By William Hope Hodgson.
Begun c. Dec 2007; finished 26 Jan 2008.
Review originally written c. Jan 2008.
As of writing this review, I’m about 3/4ths done with the 500 pages of The Night Land, but I don’t need to finish it to write about it.
This is an obscure novel, I wouldn’t have come across it if I hadn’t seen references to it on an acquaintance’s blog. The text is available on Project Gutenberg, but I was lucky enough to find a second-hand paperback copy.
William Hope Hodgson lived at the turn of the 20th century; authorially is the peer of Lord Dunsany and H.P. Lovecraft, in that he writes fantastical or speculative fiction before the Fantasy genre was established.
This epic is set in a future Earth, millions of years in the future when the Sun has died, plunging Earth into eternal night. The Earth is beset with monsters and supernatural forces of evil, and the remnants of humanity live in a great stronghold called “the Last Redoubt”, shielded perpetually from the evil without. The hero is a youth who ventures into the Night Land outside the stronghold to seek and rescue a maiden (ie. his soulmate) from another stronghold elsewhere that had been overcome by the evil forces. The story charts the perils and strivings in the Land, and finally his rescue of his beloved and their return to the Last Redoubt.