Dark Matter: the gripping ghost story from the author of WAKENHYRST

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Dark Matter is terrifying. The only novel to really get under my skin and infiltrate my nightmares.”

Michelle Paver - Wikipedia Michelle Paver - Wikipedia

Michelle Paver (born 7 September 1960) is a British novelist and children's writer, known for the historical fantasy series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, set in prehistoric Europe. [1] For the sixth book of the series, Ghost Hunter (2009) she won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a book award judged by a panel of British children's writers. [2] Biography [ edit ] Following Lyell’s route are Kits, Stephen, Major Cotterell, McLellan and Garrard – Kit’s best friend. Despite Captain Tennant’s request that they do not follow the same route up the South-West face, the party ignore his plea and continue as planned. Dr Pearce finds the jungle oppressive and dislikes the superstition and fear which surrounds the mountain. However, it is once they begin the climb that his unsettled feelings gradually turn to fear. Is he imagining things, or is there something - or someone - on the mountain, that is watching them? The Sherpas are wrong. This mountain has no spirit, no sentience and no intent. It’s not trying to kill us. It simply is.” [famous last words…]The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness tell the story of Torak, a twelve-year-old boy who is clanless, and his friends Renn and Wolf. The main story arc revolves around Torak and his quest to defeat the Soul Eaters, a group of evil clan mages who seek out to destroy all life in the forest in which they live. The books are set in prehistoric Europe during the New Stone Age. Paver is the mistress of suspense” agrees Amanda Craig in her review of children’s books for Halloween in The Times. “The strangeness that humans can suffer from when exposed to the Arctic wilderness is brilliantly exploited in this period piece.”

Dark Matter Audiobook - Michelle Paver - Listening Books Dark Matter Audiobook - Michelle Paver - Listening Books

The ghost in question is a member of the previous expedition Arthur Ward. He was an outsider, not being upper class like the rest of the team. He fell and was left to die on the mountainside. Paver builds the tension well, piece by piece using the surroundings very effectively. The contrast with the Sherpas is telling. They respect and fear the mountain and display a great deal more common sense than their western paymasters. Freud argues that the writer can achieve the uncanny by; A tightly wrought tale that keeps the reader wondering to the end whether the terror is merely psychological, or if there is in fact something dark haunting the slopes of Kangchenjunga. I could feel the chilly winds and the cold in this one and the eerie feel of the mountain really comes to life in her vivid writing. The story is simple, and unfolds with a sense of familiarity (which, somehow, only increases the level of dread). Michelle Paver understands the key to telling a ghost story – she plays within the confines of convention and doesn’t attempt to add any unnecessary embellishments or endless descriptive statements or gore (which, unfortunately, is an excess that many horror novels indulge in, much to their detriment). Rather, the tension and fear here is subliminal, creeping at an increasing rate to an inevitable crescendo of terror and tragedy. Plus, you can’t ever go wrong with a cabin/isolation story in an icy location ( The Thing, “Ice” from The X-Files, etc).Paver develops these tensions very well. Then the gradual development of a sense of haunting, initially denied by the empirical Stephen: Michelle Paver's second series Gods and Warriors is set during the Bronze Age. It tells the story of Hylas, a 12-year-old goatherd, whose adventures take him to Ancient Crete and Ancient Egypt, and Pirra, the daughter of a high priestess with a crescent shaped scar on her cheek. The story crucially features animals in the plot – a lion, a falcon, and a dolphin; the dolphin from the first book, the lion from the second book onwards, and the falcon from the third book onwards.

Dark Matter – Michelle Paver

Paver's writing style managed to read like a diary or first person tale from an actual survivor of a mountain climbing disaster. She expertly set up a failed 1907 Lyell Expedition and explained the impact it had on climbers in the 1935 Cotterell expedition at hand. Because of this, combined with the likability of everyman narrator Stephen Pearce, I was pulled in from the beginning. It is 1935 and our narrator, Dr Stephen Pearce, has left London, and the woman he was supposed to be marrying, to join his brother, Kit, on a mountaineering expedition. In 1906, Kit’s hero, Sir Edmund Lyell, led an expedition up Kangchenjunga, which ended in disaster. His book, “Bloody but Unbowed: the Assault on Mount Kangchenjunga,” presented Lyell as a hero; even though he and Charles Tennant, were the only survivors of a tragedy, which saw five members of the party perish in the attempt to climb the mountain. In the interim, she “took a bit of a wrong turn”, becoming a biotechnological patents lawyer for 13 years. “I thought, ‘I’m quite good at exams, why don’t I do law for a couple of years and maybe I’ll be published by then?’” After years of trying to write in the evenings and at weekends, and not really wanting to be a lawyer at all, she “had to jump off the treadmill”. She resigned without a book deal. During her six months’ notice period, she landed one. “My earnings fell off a cliff. I went from six figures to earning less than a student teacher. But it was unbelievable how much it felt like the right thing. I didn’t have to dress up in Armani trouser suits, I could just wear jeans.” When the summer is over and darkness sets in, you can truly visualise the derelict trappers hut, the ice, the snow and harsh landscape.

For anyone looking for a good ghost story with a rich, atmospheric setting and a historical element (yes, this book has it all!), I cannot recommend this book highly enough! She manages to create a claustrophobic atmosphere in one of the greatest great outdoors there is. And it is not by blood and guts and grossness but by the gradual ratchetting up of tension as the hero, left alone, suddenly discovers that he is neither. He is not a hero, nor is he alone. And it is the uncovering of these horrifiying truths which gradually chills and frightens you as the reader. Dark Matter is a speculative fiction novel from Michelle Paver. Part horror, part ghost story, it was published in the UK on October 21, 2010. [1] [2] Plot introduction [ edit ]