Dark Matter: the gripping ghost story from the author of WAKENHYRST

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In the summer of 1994, psychologist Daniel Hill buys a rustic farmhouse nestled in the rolling hills of West Virginia. Thin Air: A Ghost Story fitted the bill perfectly for me, this is more the the sort of story that is eerie and chilling and unsettling as opposed to scary.

In the first part of the novel, Paver sets up some brilliant foreshadowing for what is to come, and even whilst our characters are in the comfort of company, there is a sense of foreboding building up in the shadows. ⁠ During a walk through the local church yard, Edmund spots an eye in the undergrowth. His terror is only briefly abated when he discovers it's actually a painting, a 'doom', taken from the church. It's horrifying in its depiction of hell, and Edmund wants nothing more to do with it despite his historical significance. But the doom keeps returning to his mind. The stench of the Fen permeates the house, even with the windows closed. And when he lies awake at night, he hears a scratching sound – like claws on the wooden floor...It is 1935 and our narrator, Dr Stephen Pearce, has left London, and the woman he was supposed to be marrying, to join his brother, Kit, on a mountaineering expedition. In 1906, Kit’s hero, Sir Edmund Lyell, led an expedition up Kangchenjunga, which ended in disaster. His book, “Bloody but Unbowed: the Assault on Mount Kangchenjunga,” presented Lyell as a hero; even though he and Charles Tennant, were the only survivors of a tragedy, which saw five members of the party perish in the attempt to climb the mountain. All mountains are killers, but ours is worse than most," says Stephen, the protagonist of Thin Air as he climbs Kangchenjunga, the sacred mountain in the Himalayas. This is a great read and I can't wait for Michelle's next book to come out if it is anything like this one * THE FRINGE * So when he’s offered the chance to be the wireless operator on an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year.

Es gibt Tagebücher des Vaters, die heimlich von der Tochter gelesen werden und so immer mehr offenbaren. Gerade zu Beginn hat mich das sehr gefesselt. Michelle Paver is most famous for writing a series of fantasy novels for younger readers - which I have not read - and Dark Matter, subtitled A Ghost Story, is her first novel for adult readers.The opening chapter of this novel really does draw the reader in, I enjoyed the atmosphere and descriptions of the the Manor House and fens. But unfortunately the Plot was slow and uneventful. I felt the story dragged and the mystery and suspense created at the beginning, seemed to wane the further along the book I read. I wasn’t a fan of the constant switching between narratives as a lot of the story became repetitive and quite confusing. I really enjoy ghost stories in general, so getting into this modern rendition of a historical mountaineering thriller turned ghost story was pretty fun.

Thin Air is an interesting book about a group that decides to climb Kangchenjunga in India. I was quite fascinated with the books premise. Horror stories that take place in isolated places are great and I was quite looking forward to being swept off my feet. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. I liked the story, but I didn't love it. There were interesting moments, but I just felt that I never really connected with either Stephen Pearce or his fellow travelers. I liked the idea that one of the men from the previous expedition was left behind and that Stephen Pearce felt haunted. But, it just never got really interesting.

A blood-curdling ghost story, evocative not just of icy northern wastes but of a mind turning in on itself.” This is pacey, readable historical fiction with a good sense of period and atmosphere. I enjoyed Pearce’s narration, and the one-upmanship type of relationship with his brother adds an interesting dimension to the expedition dynamics. However, I never submitted sufficiently to Paver’s spell to find anything particularly scary. I’ll try again with her other ghost story, Dark Matter, about an Arctic expedition from the same time period. Dark Matter is terrifying. The only novel to really get under my skin and infiltrate my nightmares.”

This novel was.....good. I say that with a gap because it was also not as wholly impressive as I wanted it to be either, but an entertaining ride all the same. Author Michelle Paver was another wonder to me. Her knowledge of life in the Arctic is so extensive I had to find out more about her and read that Michelle traveled to Finland, Greenland, Sweden, Norway, Arctic Canada, and the Carpathian Mountains. She has slept on reindeer skins, swum with wild killer whales, and gotten nose to nose with polar bears and wolves to research her books. That explained why her book was so realistic and believable. Ghosts - or fictional ones, at least - tend to haunt inhabited places, whether houses, churches, castles or hospital wards. So used are we to the traditions of the genre that a description of a decrepit mansion full of dark corners and unexplained creaks is enough to raise in us readers expectations of phantoms and ghouls. In this regard, Michelle Paver's "Thin Air" - much like its predecessor Dark Matter - is not your typical ghostly tale since it is the very remoteness of the haunted spaces which makes the setting particularly eerie. The context of "Thin Air" is a 1935 expedition to the summit of the Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, the third highest peak in the world. A team of five Englishmen, including narrator Stephen Pearce and his brother "Kits", set off in the footsteps of a disastrous 1907 expedition, made famous through the memoirs of its leader Edmund Lyell. It turns out, however, that Lyell's memoirs might have left out some of the more unsavoury details of that doomed attempt, as our intrepid protagonists will discover to their dismay. Indeed, memories and relics of the Lyell expedition seem to cast a pall over the new climb. This is a blood-curdling ghost story” agrees Victoria Moore in the Daily Mail, “evocative not just of icy northern wastes but of a mind as, trapped, it turns in on itself.”Stephen's fraught relationship with his brother Kits, was one of the main conflicts of the story. Besides Stephen, and sometimes Major Cotterell, I didn't like any of the white members of the expedition. They were either driven by greed and pride or cowardly in the face of injustice or common sense. It gave me a smug sense of satisfaction when Kits received his just desserts. I have been reading quite a lot of Gothic Fiction novels of late and finding my joy in most of them but Wakenhyrst just didn’t create the suspense or tension I was expecting. Paver has written a seriously good, very original, genuinely creepy story and for that, we must say mange takk (Norwegian for thanks) -- Toni Whitmont * BOOKTOPIA * Although none of the characters are particularly likeable, but the portrait of Edmund Stearne is a powerful study of self-obsessed tyranny. People are more frightening than the supernatural here. There is a terrific sense of place and the fen is a character in its own right. Paver draws on folklore and tradition and there is an interesting description of eel-glaving. Some of these traditions continue and you can buy eels at my local farmers market. The combination of Edmund’s patriarchal tyranny with his puritanical protestant classicalism makes it chilling to watch his road to committing murder. The struggles of the imaginary Alice Pyett make for interesting reading as well. Paver definitely seems to be the go to author during the spooky season as this gothic Edwardian mystery is just as compelling as her ghost stories.