I didn’t tell anyone except my agent that I was writing a ghost story, because I didn’t want to get bogged down in a deal, and I didn’t want a deadline. The slowly building sense of dread in this book may not be for everyone. If you're looking for jump-in-your-face scares, you won't find any. I could (and did) read this book alone late at night. But if you're in the mood for a subtle buildup of terror, I think this is a great book. I don't know why I didn't see it coming but when Stephen was abandoned at Camp 3, it was awhile until I truly thought he was a goner and that all of his paranoid imaginings had actualized.. The ending answered all of my questions, which I always love in a thriller and a ghost story. Eigentlich hat dieses Buch alles, was ich mag, und doch hat es mich nicht gänzlich überzeugen können. Ich habe es sehr gerne gelesen, fand es auch spannend, aber zwischendurch und immer mehr zum Ende hin gab es für mich auch mal einige Längen, wo meine Gedanken dann vom Buch abschweiften... After listening to "Dark Matter" by Michelle Paver I wanted to try another of her books. Chose the audio version of Wakenhyrst and think Juanita McMahon did a great job at interpreting and presenting the different characters. Her ability to capture emotions, in Edmund Stearn's case "disdain" toward everyone and especially toward women, and individualize the personalities made it possible to identify a particular point of view or the set of values the different characters had. The story is set between 1906 (Maud is 8-yrs-old) and 1966 and I found the treatment of women and the antiquated beliefs of the Edwardian period fascinating and appalling. Thank goodness women have made it out of that.

I loved Maud, the manor, the Fen. I loved the darkness, the obsessiveness, the building sense of dread. I loved Chatterpie. I hated Maud's father, but found his journals made for excellent reading. The Suffolk Manor and surrounding Fen really adds to tension building atmosphere creates an impending doom that awaits Maud's father. Although none of the characters are particularly likeable, but the portrait of Edmund Stearne is a powerful study of self-obsessed tyranny. People are more frightening than the supernatural here. There is a terrific sense of place and the fen is a character in its own right. Paver draws on folklore and tradition and there is an interesting description of eel-glaving. Some of these traditions continue and you can buy eels at my local farmers market. The combination of Edmund’s patriarchal tyranny with his puritanical protestant classicalism makes it chilling to watch his road to committing murder. The struggles of the imaginary Alice Pyett make for interesting reading as well. Compelling… direct… relentless” writes Helen Rumbelow in The Times. “Dark Matter is terrific. It is a ghost story, but it is also a metaphysical meditation on what lies beneath our little lives.”Dark Matter is terrifying. The only novel to really get under my skin and infiltrate my nightmares.” Ein altes englisches Herrenhaus im Moor, ein grausiger Mord, eine geheimnisvolle Familiengeschichte, und das alle spielt zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Optimale Voraussetzungen für einen spannenden Roman. Author Michelle Paver was another wonder to me. Her knowledge of life in the Arctic is so extensive I had to find out more about her and read that Michelle traveled to Finland, Greenland, Sweden, Norway, Arctic Canada, and the Carpathian Mountains. She has slept on reindeer skins, swum with wild killer whales, and gotten nose to nose with polar bears and wolves to research her books. That explained why her book was so realistic and believable.

Jess – *laughs evilly* My work here is done! No seriously, if you’re ever in the mood for a quiet, seeping terror kind of novel, you’d be hard-pressed to find one better than Dark Matter. Finding a good horror novel – a truly resonant one, that manages to terrify you, entertain you, make you care for its characters, all while simultaneously giving you food for thought (and potential nightmares) – that is an increasingly rare thing, I think. It has been a long time since I’ve found a horror novel (or film, for that matter) that has managed to incite all of these emotions in me. This is a book that I want to say much more about, but I'm quite distracted at the moment, and not managing all that well to say what I actually want to say. I may return to this later, but for now this will have to do. Definitely a book to read in large bites (if not in one mouthful) if you are a lover of the strange and chilling * MIDLETON BOOKS *This book made me scared of the word Glacier. If I had any desire to climb a mountain it's totally erased now(I am scared) The atmosphere is impeccable. I literally walked together with Stephen and his groups through the ice monster. If you love a slow-building, atmospheric ghost story DON'T MISS THIS!