"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear,
and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
– H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature
Let’s face it – many of us love seeking out and reading novels that scare us senseless. It’s an addictive literary rush – one that, if I’m being totally honest with myself, I have only truly experienced a few times in my life. Only a handful of novels or anthologies have actually frightened me, compelled me to sleep with a knife under my mattress, relentlessly haunted my subconscious for weeks or months or years after reading: At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft, Night Shift by Stephen King, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, Swan Song by Robert McCammon, and Occultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron.
When I read Barron’s second short story collection Occultation and Other Stories back in 2010 (after 2007's The Imago Sequence and Other Stories), I was blown away by the intensity, dark depth, and unadulterated existential dread of the narrative. I called him “horror’s new messiah” and essentially crowned him the next coming of Lovecraft. I even predicted that when his debut novel The Croning was eventually released, “everyone will be talking about this guy and heralding him as horror’s next superstar.”
Well – after waiting two long years – The Croning is finally on bookshelves and this novel not only met but exceeded my high expectations. It is nothing short of a masterwork, comparable in so many ways to Lovecraft’s 1931 classic At the Mountains of Madness. Powered by a luminously dark writing style, a phantasmagoria of nightmarish imagery, and a bladder-loosening mythos, this is exactly the kind of novel Lovecraft would’ve written had he been alive in the 21st century.
In The Croning, Barron blends together elements from folkloric fantasy, mystery, and cosmic horror to create a story that is simultaneously epic and intimate. It’s a grand-scale nightmare that evolves as the story progresses. Largely centered around absent-minded geologist Donald Miller and his secretive anthropologist wife Michelle, certain unexplainable events in Miller’s past come into question as he discovers incredible information about his spouse, her frequent research trips to remote areas of the globe, and her mysterious family heritage. But the mind-blowing truth, once uncovered, threatens to drive him to the brink of total and utter insanity…
I cannot overstate this enough – The Croning is a masterfully constructed and brilliantly written novel, one that will more than satisfy hardcore horror fans, especially aficionados of Lovecraft. But Barron’s hypnotic writing style and his sublime fusion of popular folklore throughout make this a “must read” for fantasy fans as well. I just love the way this guy writes. Here are a few examples:
• “The Spy took a torch from a sconce and raised it high to better examine the broken ring and the mosaic of murky imagery that enmeshed it – a hunt or revel in a forest; maidens with babes in arms fled dark figures whose eyes blazed red and who grasped with elongated arms and spindly, clawed hands. He saw, as his light glanced from surface to surface, that the bones of the broken ring symbol were real human skeletons of all sizes, mortared and fused together to create a piece of unholy art.”
• “Their footsteps crunched on the gravel and Don had a vision of a carpet of dried yellow finger bones snapping beneath his shoes.”
• "Worship of Old Leech is the primary activity of the Terrestrial sect. This worship was transmitted to us by a race that exists on the rim of the universe and spreads like a mold crawling across meat. We call this race the Children of Old Leech. They dwell in the depths and the shadows, they inhabit the crack that runs through everything."
Like At the Mountains of Madness, The Croning is a novel that will stay with readers long after reading. And if you don’t think that you’re truly scared after finishing this novel, just wait a while until you go to sleep…
Bottom line: The Croning is one of the very best horror novels that I’ve read in decades – and Laird Barron is the next coming of H. P. Lovecraft. Mark my words.
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for the last two decades and has written thousands of reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and BarnesandNoble.com. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
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As always Paul, you are opening my world up to new adventures. I am not usually a horror fan (I usually find them anticlimatic and kind of a let down...maybe I've read the wrong ones?), but this review makes me want to check it out. I'm off to complete another download to my Nook. My virtual library is tetering on falling over but I think I can manage one more book at the top. 
Thanks again.
Update: Alas, it is not available on eBook format as of yet, so will have to wait a little bit longer, but it is in my wishlist for when it becomes available. Thanks again Paul.
