The Night Land

A Love Tale

By: William Hope Hodgson

Narrated by: Drew Ariana

Length: 18 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's Summary

In the far future, an unnamed narrator, who along with what remains of the human race dwells uneasily in an underground fortress-city surrounded by brooding, chaotic, relentless Watching Things, Silent Ones, Hounds, Giants, "Ab-humans", Brutes, and enormous slugs and spiders, follows a telepathic distress signal into the unfathomable darkness. The Earth's surface is frozen. At some point in the distant past, overreaching scientists breached "the Barrier of Life" that separates our dimension from one populated by "monstrosities and Forces" who have sought humankind's destruction ever since. Armed only with a lightsaber-esque weapon called a Diskos, and fortified only by his sense of honor, our hero braves every sort of terror en route to rescue a woman he loves but has never met.

Public Domain (P)2013 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Critic Reviews

"[Good science fiction stories] give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience.... W. H. Hodgson's The Night Land [makes the grade] in eminence from the unforgettable sombre splendour of the images it presents...." (C.S. Lewis)

"For all its flaws and idiosyncrasies, The Night Land is utterly unsurpassed, unique, astounding. A mutant vision like nothing else there has ever been." (China Miéville)

Tough read, but rewarding

What did you like best about The Night Land? What did you like least?

Easily, this book has one of the best concepts ever written, the idea of a future world where the sun has died and humanity holds out in a giant metallic pyramid, protected by some ill-understood force from mountain sized monsters and other crepuscular beasts is fantastic. But not only is the premise imaginative the world is full of, if not realistic detail, then at least overflows with romantic, at times sentimental, creativity. My favorite creatures being the watchers and the slugs. Truly for it's imagination it is deserving of broader recognition.

However, as much as I wanted to love this novel, the style interferes too much with enjoyment by any reader, especially a modern one. The romantic sentiment helps with the adventurous spirit and tone but weighs it down in other sections - especially the whole chapter dedicated to the seemingly insane coquettish behaviors of his beloved after he rescues her from the smaller redoubt. Those that might be inclined to the story's romantic aspect will no doubt be turned off by it's historical misogyny. The affected speech is not only foreign to modern ears but would have been ill-constructed in the period it was trying to imitate. This affected English is not only distracting, but really impedes a lot of the action, much to the books detriment.

By the end of the novel the listener will hate the phrases, "in verity" and "as you can know/imagine/comprehend/grasps etc."

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Night Land?

The opening scenes in the the Night Lands, chapter 2-3, where the world of the the Night Land is set down for you. Certainly there are cool monsters and journey and vistas, seas of fire and such, but for me at least, the initial introduction was the best.

Would you be willing to try another one of Drew Ariana’s performances?

Hard to tell it was hard to listen to the whole story, the voice sounds a bit monotone, but I feel a lot of that was more the text, and that there was very little anyone could have done to liven it up. At any rate he got me through the whole book, which I could never finish on my own so that is worth something. I supposed I might give him another shot.

Could you see The Night Land being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Unknowns, these characters belong in a romantic and adventurous period that most major actors would look out of place in. Best you could maybe hope for is a Sean Bean type character but even he wouldn't really fit.

Maybe Ray Winstone?

Any additional comments?

Definitely for fans or students of weird fiction, not for the general consumption. It is a very tough read, and at time may make you drowsy, but if you can stand the monotone and try to re imagine what is at times poorly described, it becomes very impressive and rewarding.

A perfect example of audio benefits

This would have been a more challenging book to read. Written when it was and in the style it was - the language used was odd to this modern reader. Hearing it read was far more interesting and, once past a couple chapters, both understood and enjoyed. A classic book that is oft cited as an influence on Lovecraft - this story is about a journey through a horrific future land for love. Obviously dated - some elements might be tough for today. Especially attitudes and action between the sexes. In that regard, it’s not a very enlightened perspective of the future. The woman is still portrayed as weak, in need of protection, and generally as property to be managed - sometimes using violence. Historical context aside, the portrait of the nightland is nightmarish and horrific. With a little imagination, listening to this book will transport you to a place you do not want to be! Yet - you want to join the protagonist in the journey once invested. For some reason, in addition to Lovecraft - I kept thinking this read a little like a Conan novel. With an archetype hero, helpless maiden, and monsters in all directions. Fun book to listen to. I’m glad to be safely back.

Monstrous Meandering Unfathomable Obscurity

I have never come across a book of this sort. It is essentially a meandering account of one man’s quest to recover a lost love set in an incomprehensible future where the sun has been extinguished. Told in a sing-song prose and using language evocative of Shakespeare it sounds like an epic poem. Personally I did not find this to be a successful attempt at relating a quasi-Science Fiction tale is the format of an Elizabethan love poem. The repetition of many terms takes on the quality of poetic meter at times but to me revealed the lack of imagination of the author in selecting more descriptive words.

The narrator, Drew Ariana, is well suited to this material. He has a quaint accent that is not quite English in character but resonates with the echoes of a past era and is the sole reason that I persevered until the end. In whole, this is a bizarre listening experience that I can find none else with which to compare.

A Window Through Time; Past and Future

Love bridges millenia, endures the dying world, and saves them from the Night Land. The Night Land is a relic unlike any other, a window into how the best and most poetic of our forebearers chose to see the future of the world they learned was finite. William Hodgson didn't accept that man would go quietly into the eternal night past the death of our sun, as he saw that even in his day men and women would endure impossibilities for the sake of love. The Night Land is a haunting tale set in our world after the sun has utterly set, and the remnants of humanity are beseiged by creatures of the eternal night. There are Monsters fallen to depths beyond Morlocks, interdimensional intelligences more demonic than mere alien, beastial abominations mocking the forms of their unfathomably distant ancestors and more, all watching and stalking the final redoubt of man. It is in this distant, desolate, utterly dark and endlessly dangerous world that a doomed love from the past is reborn. A man dreams of a past life wherin his bride tragically died young, and uncovers tantalyzing hints that his beloved, Mirdath the beautiful, has been reborn in this new age of endless, perilous night. To reach her he will have to do what no man has survived an attempt to do in millions of years - he must leave the walls of the Last Redoubt of mankind, and venture forth to cross the Night Lands in search of his Mirdath. Hodgson's Night Land is fantastic, haunting, and thoroughly poetic in its language, bordering on archaic. If you can imagine enjoying a story written in the vein of Milton with the influence of Lord Kelvin, this is the Night Land for you! If you enjoy the dying earth literary progeny of The Night Land, but prefer less arcane poetry in the prose, consider John C. Wright's Awake in the Night Lands as a worthy heir that captures the haunting Night Land world, but spends less time on the arcane poetry. Every weird tale told in the past century contains at least a portion of the Night Land in its DNA, and fans of Dying Earth owe it to themselves to read this masterpiece that started it all. Hodgson, Lovecraft and Howard may get a bad rap from the mediocrities peddling sludge in today's book market, but they are the giants on whose shoulders stands every strange tale of weird fiction.

A flawed classic

Amazingly imaginative work. The narrator is very good for the difficult language and makes it flow despite itself. The misogyny of its age is very evident about three quarters of the way through the book, so be warned it is quite distasteful in some places. For those who would like to enjoy the imagination and the romance of the story without the archaic language and the misogyny, I recommend the reverent rewriting of the book: The Night Land: A Story Retold. I believe both books have their place. I read the revised book before I read this classic original and it really helped in parsing the direction and movement of the story. YMMV.

My Kingdom for an Editor

The setting is very creatiwe and interesting, but the language is extremely tedious and the majority of the story is filled with trivial and repeditive details. "And lo, it was that I took a step with my right food. And verily, this was followed by none other than the same from my left. And it was that mine right foot took a step again. And surely, my left did so too, as was proper. And verily, then my right foot stepped forward. And thence, the left of my two feet did move to be in front of the other. "Then I killed ten monsters. "And it was such that after the monsters were slain, I did to set about walking again. And lo, I took me a step with my right foot..." -only slightly paraphrased

A struggle to the end

Let me start by saying that William Hope Hodgson is a wonderful writer and builder of worlds... this just isn't his best work. The story could hardly be considered even passably acceptable in today's societal climate, let alone even remotely close to politically correct. It is unfortunately riddled with inextricable misogyny, and this ended up grating on the nerves almost as much as the clumsy use of imitative 18th century prose. I can't fathom for the life of me why Hodgson chose to use that time period as a base for his framing narrative, but the fact that the entire story is told in faux-romance era vernacular makes it a difficult read. In terms of positive merits, Hodgson, as usual, has created an incredible world for the story to unfold in. The utter end-times vibe of everything and feeling of total desolation which pervades the world of the Night Land is very setting of a mood, and excellent for rainy day listening, yet thrilling and engaging if you can get beyond the clunky wordage and teeth grating misogyny. I commend the late author on his world building skills, and the narrator for making the best of the messy prose he was given, but I cannot recommend this book. The atmosphere and world building are not worth the price of admission to what is essentially a galloping Prince Charming style story, told from the POV of said Prince Charming, who is also an insufferable Mary Sue. 2 stars, if only for great narration and atmosphere.

Resist the Urge to be Original

I can’t add much to what has already been written here. However, I would say that I usually feel a powerful urge to experience an original work before moving to any derivative works. In this case, I have to recommend NOT giving into that urge. If your dead set on reading The Night Land, I suggest getting the one by James Stoddard, “A Story Retold”. The world Hodgson has constructed is very interesting and seems different from any I’ve yet experienced. He thoroughly ruined that with the anachronistic, repetitive, misogynistic prose. I’d like to emphasize that I don’t toss around the accusation of misogyny lightly. That term is barely in my vocabulary. I resisted the urge to label this story misogynistic for many pages before even I tired of the well-meaning physical abuse and archaic gender roles. The ending was trite and predictable.

A good idea, not a good book

What would have made The Night Land better?

There's no plot, and the style is clumsy. It would need significant editing (like The Dream of X), and more than the single character that exists now.

Would you ever listen to anything by William Hope Hodgson again?

Probably not. There's too many accomplished, artful writers in the world for me to be in the business of giving second chances to a man who squandered 500 pages.

What about Drew Ariana’s performance did you like?

It was articulate, even, and as smooth and responsive as the text allowed. He wasn't given a lot to work with.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The book's historical significance is its redemption, and the reason I read it. H.P. Lovecraft has inherited an unearned reputation of having given birth to "cosmic horror" from nothing. In reality, you can see all the best elements of his work in "The Night Land," and "The Gods of Pagana." To the extent anyone's interested in Lovecraft, either of these would be rewarding reads.

Additionally, there's something satisfyingly bleak about the dead world, the "House of Silence," and the Watchers that seem to exist and react along geological time scales.

Any additional comments?

It's impossible to discuss the book without noting, at least in passing, the incredible misogyny animating its internal morality. This is unfortunate. If I remember correctly, there are more uses of the term "maid" than there are pages in the standard publication.

An unbearably turgid classic

Would you try another book written by William Hope Hodgson or narrated by Drew Ariana?

Yes to both. I have read other work my Hodgson, including "The House on the Borderland" and would be pleased to listen to it again. I think most of his work is better written than "The Night Land".

What was most disappointing about William Hope Hodgson’s story?

The artificial prose style, the repetition, the descriptions that should have been evocative but fell short, the lack of twists or surprises - in short the sheer linearity of the story.

Have you listened to any of Drew Ariana’s other performances? How does this one compare?

No.

Was The Night Land worth the listening time?

Oh yes, especially as I could get on with the laundry, the washing up, the weeding and so on. And there is a diamond of a story in there. Shame it's buries under a mountain of soot.

Any additional comments?

"The Night Land" is an early and highly influential example of Dying Earth fiction. If, like me, you are a fan of the genre and a bit of a completist, it's probably on your "must read" list. However, you might have gathered that reading it is a bit of a trial; H.P. Lovecraft described it as "seriously marred by painful verboseness, repetitiousness, artificial and nauseously sticky romantic sentimentality, and an attempt at archaic language even more grotesque and absurd than that in 'Glen Carrig'."
Aside from not having read "Glen Carrig", I have to agree with Lovecraft in the strongest terms. Regarding the verboseness, bear in mind that it's 200,000 words long, about 600 pages. An abridged version, "The Dream of X", is 20,000 words long, which means that for every 10 words Hodgson wrote, 9 were discarded. This audiobook is unabridged, but once I was halfway through I could see that it should have been cut down even more. The author's vision is wonderfully powerful, but the prose and storytelling are simply dreadful, especially in the second half, and the cod-archaic style reduces the power to evoke. For entire chapters, Hodgson inserts a variant on "truly", "surely" or "in verity" in every single sentence, which becomes very annoying - and anyway, when you highlight EVERYTHING, that's just the same as not have highlighted anything.
Every time the narrator repeats something (which is often) he'll point out the fact to the reader. Indeed, he has no use for such handy devices as saying, "The next few days proceeded in much the same way." There are lengthy homilies on love that would probably make a Twilight fan wince. Despite being in extreme danger, the heroine is driven by her "naughtiness" to engage in risky "pranks". We then have the problem of how to root for a hero who beats the woman he loves.
The reader, Drew Ariana, doesn't have a different voice for each character, because there isn't any dialogue AT ALL. He does manage to convey emotion in places, but frankly, he's got so little to work with, I'm giving him 5 stars for sheer perseverence - he should really be given a medal.

fantasy WRIT LARGE!

This must surely be the greatest work of an author who deserves infinitely more recognition than he has actually been afforded. The Night Land is a long story, written in a style which can only be described as weird. And yet, the story is huge in scope, and has elements of horror, great valour, and enduring love. In a world long bereft of the sun, a young man leaves the last refuge of mankind, which is his home, in search of his soul mate, -- the existence of whom he has divined in in a clairvoyant or dream state. He embarks on a journey into the darkness, where terror and destruction stalks at every turn. Our hero, who is un named, takes the reader along with him, sharing each step of the way. The things encountered on his journey are monstrous, and bizarre beyond imagining, and begs indulgence and understanding from the reader. However, if one is patient, a feast of fantasy entertainment is in store for you. One just has to let it flow, and be receptive.