Customer Reviews

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON'S NIGHT LANDS, Volume I, Eternal Love

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If I were to rate this book solely on the basis of its stories, I would give it 4 or possibly 5 stars. The long John C. Wright story is probably the outstanding entry, though a few others, including editor Andy Robertson's concluding "The Eater", are also excellent. Part of what makes these two stories so effective is that they fully convey the dread of the nightmarish Night Land which surrounds the remaining members of Humanity many millions of years in the future. A few of the earlier stories in the book aren't so effective at this.

My complaints lie in the serious production problems which mar the book. It has THE worst copy editing I have ever seen in any professional publication. Almost every page is afflicted with multiple errors, usually missing words, duplicate words, inappropriate words, misplaced words or phrases, and other mistakes that don't show up in a pass through a spell checker. These hundreds of mistakes are very distracting. If I were one of the writers in this book I would be upset about the poor presentation of my stories. Robertson's own stories are less afflicted by these errors.

A lesser irritation is the book's page headers. The left hand ones give the title of the book, and the right hand ones identify the editor, on every single page. In every other anthology on my shelf, these headers are used to identity the title and often the author of the story I'm reading. I shouldn't have to refer to the contents to remember the title and author of whatever I'm reading.

I wish I could give this book the full praise the stories deserve. I am told that any future volumes in this series will be professionally copy edited.

Do you like far future stories? Do you like Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance's time of the long shadows? Do you thrill to Smith's Zothique? Well then you've probably tried Hodgson's Nightland.
I suspect many who tried to read Hodgson's masterpiece have had the same reaction I did, "great idea, horrible execution". I never made it through the original and always wished someone would have taken his idea and cleaned up the archiac prose. Well my wish was granted! This is a spectacular collection that only makes me want to give Hodgson another go. After finishing the Robertson and Wright stories I promptly ordered everything I could find in print. John C. Wright also has a particularly moving paen to Hodgson directed to blockheads like myself who dismissed Nightland because of stylistics.

(If there are any John C. Wright fans out there, his contribution in the form of a novellete is breathtaking)

The story "Awake in the Night" by John C. Wright (alluded to in the above review) was included in the 2003 Year's Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois. It was probably my favorite piece in this 600+ page anthology. The world described in the "Night Lands" ouerve is fascinating. Based on this one work I was eager to read more and to seek out this particular book.

Hodgson's The Night Land was a great book, marred by the very painfully awful prose that Hodgson chose to use. The concept, though, is chilling. In this book, you have the concept wonderfully explored, and the writing is much easier to access. All of the stories were at the very least good, and some were incredibly good. I loved "Mouse in the Walls of the Lesser Redoubt" and "Eater", but all were well worth reading. If you like your horror with a scifi edge, but still chilling and horrifying, please read this book. It's well worth the time, and the money. I am very eagerly awaiting Volume 2.