Reviews

I just truly disliked the guy. He takes her camping, which she doesnt like, possibly to propose? Somewhere she doesnt like to be? The way they talk togethet they dont seem to like each other too much. When they get to the camp they are specifically recommended to come back at a different time by the ranger people, and that there wont be people available to help them if anything happens, and he still goes on cause he has been camping before, and its hard to move days off. When she think she sees something, he dismisses her. When he thinks he sees something she dismisses him and think he is trying to trick her. It annoyed me too much to get into the spooky vibes 25% into the book, so I just dropped it.

melxody's review

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dark mysterious

3.0

fi293's review

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

the_weirdling's review

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2.0

I should start this review by saying I’m a huge fan of Ambrose Ibsen. His stories are not exactly groundbreaking, radical, or genre shattering. However, they are always an excellent exercise in first-rate, classical scary stories. His haunted house tales in particular always creep me out and satisfy, even though they don’t break new ground. They are well written and send a classic shiver down your spine.

When I first came across “The Splendor of Fear” I bought it sight unseen. When I read the description, I was even more excited. I felt a haunted state park would give Ibsen more options to play with in his storytelling. Sadly, this became the first Ibsen story to disappoint me and leave me dissatisfied.

The story follows a young woman (Penny) who goes for a romantic camping trip with her boyfriend (Jared). The park they pick was once the site of a Newsom’s Landing, a town abandoned for over 100 years. The town was the location of one of the last witch hunts in American history. The witch was killed by a mob of townies. Within a couple of years everybody in the town moved away due to “disturbances”. Every year, on the anniversary of the witch’s death, terrible things would happen.

So far, so good. Where the author loses meme is in a series of strange choices made by the protagonist of her boyfriend in the first half of the book. They arrive at the park on the anniversary of the witch’s death, to find it abandoned. Even the park rangers are gone. It seems everybody knows to stay away on this particular date. When the couple call the ranger station, they are told that the Rangers will not come. That no one will come. They are even told that they can get their money back, and it is suggested they should come back another weekend. So why the hell do they go in? I don’t know. I wouldn’t. That would have been enough for me to pick the next park with a camp ground over.

As the protagonist begins to “see things“ and tell her boyfriend, he routinely dismisses her feelings. Why? She is competent and sober. So, he’s either a fool or an asshole. Either way, time to leave. The boyfriend, in fact, it routinely dismissive of the protagonists’ concerns. He even plays tricks on her which accentuate her worries, laughing them off. I wasn’t a quarter through this book before I lost all empathy for him and his fate. And apparently, I wasn’t supposed to feel that way, because a lot of it was dedicated to fear about his well being.

There are a variety of other decisions made by the couple in the first half of this novel which were maddening. At one point, an abandoned house in the woods - which they’ve already had bad experiences with and seems haunted by the ghost of the witch - is found lit with candles in the middle of the night. And the protagonist decides to go in, because it seems “inviting”. That’s confounding to me. The other nonsensical decisions would give away spoilers, so I won’t go into them.

Another major problem with the story is the antagonist, the witch Ellie Pomeroy. It seems that Ibsen cannot decide if she is pure unadulterated evil or an malevolent entity to be pitied. The storytelling seems to swingly from one extreme to the other without coming down on either side. Is she the Joker or is she Mr Freeze? We never really know.

Equally problematic is the resolution. We get the typical happy but slightly ambiguous ending of horror stories. That’s fine. We are led to believe that the happy ending is brought about by the actions of Penny and Jared. But, when the story is considered, they don’t actually do anything. The happy ending is no precipitated by any set of actions.

I am sorry to say, for the first time ever, I didn’t like an Ambrose Ibsen book. It just seemed sloppy and confused. All the right elements were here for another homerun, but they just don’t come together.