The Croning
-
-
4.5 • 8 Ratings
-
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us...
Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly eighty years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret...
...of The Croning.
From Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation, comes The Croning, a debut novel of cosmic horror.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Teeming with the cosmic horrors that distinguish the fiction of Lovecraft, Machen, and other weird fiction masters, this eerie first novel offers up a picture of human civilization as a plaything in the claws of malignant alien entities. Don Miller, a corporate geologist, is married to globe-trotting anthropologist Michelle Mock, who for decades has tracked clues pointing to the existence of "the little people." As Michelle's research exposes her and Don to numerous weird experiences over the years, it becomes evident that she is investigating something primal and that she may be shielding Don from its mind-blasting incomprehensibility. The narrative toggles back and forth from past to present, establishing a rhythm between disturbing events and their foreshadowing that reaches a terrifying climax. Barron (Occultation) has studied the work of his predecessors well; already acknowledged a master of the horror short story, he shows himself equally skilled at novel-length work.
Customer Reviews
The premiere name in Horror Literature is LAIRD BARRON
Hi, if you like literary horror, weird fiction, unpredictable narratives, addictively-structured prose, and lots of occultation being woven into the plot of a masterfully crafted cosmic terror tale, THEN LOOK NO FURTHER.
The rest of you can go back to your best-selling safety bubbles of “scary stories” and your “mysteries and thrillers” (that’s adorable by the way) — the rest of us will be here reading anything and everything Laird Barron publishes because it’s the WHAT YOU NEVER KNEW YOU WERE MISSING UNTIL YOU EXPERIENCE IT.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you when someone comes up to you in the future and tries to recommend Barron’s work to you, as if they’re doing you some huge favor. No, this is that favor. Right now. Put down your Stephen King nonsense, and if you REALLY think you know what great writing looks like all while being served up in a sinister, soul-crushing style with words that get under your skin and burrow there for weeks and weeks after you’re done with this novel, then join the fun. Or you can never take a chance in life, play it stupid, play it lame, play it safe, and go read whatever book is on the front page of the iTunes Store claiming to be, “the next gone girl!!!” (Yeah, because The Girl on the Train wasn’t an awful enough novel and film to teach us that lesson by now...but you will, sadly. You will return to your safety bubble, and it’s a shame.)
You could have experienced something truly special here. Well, I guess that means it’s just me & the Children of Old Leech tonight...nothing scary about that...*whimpers*