The Boats of the Glen Carrig

By: William Hope Hodgson

Narrated by: Mark Turetsky

Length: 5 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

The survivors of the shipwrecked eighteenth-century vessel Glen Carrig fight for their lives amidst a vast continent of weeds. Mysterious wrecks, horrific monsters, and swashbuckling adventure!

First published in 1907, The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" is a classic supernatural horror tale, praised by H. P. Lovecraft for its "brooding menace... impossible to surpass"

Public Domain (P)2016 Mark Turetsky

On the "BUCKET LIST" of books you MUST read!

Spectacular Ocean going ship adventures into an unknown!
A Sargasso Sea with it's weird forbidden islands crawling with many soul-shaking horrors & horrific hungry monsters.

Vastly ahead of his time, Willian Hope Hodgson was setting the ground work for many of pop culture's greatest adventure authors to come: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, ...and, oh yes, the father of all modern horror... Howard Phillips Lovecraft. It's well established that H.P. Lovecraft gained inspiration from William Hope Hodgson's frightening tales of high strangeness on the high seas.

Beyond blazing a trail for literature, William Hope Hodgson's weird tales also influenced a generation of film makers.
Most clearly, movies such as Hammer Film's 1968's "The Lost Continent": A re-telling of "The Boats of Glen Carrig" featuring a lost ship full of passengers with dark secrets plotting against each other in true 60's sex-ploitative over-tones as they sail into the very same living sea-weed & monster infested mist shrouded Ocean mystery area, as in "The Boats of Glen Carrig"

This book is a treasure of pop-culture / adventure & horror literature.
This classic tale is told expertly in a solid narration by Mark Turetsky.

If you like horror, adventure, and very weird tales, then... William Hope Hodgson's "The Boats of Glen Carrig" is on your "BUCKET LIST" of books you MUST experience in audio, or read, in this life.

Less than the sum of its parts

Would you try another book from William Hope Hodgson and/or Mark Turetsky?

Yes. I read this book because I've enjoyed William Hope Hodgson's other work. I'm beginning to think that he's best suited for short stories and struggles with long-form fiction.

Has The Boats of the Glen Carrig turned you off from other books in this genre?

Of course not.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Just not a lot of life to it.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Frustration and impatience. There was so much potential, but the events seemed to only happen in isolation. The book had lots of interesting things happening in it, but these seemed to leave no progressive impact.

lacklustre, dragging story

The story centres around a passenger aboard a ship, when the ship sinks, he and some sailors sets out in a life boat and ends up on a strange island inhabited by ferocious plant creatures and surrounded by beastly fish.

Sounds interesting? It's not. The writing is stale and the majority of the content of the book is about how the men MaCGyver together contraptions. This is written In such detail that it's almost painful to listen to. And when things actually do happen, you barely notice as it's so boringly and matter of fact written that it never feels like there's anything at stake. There is zero emotion, the characters aren't even developed enough to be caricatures and as a reault the listener never gets invested in anything that's happening.

The reading by Mark Turetsky is childish and repetitive, but in all fairness there isn't much to work with, so he's not entirely to blame. I still wonder why they so often insist on having Americans perform Hodgson's stories. The main character is meant to be an English aristocrat, but Turetsky makes him sound like a boy scout. His cheery reading became really tiresome after a while and he would probably be better suited to do a Hardy boys novel.

The beginning is rather good, I have to say though, that's the reason why I gave this book two stars instead of one. But in spite of that, I can't recommend this book, if you want a good maritime horror story, listen to "The ghost pirates" by Hodgson instead.