Rating:

5/5 Ominous Stained Blades

Give me the short version:

1937 Arctic expedition ignores all warnings and sites itself on the shores of haunted Gruhuken.

Browsing randomly in an airport bookstore, Dark Matter prevailed over the smorgasboard partly because of the beautiful and haunting cover of vertebrae glowing in the moonlight (if you can find the edition with this cover!), but also because the blurb ticked all of my personal boxes. A well written blurb seems so hard to find these days. I certainly wasn't expecting to be genuinely unnerved. Ok, pretty close to frightened in bits. The isolation, loneliness, and sheer reasonableness of events (yes, that could absolutely happen) ought to be enough to get under anyone's psyche. Dark Matter isn't breaking new ground, so much as exploring a beautiful, classic haunting as well and roundly as it can be told.