THE LONELY LANDS - Ramsey Campbell

Joe Hunter is struggling with depression. He is only just beginning to adjust to life since his beloved wife, Olivia, passed away when he hears her calling from the 'beyond.' "Where am I?" she calls out to Joe. While her body has died, her soul, her essence, is wandering in an afterlife that is made up of her memories. Memories which he mostly shares. But she is not the only spirit inhabiting the afterlife and she wanders to avoid the restless.

Joe journeys into the afterlife each day to lure the restless dead away from his wife, but with each journey it gets harder for him to return and by opening the door to and from the afterlife, Joe allows some of the restless to invade his everyday life.

As his wife gets more frantic, facing increasing horrors among the afterlife, Joe will need to make a decision about whether or not to make the ultimate sacrifice to help his wife.

I've written before about how much I like Ramsey Campbell's slow-boiling horror and how the story creeps up on you and you sometimes you don't realize how terrible the events are until it's too late. But this book is different, and not in the best of ways.

This story moves even slower than usual for a Campbell novel. Some of this might be that it is also much more repetitious than other books from the horror grandmaster. Joe is lonely and concerned. Olivia is dead and afraid. Joe goes to help, then returns.  Repeat. The only change is the intensity of the wanderers in the lonely lands.

This is almost not really a horror story as much as it is a novel about grief in a dark fantasy setting. 

It's possible, even likely, that I was expecting something very different, given that it's a Ramsey Campbell book, and I'm more than willing to give this the benefit of the doubt that I missed something because of my expectations. The writing is sharp and the characters are so real they don't just disappear when you close the book.  It's just ... the horror is too contained and the spiral that we expect to see happen to our protagonist isn't quite there.

Looking for a good book? Ramsey Campbell gives us lots of grief and depression in The Lonely Lands but the dark fantasy/horror is more backdrop than spotlight.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3 stars

* * * * * *

The Lonely Lands

author: Ramsey Campbell

publisher: Flame Tree Press

ISBN: 9781787588615

hardcover, 256 pages

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