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adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
After Abe loses his wife, he turns to fishing. When his coworker, Dan is involved in a tragic accident and suffers his own loss, Abe extends an invitation to go fishing together and the two form a bond. After many outings, Dan mentions trying out a new fishing spot called Dutchman’s Creek, so the men pack up and hit the road. After stopping at a diner to grab some breakfast, they find themselves chatting with the cook and ask him about the Creek. The cook is hesitant to give them any information and suspiciously asks how they even know about the Creek. He eventually decides to pass along the rumors and the men listen to a dark tale full of terror, power, and a strange man called The Fisherman. Is the cook just pulling their leg? The story is so far fetched it can’t be true. Chalking it up to being a local legend, Abe and Dan continue on their trip to Dutchman’s Creek, but soon find that some stories aren’t just stories all. They are pulled even deeper into the legend when they see something they’ve wanted dangling in front of their eyes, but below the surface, things aren’t at all what they seem.
With equal parts cosmic/folk horror, this is such a weird story, but in a good way. I feel like if I sit and ponder over it too long, I’ll end up spiraling into existential dread. This story does a great job of creating an atmosphere of unease, like you need to take a second or even third look at the shadows on the wall or the trees around you. It’s well written and constructed, with some deeply unsettling imagery. This is a story within a story. The vast majority of the book is what’s told by the cook to Dan and Abe. It’s a bit long winded and there were a few parts that could’ve been shortened, but overall I enjoyed it and it held my attention throughout. Abe’s character is realistically written and relatable. He’s just trying to keep himself going after he lost the woman he loved and coping in the best way he can. Dan has no idea how to even begin healing, so I definitely felt sympathy for them both. I would recommend this one with the reminder that it very much is a slow burn that gets better as you go. I would also highly recommend the audio since the narrator did a really good job.
With equal parts cosmic/folk horror, this is such a weird story, but in a good way. I feel like if I sit and ponder over it too long, I’ll end up spiraling into existential dread. This story does a great job of creating an atmosphere of unease, like you need to take a second or even third look at the shadows on the wall or the trees around you. It’s well written and constructed, with some deeply unsettling imagery. This is a story within a story. The vast majority of the book is what’s told by the cook to Dan and Abe. It’s a bit long winded and there were a few parts that could’ve been shortened, but overall I enjoyed it and it held my attention throughout. Abe’s character is realistically written and relatable. He’s just trying to keep himself going after he lost the woman he loved and coping in the best way he can. Dan has no idea how to even begin healing, so I definitely felt sympathy for them both. I would recommend this one with the reminder that it very much is a slow burn that gets better as you go. I would also highly recommend the audio since the narrator did a really good job.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Child death, Death, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Murder
Moderate: Gore, Dementia
Minor: Cursing
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Extremely fuck that and no thankyou.
I was almost put off by the immediate fridge-ing of Marie and then also Sophie. Which I will look past because the world building and pacing of this book is masterful.
Call me a fish, because I have been LURED into a false sense of safety. The book is a constant surprise and you simply cannot predict what is going to happen next… because whatever it is youve come up with is nowhere near are wacky and grotesque.
I said in an update- this book is what would be the mind child of Hayao Miyazaki and Guillermo Del Toro.
I was expecting spectral spooks, and what I got was an grotesque sci-fi cosmic fantasy body horror. That had me curling my toes in disgust and squealing. How satisfying.
Its a wonderful mystery, and the book never forgets the lore it has laid down and the rules of the world.
The book within a book was very interesting and I didn’t hate it.
Underpinning this atmospheric thrilling plot and gnarly descriptions of gore… was this harrowing depiction of loneliness and grief. I truly will never forget how well this book describes the experience of losing someone and having to fill your life with new things in this cold empty space where love existed. I think thats what made the characters and the story so accessible- because right from the start the book said ‘I get you, you’re not alone’
What stopped it from being 5 stars was that there were a few points where I felt the descriptions got a bit overwhelming of the wolrd - which I get you have to do when you’re doing sci-fi/fantasy. But got carried away sometimes and muddied the mental image. Also a lack of other female characters who arent dead, dying/ill or wives.
Will be recommending this book for sure.
I was almost put off by the immediate fridge-ing of Marie and then also Sophie. Which I will look past because the world building and pacing of this book is masterful.
Call me a fish, because I have been LURED into a false sense of safety. The book is a constant surprise and you simply cannot predict what is going to happen next… because whatever it is youve come up with is nowhere near are wacky and grotesque.
I said in an update- this book is what would be the mind child of Hayao Miyazaki and Guillermo Del Toro.
I was expecting spectral spooks, and what I got was an grotesque sci-fi cosmic fantasy body horror. That had me curling my toes in disgust and squealing. How satisfying.
Its a wonderful mystery, and the book never forgets the lore it has laid down and the rules of the world.
The book within a book was very interesting and I didn’t hate it.
Underpinning this atmospheric thrilling plot and gnarly descriptions of gore… was this harrowing depiction of loneliness and grief. I truly will never forget how well this book describes the experience of losing someone and having to fill your life with new things in this cold empty space where love existed. I think thats what made the characters and the story so accessible- because right from the start the book said ‘I get you, you’re not alone’
What stopped it from being 5 stars was that there were a few points where I felt the descriptions got a bit overwhelming of the wolrd - which I get you have to do when you’re doing sci-fi/fantasy. But got carried away sometimes and muddied the mental image. Also a lack of other female characters who arent dead, dying/ill or wives.
Will be recommending this book for sure.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Cancer, Child death, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Blood, Grief, Car accident, Murder, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Cancer, Child death, Death, Sexual content, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Dementia, Grief, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, War, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Body horror, Cancer, Child death, Confinement, Death, Infidelity, Sexual content, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Dementia, Grief, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, War, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Alcoholism, Animal death, Body horror, Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Incest, Sexual content, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Cannibalism, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, War, Classism
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief
Minor: Gore
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Violence, Grief, Injury/Injury detail
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Pardon the pun, but this book set its hooks in me early. Call me a sucker for personal tragedy, but the inciting incident(s) of this story are engrossing and well-written, and tinged with ominous hints of what is to follow. However, by the time the narrative reaches those events, you're completely swept up in this grim, gnawing, and completely absorbing horror story. Calling this Lovecraftian is both accurate, and not. Langan is much more concerned with painting relatable, interesting, and good characters than Lovecraft is for one, and secondly, his narrative is significantly better at twisting his reader's guts around.
This book had me in tense knots and sweats, it is very good. I don't usually read horror, and this is worth every bit of time I put into it. Really excellent.
This book had me in tense knots and sweats, it is very good. I don't usually read horror, and this is worth every bit of time I put into it. Really excellent.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Violence
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Despite Langan being an excellet short story writer, I think he overstretched himself, and his story with this one. The Fisherman was a very dark, brooding, fascinating book, but also disjointed, too familiar, and self aware to be anything other than forgotten the moment it ended.
The story is told by a man who's life ended the day his wife died of cancer. It's tragic and he falls into the usual vices to dull pain, but does thankfully recover. He decides one day to take up fishing as a distraction, and it works. He falls for it. Eventually a friend joins him and they both decide to go to a strange creek, barely on any map.
If you told me this was a paste-up book, I would have believed you. There are two stories, set a good hundred years apart. On their way ot this creek, the guys are told a tall tale a bout the creek and its history, and this is told in a weird mix of familiar passive present tense, like an old buddy telling you. Despite this, it's one of the few occasions I don't hate the choice of present tense, and this whole section (roughly 200) pages is the best part of the book. The bit before it is also good, in an intro-to-an-x-files kind of way. You feel the something is around the corner, even on top of all the lonely tragedy. After the tall tale is over, and despite everything revealed within to us and the characters, they boys decide to carry on to the creek anyway. This last 3rd of the book feels deflated, plateauing to a pretty good, but abrupt end.
Langan is at his best writing like a mafia boss "Nice family you have her, it'd be a shame if something happened", when there's always a menace, and less adept at the aftermath. Especially as it required additional suspension of disbelief form the reader to believe the characters would not only press on with thier journney, but also write about the whole thing, after already suffering more than any human would hope.
To top it off, perhaps in the style of a fishing story, the prose are a bit too familiar, and self aware. He'll write how a horror trope should happen here, and then it immediately happen. It makes it hard to accept this story of dreadful cosmic horror when the story teller is winking at us. According to the aknowledgements at the back this took a good 12 years to write, and I think it needed both more re-reading, and less writing.
I wish I could give it more, but I am still a Langan fan.
The story is told by a man who's life ended the day his wife died of cancer. It's tragic and he falls into the usual vices to dull pain, but does thankfully recover. He decides one day to take up fishing as a distraction, and it works. He falls for it. Eventually a friend joins him and they both decide to go to a strange creek, barely on any map.
If you told me this was a paste-up book, I would have believed you. There are two stories, set a good hundred years apart. On their way ot this creek, the guys are told a tall tale a bout the creek and its history, and this is told in a weird mix of familiar passive present tense, like an old buddy telling you. Despite this, it's one of the few occasions I don't hate the choice of present tense, and this whole section (roughly 200) pages is the best part of the book. The bit before it is also good, in an intro-to-an-x-files kind of way. You feel the something is around the corner, even on top of all the lonely tragedy. After the tall tale is over, and despite everything revealed within to us and the characters, they boys decide to carry on to the creek anyway. This last 3rd of the book feels deflated, plateauing to a pretty good, but abrupt end.
Langan is at his best writing like a mafia boss "Nice family you have her, it'd be a shame if something happened", when there's always a menace, and less adept at the aftermath. Especially as it required additional suspension of disbelief form the reader to believe the characters would not only press on with thier journney, but also write about the whole thing, after already suffering more than any human would hope.
To top it off, perhaps in the style of a fishing story, the prose are a bit too familiar, and self aware. He'll write how a horror trope should happen here, and then it immediately happen. It makes it hard to accept this story of dreadful cosmic horror when the story teller is winking at us. According to the aknowledgements at the back this took a good 12 years to write, and I think it needed both more re-reading, and less writing.
I wish I could give it more, but I am still a Langan fan.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Gore
Moderate: Body horror, Violence
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The first and third part of this book are excellent, and a solid half of the second part is too. But there’s a chunk of the second part, which is by far the majority of the book, that I struggled to read.
There were a lot of characters, most of which weren’t thoroughly explored enough to stand out and differentiate, and a lot of the environments were not as well described as they could be, which really doesn’t help matters when the environments are as fantastical as they are.
I think more than anything I liked the idea of the book, the concept of the story, more so than the actual contents. Parts 1 and 3 focus on Abe and Dan, two widowers that turn to fishing to deal with their trauma. In this, they’re told a story about a fisherman who set out to catch a mythical creature that essentially resides in purgatory, which is the story that makes up part 2.
While part 2 is a good story, and the scenes where Helen returns from the dead, still broken from the carriage accident, hell bent on taking her kids back and where she “cursed” Lottie in the closet of the bakery were genuinely unsettling. I think describing the fisherman in a very literal sense as a black sorcerer was very on the nose and brought in an element of magic that I didn’t enjoy. Also having Rainer constantly talk in riddles, become a de-facto posse leader despite not telling anybody anything, and be an expert in magic and able to use it to a degree in my opinion took away from the story, added a magical element that I didn’t like and made it a bit more fantasy-esque than a cosmic horror.
Part 2 was absolutely necessary, if a little long, and despite being a little long the pacing wasn’t great.Helen’s second death felt very abrupt, and the confrontation in the Dort residence with the fisherman lacked build-up. We never really got to know the fisherman until the middle of part 3, and having him a little less removed may have benefitted the story.
Ultimately, I enjoyed it, I don’t regret reading it because it was a good story, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it and I wouldn’t read it again. Oh and the fish sex scene was weird.
There were a lot of characters, most of which weren’t thoroughly explored enough to stand out and differentiate, and a lot of the environments were not as well described as they could be, which really doesn’t help matters when the environments are as fantastical as they are.
I think more than anything I liked the idea of the book, the concept of the story, more so than the actual contents. Parts 1 and 3 focus on Abe and Dan, two widowers that turn to fishing to deal with their trauma. In this, they’re told a story about a fisherman who set out to catch a mythical creature that essentially resides in purgatory, which is the story that makes up part 2.
While part 2 is a good story, and the scenes
Part 2 was absolutely necessary, if a little long, and despite being a little long the pacing wasn’t great.
Ultimately, I enjoyed it, I don’t regret reading it because it was a good story, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it and I wouldn’t read it again. Oh and the fish sex scene was weird.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Grief
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Incest
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is the exact tempo and flavor of horror fiction that I really respond to. It has almost no pop-sensibilities. The corner of the genre it occupies isn’t simply “ghost story” or “murder tale”… but rather this deep, elemental, eternal horror. Folksy, acoustic, story-older-than-stories type stuff. However, the writing style never feels posh or kitschy or twee… it remains modern, clear, and it is a story very crisply and urgently told.
This is a book that is very much served in 3 parts. A pre-amble, the story within a story, and the climax/resolution. The bulk of the world building and narrative juice comes from the middle part. Which leaves the novel, as a whole, feeling a but unbalanced in a sense. That is to say, the framing device throws the pacing of it off in a peculiar way.
But the imagery and ideas are what the book is offering. And in that regard, it is a truly unflinching example of existential, cosmic, bone-deep horror. Not for the casual reader of popular horror, or the faint of heart.
This is a book that is very much served in 3 parts. A pre-amble, the story within a story, and the climax/resolution. The bulk of the world building and narrative juice comes from the middle part. Which leaves the novel, as a whole, feeling a but unbalanced in a sense. That is to say, the framing device throws the pacing of it off in a peculiar way.
But the imagery and ideas are what the book is offering. And in that regard, it is a truly unflinching example of existential, cosmic, bone-deep horror. Not for the casual reader of popular horror, or the faint of heart.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail