| Title | : | Midnight Sun |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0312850514 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780312850517 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 336 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1990 |
| Awards | : | British Fantasy Award Best Novel (1991) |
Midnight Sun Reviews
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I came to this book expecting another hell raising ride of chaotic imagery (that I experienced with his short story collection
Demons by Daylight) but this was far more conventionally written. Still in evidence though was Campbell's subtle approach to horror. Before the opening chapter was a quote from David Aylward:
"Writers (of supernatural fiction), who used to strive for awe and achieve fear, now strive for fear and achieve only disgust."
This shows Campbells appreciation of such classic writers as Blackwood, Machen and Lovecraft and his preference for their approach to horror over that employed by many modern writers (naming no names!) He is setting out his intention to write a modern horror in the classic tradition and I have to say that he does so successfully.
Indeed, I do not know if I have ever read such a slow and graduated build up of unease and fear towards it's dramatic conclusion. I was put in mind, in many ways, of Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo" but that is only a novlette. In this 309 page novel it is an even longer build up. There is a danger that it might feel drawn out and for some it will probably feel that way, but personally my interest was sustained throughout and the eventual tension towards the end almost agonising to endure. An effect one could not possibly achieve with a more direct approach.
Reading this has only increased my respect for Ramsey Campbell and I look forward to reading more of his work. -
This book really gets you in the mood for winter! After an extremely slow start the atmosphere turns extremely eerie. Ben Sterling returns to Stargraves with his wife and children and falls under the spell of some mysterious cold. He's an author wife his wife illustrating his books. Edward Sterling, an ancestor of his went out into the forest behind their family home and froze to death. Is history repeating itself on Ben? Is he able to overcome his destiny? What is the legendary Midnight Sun about? This is your trip from reality into winter madness. I promise you'll never have a look at snow the same way as before! A masterly written book with some sinister scenes that raise your hair at the neck. Great horror story that lives on atmosphere not gore!
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This was my first book by Campbell and while intriguing, with Lovecraftian overtones, it was a slow burn to be sure. Our main protagonist, Ben Sterling, writes children's books, while his wife Ellen, an artist, illustrates them. They and their two children have been struggling to make ends meet for a long time when Ben finally has a book make it big time. At roughly the same time, his aunt dies and Ben finds out he inherited two properties-- one being in the town he grew up in, Stargrave.
The book starts off with a young Ben traveling alone to Stargrave. We soon find out that his parents and grandmother died when he was just 8 and that he is being raised by his aunt. In dribs and drabs, we find out more and more about his family. His great grandfather was something of an explorer, going to the arctic, but ended up dying in a forest near Stargrave one cold and lonely night. Many trees were planted around where he died and now a thriving forest surrounds the glade. When Ben finds out that his aunt still owned the old family house in Stargrave (now his), he and his family visit and it seems too good to be true-- the fine old house just needs a little TLC and it will be good to go! The kids love it, as does Helen his wife, so they sell their other properties and move in. At first it seems like a dream-- plenty of space to work, etc.-- but Ben is suffering some serious writer's block...
Enough with the plot. Campbell constructed a moody, slow burn horror story here that revolves around endless winter. The description of the cold at times was enough to make me shiver just reading about it. What drew Ben back to Stargrave as a young child? Is he part of something, or haunted by something from the Sterling family past? This was a pretty absorbing read, but as I said regarding slow burn, do not expect scares a mile a minute here. As the story builds toward the final denouement, the tension builds nicely, but over all, I was not that impressed. Campbell took a _long_ time to get to where he was going. Further, too many loose ends for my taste. 3 icy stars. -
As patient as death by hypothermia, Midnight Sun is a rich display of atmospheric dread that tackles the meaty topics of existential purpose and the nature of creativity. Readers with a weak stomach for description should stuff their faces elsewhere; however, a game palate will be rewarded with a slow-burning phantasmagoria of supernatural awe.
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I was wrong.
After reading Ramsey Campbell’s debut novel The Doll Who Ate His Mother way back in 2016 or 2017, and hating it, I was convinced Campbell wasn’t an author for me. Doll was too cold, too under-developed, and leaned more toward crime than horror. I wanted something which would scare me, as I’d heard Campbell is a horror master, and unfortunately his debut didn’t deliver.
Here we are some years later, and I’m trying to attune myself to some of my blindspots in the horror genre. As much as I love and respect the genre, there are many writers (Charles L Grant, Bernard Taylor, Graham Masterton, Thomas Tessier, Bari Wood, HP Lovecraft) I’ve never experienced at all, and many others I’ve sampled but haven’t given enough attention to—yet. Campbell was one of those; after reading his debut I suspected I might would come back. I owned several of his titles in paperback, after all—and who couldn’t love those evocative covers?
I went with Midnight Sun because it had been sitting on my Kindle since 2015 or so, and the synopsis called to me: a man moves his wife and young children into the home of his childhood, where something bad happened ... and will probably happen again. Spooooky.
It’s a good thing I loved these characters because Campbell takes his sweet time developing the story, but it made the payoff that much more rewarding. The story is by no means boring—I was hooked from the beginning, when Ben escapes his aunt’s house to visit his parents’ graves—and is actually quite beautifully written. Several passages describing the Moors took my breath away. It’s clear Campbell is a master of the English language.
What this book reminded most of is The Shining, though the two are fundamentally different, and written by two extraordinarily different authors. What Campbell is trying to do is not what King tried to do with his tale of the Overlook, but there’s a sense of building dread, and intensifying instability—not to mention the snowy, isolated setting—that makes me think these novels mirror each other, if only the tiniest bit. It’s for this reason I’d recommend this book to those interested in Campbell; hell, it worked for me. I’m totally a fan.
Much could be written of this book, and I could never give it the analysis it deserves, but I will say it gave me that special thrill one gets when in the hands of a horror writer who knows what they’re doing. It’s one that’s latched on, and maybe gotten under my skin, because I can’t stop thinking of it. -
I have read Ramsy Campbell's books for more years than I care to recount. I started with The Hungry Moon and The Doll Who Ate His Mother and have been hooked on his books ever since. In spite of my fondness for this author, I found this one a bit frustrating, for lack of a better word, to read. It was excessively descriptive and seemed to just plod along until almost the last. The plot was interesting, but I didn't feel that it ever really fleshed out. The father of the family relocated to a big house that his grandfather had lived in and immediately begins to get obsessed with the forest that had been planted many years ago. This forest seems to have some type of energy that remains unknown to the reader throughout the entire story. It never becomes clear what is in the woods... what is illuminating the frozen forest... and what exactly is in the center of it all. It was strange and somewhat eerie at times, but ultimately i felt it was unfulfilling. The main character simply does an implausible turn around, conveniently tying things up in very short order...making it all a bit pointless. 3 stars because I know this author can and has done better and I do have hope for the future.
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I'll be honest. It took me three tries over many years to get through this one.
I kept stalling in the middle of Campbell's tale of a writer returning to his family's house and unearthing something terrible. I wondered "Why?" I mean, it has everything I normally like:
*Hints of the terrible deeds of an ancestor.
* A powerful alien force
* A secluded little town
*A family experiencing the horror together.
I think the problem is that this book feels padded as hell. There are certain beats that seem to be repeated. The "Oh, shit, the THING has killed a random townsfolk as our hero becomes unhinged" moment happens... twice? Maybe three times?
One of our protagonists gets the insane insight and starts dropping hints way too early on. If the action had started soon, it would've been okay, but it's like telegraphing the murderer in the first ten minutes of Murder, She Wrote. I eventually thought, "Oh great, they're acting creepy again, we've got some insane thoughts, ho hum."
This would be a great novella, but as it is, it feels like a good Twilight Zone 24-minute episode stretched to a boredom inducing two hours.
Here's the best way to sum up my feelings. I'm tempted to recycle this book instead of giving it to the library because I LIKE RAMSEY CAMPBELL and I don't want this to be someone's first introduction to him.
Two stars solely for the cool background hints that you never quite learn the truth of. -
Doomsday cults have that whole implicit death wish thing and so are not great for raising kids, what with raising kids being a more or less future-oriented endeavor. So you'd think finding out the father of your children was raised in a doomsday cult - one that collapsed in his family's fiery murder-suicide, BTW - just as he moves you back to the old compound, would probably be pretty scary. Especially when -surprise!- you too might now be in a doomsday cult based on some hints the guy keeps dropping. Too bad that never happened in this book, as our heroine never really learns her story's most frightening aspects. Sadly, it's just one of many missed opportunities. Like: this book made freezing to death seem sort of pretty and peaceful, when, in my experience, exposure to that dangerous kind of cold literally burns and is quite frightening. And in a related abandoned tangent: ice penis?
I hate to complain at all about this otherwise very enjoyable and interesting book full of consistently inventive and impressive writing. There are some really fantastic moments, both scary and reflective. Here's one of many takes on the spooky side of snow:
"The whiteness streamed out of the forest like the seeds of an unimaginable growth; the sky seemed to sink towards her, an endlessly prolonged fall. She felt as though everything, herself included, were slowing down."
Mr. Campbell serves up this weird Christmas-themed mythic horror story with humor and a style that rewards slow reading and re-reading. Paragraphs that seem at first to be strings of non-sequiturs slowly grow clear and reveal a witty engagement I wish every writer delivered so consistently. If only it were packaged with a conclusion that tied up more of the book's many promising loose ends. -
This is another milestone for me (having quite a few of these with all the new authors and series I am reading).
This time it is my first Ramsey Campbell book. A well-known classic author from the 70’s onwards whose style is that of Lovecraft and King. With nine of his books on my shelves I picked this at random. Good choice!
The book is a slow burning horror tale. There is no gore or outright violence. It builds the story with increasing dread and weirdness as hints are dropped into what exactly is happening. It has a chilling and creepy atmosphere.
The story starts with 8-year-old recently orphaned Ben Sterling returning to his home town to visit the graveyard where his family have been buried. What exactly happened to his family? Ben slowly begins to find out his family history and the forest behind his home.
The story then jumps to the modern day where Ben is now a husband with two children. He inherits the family home from his aunt and after a visit they decide to move in. As the story progresses it is clear there is some evil in the cold icy forest.
However, parts of the story focus on Ben’s career as a writer of children’s books and his wife’s career as an illustrator. This does not affect the main story in anyway and slows the book down. It distracts from the atmosphere of dread.
A great slow burn horror story. I look forward to reading more of Mr Campbell’s books. -
A wondrous and wooden novel that reads slowly and never really gathers the cosmic awe that the narrative seems to suggest. This is slow-burn horror, a domestic Lovecraftian drama. What makes this book is that there is no tangible evil to be seen: just the cold, the frost, the snowstorm that comes from the cosmos and encases a town in ice. All of it is classic Campbell. Sadly the doom doesn't live up to its potential.
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Much of Campbell's work is stunning (The Face That Must Die, The Doll Who Ate His Mother), but this one was just lukewarm (sorry!). While you want a certain amount of the mundane, quotidian lives of the characters in order to flesh out said characters, MS overdoes it, giving us what feels like whole chapters of, for example, Ellen's life at the office that lend nothing to the story. There's some very poetic verbiage in here, and some genuinely creepy moments, but the story moves at a glacial pace (sorry!). Too much foreshadowing, too many red herrings; these are not bad things, they're just in excess. Really, there's a good book in here, it just needed to be trimmed down and tightened up, maybe to novella length.
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This is my third Campbell novel, and I loved the last two, really expected to like this one but I didn't. I WANTED to like this book and I gave it the benefit of the doubt nearly to the end, but it's quite flawed in my opinion. First of all, it feels way too padded. There's whole chapters about book publishing, a characters' sexually harassing boss, family drama, and others which add little or nothing to the story. I love a slow, atmospheric horror story, but the problem here isn't the pacing, it's the focus on things which aren't relevant. It felt like a ride that was constantly taking very boring scenic routes. If only my mattress was this well padded.
There were a few really good scares in this novel -- I won't ruin it, but the chapter where the phrase "faces and teeth" comes into play actually made me lose sleep! That's the first time I can recall a book doing that in years. A few other moments were quite chilling too. It would be a good book to read in the winter time (I read it in mid-August!) because Campbell evokes both a menace and a beauty in the snow and ice of the season. I thought the "monster" of the story was quite interesting, but we don't get to see much of it up close.
I feel like this could have been a good short story or novella perhaps, but to me it felt like Campbell was trying to fill too much canvass without loading enough paint on his brush. It's got a few good nuggets, but I'd recommend something else of his before trying to dig them out. -
Un terror basado en la ambientación. No hay sangre ni monstruos, el frío hace su trabajo agobiando al más “pintao”.
Vuelve con su mujer e hijos a la vieja casa donde tuvo su infancia junto a su tía. La razón de su vuelta: la muerta de la tía en circunstancias extrañas. Pasarán mucho frio. -
I love Ramsey Campbell's style. He writes in a way that makes me feel like I'm becoming unhinged. Stuff seems to happen just offscreen or just at the peripheral of things in a Campbell book, and Midnight Sun is no exception.
This is a slow-burn cosmic horror tale. It hearkens back to the very old-school horror traditions of dread and awe instead of outright violence or disgust to terrify. And in this way, the author might appear a little unhurried to tell his tale. But stick with it. The scares aren't immediate, but will slowly gather, form, and, ultimately, overwhelm you. Midnight Sun is Campbell in top form. -
3.5/5 rounded up
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This book is about a lot of things: the embodiment of winter cold as a cosmic force, the effect of an evil legacy on a family, the vicissitudes of family life, the nature of creativity and its sources, and the difficulties of trying to earn a living in the publishing world as it was when the book was published in the 1990s.
As the story opens, Ben is an eight-year-old boy, newly orphaned, who travels back on the train to his home town to visit the graveyard where his most of his family have been buried (his mother has been buried in Norwich where her sister, his aunt, lives). He has a formative experience with a lifeform which manifests as dancing snowflakes, but before he can follow it into the woods, he is intercepted by well-meaning adults and returned by the police to his aunt. A brief chapter from another POV hints that the car accident in which his parents and grandparents were killed was caused by his grandmother who had severe concerns about something happening in the family - involving her husband, son and grandson, Ben - connected with the forest near their house; a pine forest which had been planted around the oak grove where Ben's great grandfather, an explorer of the frozen north and recorder of folktales, was found dead years before. Ben's aunt finds him secretly reading his great grandfather's book at night and is so disturbed that she destroys it: the book is so rare that Ben is never able to obtain another copy.
The book then flashes forward to when Ben is an adult, and the father of two pre adolescent children. He is a writer of children's books which retell the stories from the lost book, after immersion for years in hs subconscious. His wife, Ellen, is an artist who illustrates his tales. He struggles with the attitudes of his publishing company due to a personnel change and far less enthusiasm for his books.
Ben's aunt dies and he discovers he has inherited the old family home which his aunt was in the process of trying to sell, having rented it out for years unbeknown to him. He and the family visit and become keen to take up residence. At first, all goes well and they start to find a place in the local community, but then resonances from the forest start to affect Ben, and eventually the whole town and ultimately the world is placed in jeopardy.
There is a very slow build up to this story, which I don't mind, but there is also far too much inclusion of things that go absolutely nowhere, such as the job interview which Ellen attends, where she discovers that an ex-colleague from years ago, a sexual harrasser who stole her ideas, is one of the interviewers. Ultimately, she decides to turn down the job offer and move miles away to the old family home, so this is all unnecessary. Similarly, there is quite a bit about the publishers: how they terminate the employment of the editor who is enthusiastic about the books Ben writes and which his wife illustrates, and how the woman who takes over has a much more hard-nosed attitude. Again, this doesn't really drive any of the plot or character development.
The first part of the story, when we are in Ben's viewpoint, works best. As a child, struggling with bereavement, he engages the reader's sympathy. However, the grown-up Ben somehow falls flat as a character, and as he withdraws into his own world, communing with the strange lifeform and/or being taken over by it, it is less and less possible to have any identification with him, so that the sympathetic viewpoint has to switch to Ellen, his wife. Alongside the human characters is the forest which takes on a malevolent personality as it increasingly becomes the abode of something inimical and unearthly, and there is some good description of ice, cold, darkness and general creepiness.
The underlying theme of the book is of a family taint which has come down to Ben and will make him an instrument of the expansion into human space of inhuman forces, yet this isn't really borne out with his children. His son is frightened when the revelations begin to be made at the end of the story, and although there is a hint in the epilogue that he and his sister are perhaps still conduits, it isn't developed earlier. Also, the early part of the story and subsequent revelations about Ben's family make it seem as if only the boys and men are affected, but there is no logical reason for this, or indeed why this force needs them at all. And Ellen's lack of curiosity about what really happened to him at the end is rather odd too. I usually enjoy Campbell's work but found this a little too tenuous, sadly, to rate more than 3 stars. -
Campbell has the unique ability of finding something new with which to horrify. There is the slow building of dread as the story moves forward. The reader is only given hints of what that is when introduced to the young boy, Ben. His childhood, abruptly altered when his parents and grandparents all die, is suddenly filled with questions. Who is he? Who was his family? We know that something is different, that something haunts the young boy. He searches for it in a book of stories written by his great-grandfather.
But that is put aside as the story changes, and now Ben is an adult. Now he is the writer. Still haunted, he brings his family to Sterling Manor and whatever still haunts it and the forest that huddles behind it.
I was engrossed from the beginning, but near the end I started having a problem with Ben’s wife, Ellen. What would it take for her to finally recognize that something was seriously wrong? When would she finally start asking questions? I kept seeing the Geico commercial where the four young adults hide behind a curtain of chainsaws rather than get into the running car. In horror books as in horror stories, it is really what you do?
But, finally, Ellen comes into her own as the book reaches its terrifying conclusion. -
A slow-burning masterpiece of cosmic horror that doesn't stint on character, story, and atmosphere: the bonechilling promise and threat of midwinter snow in a beautifully drawn study of the family life of writer Ben, his illustrator wife Ella, and their two children; and the slow unraveling of the stories they tell one another. To be read at Midwinter for maximum impact - not since
Susan Cooper's classic
The Dark Is Rising has snow been so terrifyingly fascinating. Captivating, enthralling, magnificent. -
This is one of the most painfully one-note horror books I've ever read. It had some pretty sentences, but all of the characters were devoid of any real personality and I honestly never connected with any of them, except Kerys, an employee from a publishing company that maybe has like three scenes in the book. The story had potential, but I didn't connect with the way it was delivered at all. This book could have been 100 pages instead of almost 400, ((mild spoilers?))
especially since it felt like nothing ever got explained. Why keep referencing "the midnight sun" and Edward Sterling's ritual if you're never going to give any inkling of an idea to what those things actually mean/are. I get that this was supposed to be flavored with Lovecraftian/cosmic horror or whatever, but to me it was just an incredibly frustrating oversight. The book wasn't necessarily boring, but I did not care about a single thing that was happening because none of it really meant anything to me. Beyond the base-level human compassion of "I hope these decent people don't die!" I had no sense of urgency. It felt like there was no build up anywhere.
Plus, how many times can you read the words ice, snow, frost, freeze, frozen, etc. etc. before they completely lose all meaning? The answer is probably lower than you'd expect. I've never felt so assaulted by such a simple theme.
This was the first Ramsey Campbell book I've read, which is probably the main reason I forced myself to finish it. I don't think it would be fair to let this turn me off of his work completely, but I can't say it's made me optimistic. -
A Slow Winter’s Creep in Ramsey’s Midnight Sun
1990's Midnight Sun by Ramsey Campbell is a bit like some great artistic creation that subtly works an idea over and over until it reaches its inevitable crescendo (or destruction). Perhaps similar in concept to Ravel's Bolero, where the theme is explored repetitively but with added layers each time until it destroys itself. However, much like Bolero, it is probably not to everyone's taste. For example, most popular fiction readers expect a bit more flash, gore, and recognizable plot lines in their scary tomes. Midnight Sun may lack the panache of popular fiction, but it is rich in atmosphere and dread, and it works those themes relentlessly.
Artistically, Midnight Sun reads as if H.P. Lovecraft had re-written The Shining. Simply substituting a forest for the overlook hotel and an unknowable entity for ghosts and then completes the process with the requisite slow ride into "madness" by the family patriarch during a harsh winter. This is an oversimplification, but it does give you a sense of what you are about to experience.
For those not in the know, Ramsey Campbell is the living grandmaster of weird fiction and horror with over 30 novels to his credit and a career that spans nearly 50 years. Born in Liverpool, England to Alexander Ramsey and Nora Campbell, in 1946, Ramsey had a very sorted childhood. His parents became estranged shortly after his birth leaving Nora to raise Ramsey alone in the blitzed post-war city of Liverpool. Ramsey, as a child, consumed large volumes of Kafka, Lovecraft, and Ambrose Pierce, setting his literary tastes toward the weird. As his childhood progressed, his mother descended into severe mental illness, becoming more paranoid and schizophrenic, making Ramsey's life, by his own estimation, a "living hell."
The bleak landscape, weird literary landscapes combined with his mother's mental illness all likely contributed to Ramsey's somewhat tilted view of the world. Ramsey, over time, could relate more and more to the Lovecraftian universe of madness and man's futility in the face of forces beyond his control. Indeed Ramsey has become the logical (if one can use logic here) heir to H.P. Lovecraft, and this shows in his masterwork Midnight Sun.
In his fifteenth novel, we follow Ben, a successful children's book author, on a dark journey that began in his childhood home in a small English village. After Ben has become a grown successful family man, he inherits the house he grew up in. A house which is on the edge of a primordial forest, the story's real central character. Ben moves his family there and the situation, initially, proves to be idyllic. The isolation and village atmosphere enabling him and his illustrator wife, Ellen, to focus fulltime on their writing efforts.
As mentioned, the forest is the central character in the book, holding Ben in deep fascination. He is drawn into its depth, the wood speaking to his memories and some deep-seated desire within. There is clearly an evil and influential presence in the wilderness. Ramsey cleverly avoids describing the source of dread but infuses us with a shiver of fear over and over again. His ability to pull on our subconscious ancient fear of the forest is uncanny. (My wife woke screaming one-night mid-reading). Yet if you were asked to describe what scared you, you would be at a loss for words.
Ben's oneness with the woods then is in sharp contrast to the villagers and indeed our own experience. He often communes with the forest wondering it alone, never losing his way. A fact that is at odds with the locals who lose their way and have tragic "accidents" in its depths.
Ben's fascination overtime becomes an obsession and the focus of his new children's book. Just like Jack Torrence in The Shining, as Ben's writing progresses, he isolates himself more and more from his family. His behavior becomes bizarre, cold, and distant and is repeatedly accented by actual physical occurrences of a frigid environment within and later outside of the house. At one point in the telling, this is carried to an extreme. A sexual encounter between Ben and Ellen is described in a manner that will stay with you for days.
Ben finally unveils his grand work with the arrival of a polar vortex and blizzard-like conditions. Unlike the Shining, Ben actually has created something. The story though is so bizarre and terrifying that the family immediately recognizes that they are in extremis. Ellen manages to flee the house with her children in tow, out into the blizzard. Heading for the village, she discovers the whole town has been overcome with snow and its citizens transformed into bizarre ice creations.
It is at this point that Ramsey has us. We are completely immersed in his bizarre alternate world, with an undescribable ancient horror. Adding to the sense of fear is Ben's madness. He revels in the events believing this to be master deliverance of whatever presence that has been working on his mind in the forest. Indeed, in part, it resembles, in theme, much of what he describes in his children's book.
At the height of Ramsey's power though the ending leaves us wanting. The conclusion is awkward and doesn't seem to be substantiated by the other events leading up to the finale. Perhaps this is why Ramsey felt that the book was an "honorable failure."
He had stated that his ambition for Midnight Sun was to write a novel that "depended not at all on physical violence, even the threat of it, and went instead for awe." He certainly succeeded to a point, mining that familiar primitive fear within each of us. The juxtaposition of nature, the unknown, and man. Man being the frightened child he really is in the face of forces far beyond his control.
Was this book the failure Ramsey said it was? Only the reader can judge, and as I warned at the beginning, this book may not be appreciated by everyone.
www.monkeyfist.life -
Nach rund einem Drittel des Buchs dümpelt es konstant vor sich hin, so wird das nix mit uns zwei beiden. Abgebrochen, aber (noch) nicht aufgegeben, ich versuch's vielleicht nochmal, wenn ich keine literarische Aufregung vertragen kann...
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A very evocative book. I felt cold just reading it and it’s May! The characters were well drawn, even minor ones were easily recognised and the descriptive prose was very good. I could picture the house and the forest very easily, the sense of foreboding was palpable. Ben’s shifting away from the family was somewhat reminiscent of the father character in Stephen King’s ‘The Shining’ I found Ben’s time in the forest towards the end of the book tended to drag on quite a bit - hence the four stars, but all in all an enjoyable book.
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Classy horror with a superb sense of growing dread. One to get under your skin and stay there.
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Campbell es un muy buen escritor, y la idea detrás de "El sol de medianoche" era muy prometedora, sin embargo, de algún modo, creo que se contuvo demasiado y acabó ofreciendo una novela que si bien es entretenida, la verdad es que no acaba de cuajar del todo.
Trata de la historia de una pareja de jóvenes escritores y sus dos hijos que, tras la muerte de la tía del papá, descubren que han heredado algunas propiedades, incluida la casa donde el protagonista vivió de niño, y que tuvo que abandonar cuando sus padres murieron en un accidente muy extraño. Se supone que de alguna forma, su familia había entrado en posesión de un secreto de un pasado remoto apenas conservado en la forma de algunos "cuentos de hadas" que tenía que ver con una presencia cósmica que de alguna forma era capaz de sumir en una nueva edad de hielo a la humanidad. La familia poseía el secreto para su total liberación o para contenerla atrapada en el bosque que era custodiado por la vieja mansión familiar.
Así, asistimos al proceso en el que el pobre Ben, sin darse cuenta, desata fuerzas más allá de su comprensión que amenazan no sólo con acabar con su estabilidad familiar, ¡sino que ponen en riesgo a la humanidad y al universo entero! :O No suena nada mal y en teoría es una buena idea aunque nada original. Sin embargo el problema radica en que Ramsey jamás llega a pisar a fondo el pedal, y la larguísima trama se arrastra muy lentamente hasta un final que no mejora en nada lo que ya hemos tenido que pasar para llegar a él. Acaba terminando con un libro inofensivo donde, pudiendo haber echado mano de todas las posibilidades que ofrece el "horror cósmico", el autor se conforma con pintarlo de un modo muy introspectivo, cayendo en los terrenos del "terror psicológico", pero sin ofrecer nada que no haya sido ya tratado en otras obras con escenarios similares como "El resplandor" de Stephen King.
Lo recomendaría como curiosidad a lectores fans del horror insaciables, pero de ningún modo a alguien que esté buscando esa novela que lo pueda volver fan del género. -
A disappointment. It opens very promisingly with an account of the protagonist's boyhood, hinting darkly of bizarre family secrets, and there are brief, effective moments of cosmic horror. Unfortunately, the book as a whole does not come up to snuff. The main character, now an adult, has rather a dull family, on which altogether too much uninteresting verbiage is squandered. Characterization is sketchy, and even Campbell's typically acidic portrayal of the awfulness of human interaction (always good at evoking suitably paranoiac feelings in the reader) is muted. The narrative is flat and lacks tension, and a few crumbs of weirdness along the way don't make up for the tediously prosaic exploration of everyday middle-class life.
In the last few chapters, after what feels like a great deal of stalling, the anticipated horrors finally manifest themselves. There are fine, eerie images here, and some excellent ideas, but they are rushed out instead of being developed slowly and carefully; the protagonist even engages in a sort of catechism with his family as a means of expounding Campbell's sinister concepts, a clumsy, bald form of presentation which you'd expect from a literary novice. If only he'd spent the bulk of the book introducing these ideas to the reader slowly and frighteningly, instead of chattering about domestic and professional trivialities!
The book concludes with a chirpy epilogue, ludicrous after the monstrous, if abbreviated, events which precede it; a hint of foreboding doesn't resolve the incongruity of tone.
So––bravo to Campbell for trying to evoke Lovecraftian cosmic horror, but, perhaps owing to commercial pressure, his vision here is abortive and compromised. Later novels, notably The Grin of the Dark, are much more successful explorations of this sort of weirdness. -
Este libro es mi primer acercamiento al escritor Ramsey Campbell y debo admitir que tengo sentimientos encontrados referente a su prosa y desarrollo de tramas.
Un escritor que es difícil de conseguir en mi país (México), pero que se encuentra envuelto en un aura fuertemente relacionada a los mitos de Cthulhu. Que error aparente con la lectura de este libro.
Si bien, podríamos decir que el libro tiene algunos tintes de horror cósmico podríamos caer en el sobre análisis.
La obra nos cuenta la historia de Ben Sterling, un escritor de novelas infantiles que después de un suceso desgarrador recibe como herencia la mansión de su bisabuelo. Es a partir de este punto que comienza una historia donde el frío, la nieve y el Sol de Medianoche tienen papeles protagonistas.
Un gran punto a destacar es la manera magistral de escritura que tiene Campbell, que nos puede recordar a los grandes como Chambers y Blackwood. -
I rate Ramsey Campbell very highly indeed, and I wanted to like this so much but it left me cold; unfortunately, just not in the way the author intended. The opening section is very good - Campbell's ambition to evoke old school eeriness works well here, as it also does in the strange patterns that form amid the trees. Yet it all becomes very repetitive very quickly - there's only so many times you can be reminded of the stillness of the brooding forest before you want to scream; out of frustration rather than terror. I also dislike characters who are writers - allowing, as it does, the author to get philosophical and pompous about his craft. Ben Sterling writes illustrated kid's books, but ponders their significance like Hemingway pondering a shotgun. Campbell is a great author, this just wasn't for me.
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Midnight Sun, by Ramsey Campbell, is an epic tale that follows the life of the only living heir to the malevolent Sterling family’s notorious reputation. Will he find a way to turn away from the call of cosmic evil, or will he capitulate and shadow his family in a quest for supernatural secrets and power?
The saga opens with young Ben Sterling traveling alone on a train. He is a runaway determined to visit the cemetery where his mysterious family is buried. Due to his family’s tainted past, he tries to become unnoticed, but is soon recognized as the boy whose “mam and dad and everyone got killed on the moors.” Ben is so mortified that he considers throwing himself off the train so he might join his family in the Stargrave cemetery. Once he arrives in Stargrave, he immediately heads to the cemetery where all his family is buried, except for his mother, who upon the orders of her sister, Beryl, was buried in her family grave in Norwich. This foreshadows the fact that Beryl does not approve of the Sterling family. While visiting the graves, a hypnotic, supernatural horde of frozen, sparkling flakes approaches Ben. Just as he is about to be carried off by the frigid storm, a policeman saves Ben from going over the edge. Soon, he finds himself back at home with his Auntie Beryl, who loves him but is aware of the evils of his father’s family and is determined to save him from the mistakes his mother made.
Campbell creates a multifaceted and masterfully organized plot with consequential foreshadowing and flashback episodes that guarantee readers will never get lost in its complexity and will ensure that they will remember Ben’s dark past and the evils that stalk him. The constant invasions of evil elements and temptations ensure that no one will lose interest. The early years of Ben’s life take place in Norwich, where he lives with Auntie Byrl. There, his childhood is complicated by repeated calls from the dark side. He is fascinated by a magical book written by his grandfather and augmented by the motif of freezing and star like flakes will chill readers.
The second part places Ben and his wife and two children, in London. Ben is a successful writer, and his wife is an artist who illuminates Ben’s works with visuals. They live a charmed life until Auntie Byrl passes away and Ben inherits her home and the home of his father’s family. Ben and his wife decide to leave the city to create a better home for their family in the country. There, the plot turns. They intentionally move back to the source of the evil that stalked Ben throughout his youth.
The plot soars above the average because Campbell weaves together varying themes such as temptation, loyalty, family, and love. Perhaps the most touching and important theme is that of redemption. Can love defeat inherited evil? Can a shattered character achieve redemption? The obscure, dark power of Ben’s family lurks, waiting, determined to envelop Ben and his family.
Campbell’s writing style is clear, smooth, and evocative. Readers will never get lost or confused by the mysteries or strain to realize the foreshadowing, motifs, and other breadcrumbs buried in the subtext.
The characters are all relatable and well-drawn. Both Ben and his wife go through major character changes due to the stresses they encounter when they move to the country. Ben is a haunted character who loves his family, however he bears a genetic weakness when it comes to the lure of unknowable, cosmic malevolence. Ben’s wife is at first a bit innocent, but when the safety of her family becomes an issue, she takes up the challenge of protecting them as Ben’s mother and Aunt had done before.
Midnight Sun comes highly recommended for readers who appreciate fine writing that includes spectacular motifs that tie all together. The motifs of frozen flakes, unknowable evil that might come from the stars, and the influence of the secrets lurking in a forest harkens back to gut wrenching dominance of the woodlands in The Darkest Part of the Woods, arguably Campbell’s most hypnotic and frightening tale. Will Ben survive, or will he and his new family end up frozen in the grave of stars?
Rougeskireads -
Disappointing took me ages to get through, it was weird to say the least. I have read a lot of Ramsey Campbell books and enjoyed them all up to this one. It was classed as a horror but I found it was only a mild horror/supernatural story would be better for young teens than adults.
The first half was about a young Ben Stirling who had lost both his parents and went to live with his aunt in Norwich. Not much going on there. Ben's Grandfather Edward Stirling was into rituals to do with the midnight sun and the spirit in the ice, he dies because of this leaving behind a book a stories he has gathered on his travels. The book is taken away from Ben by his aunt but too late Ben has already read it and subconsciously remembers the stories. When Ben is an adult and married with two children of his own his aunt dies and he finds out that she had looked after and leased his childhood home in a place named Stargrave. Ben and his family moved into the Stargrave house and little by little Ben becomes obsessed with a glade in the surrounding forest where he is sure Edward Stirling died. Then the snow and frost came and people were dying. Ben slowly loses his reasoning with each victim that the ice entity claims. When it starts to hurt his family Ben knows that a sacrifice is needed to save them, after all he was the one who by his presence awakened the entity.
