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Cover blurb for The House on the Borderland
British fantasy author William Hope Hodgson wrote the supernatural horror book The House on the Borderland in 1908. The book is a hallucinogenic description of a recluse's stay in a rural location and his encounters with paranormal beings and ethereal realms. Two men are taken aback when they come upon a peculiar abyss while on a two-week fishing trip in secluded western Ireland. They discover ruins and a journal buried in them on a rock spur above this hole. They read the journal. The journal's author describes himself as an elderly guy who has long resided in a historic building. A few months later, awful man-sized monsters with dead-white skin attack the House after emerging from a nearby Pit. Strong and intelligent, the Swine-Things are unable to enter; after a night and day during which the Recluse kills several of them, they vanish. He waits several days before leaving the House with Pepper to seek the previous gardens outside because he is scared of the dangerous monsters. The story closes with the guy in his study seeing the beast enter the Cellar through the trap door. After recovering from reading the journal, the two guys resume fishing without attempting to return to the terrifying abyss.
Comments
Which edition is that a back cover blurb for? It appears to give away the ending.
Here's what I find available on Amazon
Dover Books edition:
A reclusive man, retreating to the Irish countryside with his sister, finds himself one day at the portal to another dimension. Years later, amid the crumbling ruins of his home, a pair of travelers find his diary and its horrifying details of the terrors that stalked his world — grotesque, swine-like monsters crawling from an abyss to swarm about the doors, fierce storms that threatened to unleash malevolent supernatural powers, and a harrowing vision of the death of the solar system."A classic of the first order," declared H. P. Lovecraft of this hugely influential novel. First published in 1908, it bridges the era between traditional ghost stories and modern fantasy. Modern readers will savor its compelling journey through space and time and its evocative blend of the best aspects of horror and science fiction.
Pen Pulse edition:
“Impossible, that blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown.”
The House on the Borderland is a supernatural horror novel by British fantasist William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1908. Two friends discover the terrifying story of an unidentified recluse when they come across a crumbling manuscript in the remains of an old Irish home. The odd and evil forces that converge on his remote home, a house that swings uncomfortably between reality and an eerie dimension, are recounted in his terrifying tale. The narrator is thrown into a cosmic voyage of frightening visions, monstrous creatures, and existential dread as time and space break apart around him.
Penguin Weird Fiction:
Penguin Weird Fiction: a celebration of the very best of the weird, a store of novels and tales that for generations have delighted and horrified.
A manuscript is found. Filled with small, precise writing and smelling of pit-water, it tells the story of an old recluse and his strange home – and it’s even stranger, jade-green double, seen by that old man on an otherworldly plain where gigantic gods and monsters roam. Soon his earthly abode is no less terrible than this strange vision, as swine-like creatures boil from a cavern beneath the ground and besiege it. But a still greater horror will face the recluse, one more awful than any creature that can be fought or killed.
The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson’s great masterpiece of cosmic fear, is an extraordinary novel that defied all accepted conventions of horror writing, forging in an instant a new, weird direction for the form.
'Forget vampires and gore . . . this is where the screaming really starts, out in the void, with no one left to hear' Terry Pratchett
Rereading the blurb, did anyone else find it sounds like an AI text from a publisher who has no human staff?
Yup, they're all way better than the one I found