I sometimes get into a rut. People think of me as the horror guy, but I read a lot of other things. Sometimes I need a break from the routine. There are, after all, a lot of phenomenal books out there outside the genre.
It gradually came on from a few more disappointments. The first was a major hardcover from a critically acclaimed newish writer. I liked the first novel from this person, and I hoped the work would improve. After trudging through a few laborious chapters, I gave it up.
The prose was so slow and stodgy. He. Went. Into. The. Room. He. Sat. At. A. Table. Someone else. Entered. The. Room.
It wasn’t quite that bad, but you get the idea, I think. Fiction should flow; it should pull you along the way toward the end. This book pushed me away. I know people say literary horror writers like Peter Straub are tough to read but trust me: This wasn’t anywhere close to Straub.
Don’t ask me the name of the writer. Suffice to say it was a Tor Nightfire book.
I tried two beloved indie authors. These two people are pillars of the community, darlings of the new frontier of independent publishing. Again, a few painful chapters and I threw in the towel.
At least I got the Nightfire book from the library. I paid for the other two. I keep telling myself to stop throwing good money away on books I will likely hate. If I want to try new authors, I can use the library.
I shook off the disappointments and read a few other books. I read one by a respected literary writer and I liked it a lot. I read a couple of YA books, and again, I liked them.
Breaks are good, but I miss horror. I wish I liked more new books.
I don't even think it’s a case of me thinking old books are better. The shelves at WaldenBooks were overflowing with horror books. Most of them were the lousy paperbacks from hell tiles people drool all over today. I was lucky to find one or two good new books a month back then.
I always liked Mark Morris. He’s not well known here in the States. More are familiar, I bet, with his work as an anthologist. Morris is, however, a remarkable author of fiction.
I first encountered Mark Morris with a book called The Horror Club. It was an American paperback, from Bantam Spectra. Sadly, The Horror Club was a truncated version of Morris’s 1989 classic coming of age debut novel, Toady.
There were a couple others. White Wolf did an American paperback of The Immaculate in ‘95. Leisure reprinted The Immaculate a decade later. Leisure also published one called The Deluge.
By and large, unfortunately, Mark Morris has mostly seen print in his native England. He seems to have a good arrangement with Flame Tree Press, who do Morris’s anthologies and nice editions of his own fiction.
Desperate to break the curse of mediocrity I’d been struck with, I chose Mark Morris’s That Which Stands Outside, from 2024. It was exactly the remedy I needed.
That Which Stands Outside won’t knock the top books off my favorites list, but it’s a damned good horror novel. That’s hard to find these days, or in any era.
This one stands somewhere between the styles of Ramsey Campbell and James Herbert. Morris’s writing is lyrical and often humorous, and he deals with apocalyptic themes. For those who live by sub-categorical labels, That Which Stands Outside is part folk horror, with a generous helping of Lovecraftian cosmic terror on the side.
Todd is an average bloke, trying to make it as a successful actor while working a couple nondescript jobs. One night while walking home from his bartending job, he sees a woman being mugged. Todd jumps in, gets the crap beaten out of him, but saves the woman. Grateful, she openly wants a relationship with Todd.
Beautiful, exotic, well-off, dynamic, Yrsa is almost too good to be true. Todd is too smitten to be deterred by Yrsa’s occasional bouts of dangerous temper and harsh opinions about his friends.
Yrsa’s mother dies and she wants Todd to accompany her to her home. They set off to her island home near Iceland. That’s when things begin to get really weird. The locals are hostile. They despise Yrsa and want her gone from the island. She dismisses them as superstitious savages.
Yrsa was lost in a cave when she was young, and she swears she saw an preserved ancient ship hidden in the narrow confines of the caverns. She persuades Todd to hire his contractor brother to tear out some walls to find the treasure. Does Yrsa wish to discover an archeological treasure, or does she have more sinister motives?
I think you know the answer to that question.
That Which Stands Outside is rich in language, detailed in character and atmosphere, and at around three-hundred-and-sixty-pages, it’s neither too long nor too short.
Change a few details and That Which Stands Alone could have been published in the eighties. It also feels completely modern. The novel avoids the cliches but somehow seems completely familiar. It’s absolutely one of the best horror novels I’ve read so far this year.
It’s sad that Mark Morris is published in England and not in America, but his books are distributed here. Flame Tree titles are easily obtained at your favorite bookselling outlets. His next novel, the tantalizingly-titled Bad Things Happen Here, comes out next week. I just placed my order with Bookshop.org, which is where we all should buy our books.
Written by Mark Sieber
It gradually came on from a few more disappointments. The first was a major hardcover from a critically acclaimed newish writer. I liked the first novel from this person, and I hoped the work would improve. After trudging through a few laborious chapters, I gave it up.
The prose was so slow and stodgy. He. Went. Into. The. Room. He. Sat. At. A. Table. Someone else. Entered. The. Room.
It wasn’t quite that bad, but you get the idea, I think. Fiction should flow; it should pull you along the way toward the end. This book pushed me away. I know people say literary horror writers like Peter Straub are tough to read but trust me: This wasn’t anywhere close to Straub.
Don’t ask me the name of the writer. Suffice to say it was a Tor Nightfire book.
I tried two beloved indie authors. These two people are pillars of the community, darlings of the new frontier of independent publishing. Again, a few painful chapters and I threw in the towel.
At least I got the Nightfire book from the library. I paid for the other two. I keep telling myself to stop throwing good money away on books I will likely hate. If I want to try new authors, I can use the library.
I shook off the disappointments and read a few other books. I read one by a respected literary writer and I liked it a lot. I read a couple of YA books, and again, I liked them.
Breaks are good, but I miss horror. I wish I liked more new books.
I don't even think it’s a case of me thinking old books are better. The shelves at WaldenBooks were overflowing with horror books. Most of them were the lousy paperbacks from hell tiles people drool all over today. I was lucky to find one or two good new books a month back then.
I always liked Mark Morris. He’s not well known here in the States. More are familiar, I bet, with his work as an anthologist. Morris is, however, a remarkable author of fiction.
I first encountered Mark Morris with a book called The Horror Club. It was an American paperback, from Bantam Spectra. Sadly, The Horror Club was a truncated version of Morris’s 1989 classic coming of age debut novel, Toady.
There were a couple others. White Wolf did an American paperback of The Immaculate in ‘95. Leisure reprinted The Immaculate a decade later. Leisure also published one called The Deluge.
By and large, unfortunately, Mark Morris has mostly seen print in his native England. He seems to have a good arrangement with Flame Tree Press, who do Morris’s anthologies and nice editions of his own fiction.
Desperate to break the curse of mediocrity I’d been struck with, I chose Mark Morris’s That Which Stands Outside, from 2024. It was exactly the remedy I needed.
That Which Stands Outside won’t knock the top books off my favorites list, but it’s a damned good horror novel. That’s hard to find these days, or in any era.
This one stands somewhere between the styles of Ramsey Campbell and James Herbert. Morris’s writing is lyrical and often humorous, and he deals with apocalyptic themes. For those who live by sub-categorical labels, That Which Stands Outside is part folk horror, with a generous helping of Lovecraftian cosmic terror on the side.
Todd is an average bloke, trying to make it as a successful actor while working a couple nondescript jobs. One night while walking home from his bartending job, he sees a woman being mugged. Todd jumps in, gets the crap beaten out of him, but saves the woman. Grateful, she openly wants a relationship with Todd.
Beautiful, exotic, well-off, dynamic, Yrsa is almost too good to be true. Todd is too smitten to be deterred by Yrsa’s occasional bouts of dangerous temper and harsh opinions about his friends.
Yrsa’s mother dies and she wants Todd to accompany her to her home. They set off to her island home near Iceland. That’s when things begin to get really weird. The locals are hostile. They despise Yrsa and want her gone from the island. She dismisses them as superstitious savages.
Yrsa was lost in a cave when she was young, and she swears she saw an preserved ancient ship hidden in the narrow confines of the caverns. She persuades Todd to hire his contractor brother to tear out some walls to find the treasure. Does Yrsa wish to discover an archeological treasure, or does she have more sinister motives?
I think you know the answer to that question.
That Which Stands Outside is rich in language, detailed in character and atmosphere, and at around three-hundred-and-sixty-pages, it’s neither too long nor too short.
Change a few details and That Which Stands Alone could have been published in the eighties. It also feels completely modern. The novel avoids the cliches but somehow seems completely familiar. It’s absolutely one of the best horror novels I’ve read so far this year.
It’s sad that Mark Morris is published in England and not in America, but his books are distributed here. Flame Tree titles are easily obtained at your favorite bookselling outlets. His next novel, the tantalizingly-titled Bad Things Happen Here, comes out next week. I just placed my order with Bookshop.org, which is where we all should buy our books.
Written by Mark Sieber
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