Trigger warning: Animal death.
So this was a weird one. I read elsewhere this book describes the “Big Bang Theory” better than any other supernatural/horror novel and I have to say I agree. It also is very easy with the description of mountains, chasms, and strange beings, to see how this aspired some horror authors such as Lovecraft (still racist).
I think though that I would have loved it more if we had any dialogue outside of the two friends, “reading” the mysterious journal written by someone with the initials M.S. The descriptions of everything M.S. was witnessing in the universe, on the Earth, and the things that lived beneath his home just started to get a bit too same-y after a while. I do wonder about what was real versus not real, but he ending of the book gives you an idea of how much what the mysterious M.S. really saw as he watched worlds pass away.
“The House on the Borderland” follows two friends who go away to fish and camp in Ireland. While out, they find a strange pit that has ruins in it. They dig around and also find a journal. They go back to their campsite, and one friends tells the other to read, and to not skip anything and boy he did not.
I can’t say much about character development in this story. We don’t really get to know the narrator. At times you are going to think they are insane and you wonder about what he has done or said to the sister that lives with him. The two men who are reading the story are only used for framing of the story and there’s not much there.
The plot though I have to say that the initial parts of the story were very good. The imagery the narrator evokes as he explains about the history of the house he bought and how it lay uninhabited for years. How after 10 years something seemed to be plaguing the house and gardens. All of that to then push the man to see the world in different ways and a horrible humanoid swine creature with connections to the house.
That said, the book starts to slow after this and I found myself getting bored while reading. I wanted something to be done or discovered, but instead we get even more scenes of time flying past and the man seeing the end of the world.
The setting of this book takes place in Ireland. I was surprised though that the mysterious narrator talks of goddess Kali and the god Set and doesn’t try to delve into Irish folklore. I say that now, but for all I know there’s a story about a pig demon with talons in Irish folklore that I just don’t know about.
The ending though leaves no doubt that at least some parts of what was said in the journal was true.
I read this book for Halloween Bingo 2025, “Arcane Archives.”