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

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To me, this was a perfect, quiet little tale of terror. One of the best true horror novels I’ve read in years, and absolutely recommended. (Just don’t read it until 2am like I did, in the middle of a cold, snowy night)

BBC Radio 4 - Dark Matter

Ghosts - or fictional ones, at least - tend to haunt inhabited places, whether houses, churches, castles or hospital wards. So used are we to the traditions of the genre that a description of a decrepit mansion full of dark corners and unexplained creaks is enough to raise in us readers expectations of phantoms and ghouls. In this regard, Michelle Paver's "Thin Air" - much like its predecessor Dark Matter - is not your typical ghostly tale since it is the very remoteness of the haunted spaces which makes the setting particularly eerie. The context of "Thin Air" is a 1935 expedition to the summit of the Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, the third highest peak in the world. A team of five Englishmen, including narrator Stephen Pearce and his brother "Kits", set off in the footsteps of a disastrous 1907 expedition, made famous through the memoirs of its leader Edmund Lyell. It turns out, however, that Lyell's memoirs might have left out some of the more unsavoury details of that doomed attempt, as our intrepid protagonists will discover to their dismay. Indeed, memories and relics of the Lyell expedition seem to cast a pall over the new climb. 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.”In 1935 Dr. Stephen Pearce and his brother Kits are part of a five-man mission to climb the most dangerous mountain in the Himalayas, Kangchenjunga. Thirty years before, Sir Edmund Lyell led an ill-fated expedition up the same mountain: more than one man did not return, and the rest lost limbs to frostbite. “I don’t want to know what happened to them. It’s in the past. It has nothing to do with us,” Dr. Pearce tells himself, but from the start it feels like a bad omen that they, like Lyell’s party, are attempting the southwest approach; even the native porters are nervous. And as they climb, they fall prey to various medical and mental crises; hallucinations of ghostly figures on the crags are just as much of a danger as snow blindness. I’ve been in the mood for a good ghost story for a while, and when another book blogger told me that Michelle Paver’s novel Dark Matter was not only suspenseful and spooky, but also set in a wild remote place, I didn’t need any more persuasion! And I must say that it lived up to all my expectations.

BBC Sounds - Dark Matter - Available Episodes BBC Sounds - Dark Matter - Available Episodes

Her fen, “alive with vast skeins of geese… the last stretch of the ancient marshes that once drowned the whole of East Anglia”, casts “a dim green subaqueous glimmer” over her story; Maud, poised between superstition and religion, is inexorably drawn to it. “‘Don’t you nivver go near un,’” she’s told by her hated nurse. “‘If’n you do, the ferishes and hobby-lanterns ull hook you in to a miry death.” Like all good heroines, Maud doesn’t listen. perfectly executed little ghost story set in the Arctic wastes in the late 1930s, featuring the adventures of AN AWESOME HUSKY NAMED ISAAK and I suppose some humans as well. Dark Matter is terrifying. The only novel to really get under my skin and infiltrate my nightmares.”There’s no dawn and no dusk. Time has no meaning. We’ve left the real world, and entered a land of dreams.’ 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. 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…] I am immensely fascinated with the Artic so anytime I find a book set in the area, I snap them up. I also love a good ghost story so if you combine the two I'm in heaven! And that's exactly what you'll find in Dark Matter so I knew going into it, that it just had to be good.

Dark Matter: A Richard and Judy bookclub choice from the Dark Matter: A Richard and Judy bookclub choice from the

Paver includes a number of references to the author Robert Louis Stevenson. Firstly, the Stevenson screen is an instrument designed by Robert Louis Stevenson's father. Secondly, the character Gus Balfour's namesake comes from Robert Louis Stevenson's mother's maiden name; Balfour. This name is also shared by Stevenson's protagonist of his novel Kidnapped.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.” Paver is the mistress of suspense. The strangeness that humans can suffer from when exposed to the Arctic wilderness is brilliantly exploited in this period piece.” Once the depleted team are truly on their own, the realisation that they are in such an isolated and desolate location really hits home .

Dark Matter – Michelle Paver

However, the setting on its own would not be enough. Paver creates a small cast, well drawn, but focuses on one man and his difficult realtionship with his conceited older brother. Through this narration, we become immersed not only in the sibling relationship but also the harsh conditions of the expedition. Our group is trying to reach to summit of the yet unconquered third highest peak of the Himalayas, retracing the steps of a previously ill-fated team.

I don’t think snowy horror gets better than Michelle Paver’s masterful fictional account of a 1937 winter in Svalbard, deep in the Arctic. The real terror of being alone in the dark, cut off by snow and ice, and with a hostile presence lurking, left me breathless. This book is terrifying!”