual coolness, and other trouble because of the eruption of Indonesian volcano Mt. Tambora the year before.
Between a prologue in 1851 and an epilogue that spans the years between 1816 and 1851, the bulk of the story takes place in and around Penderbrook, one of the grandest mansions in England.
The current Earl enjoys a great reputation and is responsible for maintaining a cloth mill that employs hundreds of people who'd otherwise be out of work and starving, but is secretly a total scumbag. His elder son, Barnabas, is a scholarly sort, whose interests include the occult as well as the scientific. He's engaged to the daughter of the Earl's trusted long-time comrade and advisor, who it turns out actually fell out with the Earl some time ago. The daughter, Lucy, will (we know from the prologue) go on to be a famous and successful writer of gothics and prototypical weird fiction. The Earl's younger son, Marcus, ran off to join the army, and is home now that the Napoleonic wars are over, having become a successful captain.
Their version of the "year without a summer" is weirder than hours. There are...not sunspots, but things that look like spreading fungal filaments through a telescope. Here on earth, there's a red fungus that's getting into everything and warping the bodies of plants and animals it's gotten into. Things are not right with the mill - a whole lot of people head off to work there, stripping Penderbrook of most of its customary vast staff, and there's no real explanation of what happens to them, or how the mill keeps itself in food. Elder son Barnabas has been killed by a monster, but everyone who saw it has a wildly different account of what happened, and now his body's gone missing. Things go from bad to worse, and then keep going.
Knippling brings together two strains of horror in a really distinctive fusion. On the one hand, there's plant and body horror of the sort you might find in a David Cronenberg movie or one of Laird Barron's supernatural tales. On the other, there's a strong influence from the tale of creeping dread of the sort Robert Aickman excelled at, where being intensely uncomfortable becomes the key to cosmic horror. I've never read a story that put those together in such a successful blend.
It helps that I have an ongoing fascination with the concepts at the heart of what's actually going on, of course. So I loved the opening, loved the development, and then the revelations and resolution, too.
Very highly recommended, and it's a pleasure to have a horror recommendation that doesn't need a disclaimer for sexual violence and such. There is a goodly quantity of violence, so those who need to avoid that will want to steer clear, but what's going on doesn't need sexual degradation and abuse and doesn't get any.
Between a prologue in 1851 and an epilogue that spans the years between 1816 and 1851, the bulk of the story takes place in and around Penderbrook, one of the grandest mansions in England.
The current Earl enjoys a great reputation and is responsible for maintaining a cloth mill that employs hundreds of people who'd otherwise be out of work and starving, but is secretly a total scumbag. His elder son, Barnabas, is a scholarly sort, whose interests include the occult as well as the scientific. He's engaged to the daughter of the Earl's trusted long-time comrade and advisor, who it turns out actually fell out with the Earl some time ago. The daughter, Lucy, will (we know from the prologue) go on to be a famous and successful writer of gothics and prototypical weird fiction. The Earl's younger son, Marcus, ran off to join the army, and is home now that the Napoleonic wars are over, having become a successful captain.
Their version of the "year without a summer" is weirder than hours. There are...not sunspots, but things that look like spreading fungal filaments through a telescope. Here on earth, there's a red fungus that's getting into everything and warping the bodies of plants and animals it's gotten into. Things are not right with the mill - a whole lot of people head off to work there, stripping Penderbrook of most of its customary vast staff, and there's no real explanation of what happens to them, or how the mill keeps itself in food. Elder son Barnabas has been killed by a monster, but everyone who saw it has a wildly different account of what happened, and now his body's gone missing. Things go from bad to worse, and then keep going.
Knippling brings together two strains of horror in a really distinctive fusion. On the one hand, there's plant and body horror of the sort you might find in a David Cronenberg movie or one of Laird Barron's supernatural tales. On the other, there's a strong influence from the tale of creeping dread of the sort Robert Aickman excelled at, where being intensely uncomfortable becomes the key to cosmic horror. I've never read a story that put those together in such a successful blend.
It helps that I have an ongoing fascination with the concepts at the heart of what's actually going on, of course. So I loved the opening, loved the development, and then the revelations and resolution, too.
Very highly recommended, and it's a pleasure to have a horror recommendation that doesn't need a disclaimer for sexual violence and such. There is a goodly quantity of violence, so those who need to avoid that will want to steer clear, but what's going on doesn't need sexual degradation and abuse and doesn't get any.