>>25350147
Synopsis I once read made it sound really comfy/dreamy but I haven't yet gotten around actually reading it.

>>25350171
It's great. Definitely Machen's Magnum Opus.
>He had got to the bottom of the hill, and, lifting up his eyes, saw the strange changes of the sky. The pale band had broadened into a clear vast space of light, and above, the heavy leaden clouds were breaking apart and driving across the heaven before the wind. He stopped to watch, and looked up at the great mound that jutted out from the hills into mid-valley. It was a natural formation, and always it must have had something of the form of a fort, but its steepness had been increased by Roman art, and there were high banks on the summit which Lucian’s father had told him were the vallum of the camp, and a deep ditch had been dug to the north to sever it from the hillside. On this summit oaks had grown, queer stunted-looking trees with twisted and contorted trunks, and writhing branches; and these now stood out black against the lighted sky. And then the air changed once more; the flush increased, and a spot like blood appeared in the pond by the gate, and all the clouds were touched with fiery spots and dapples of flame; here and there it looked as if awful furnace doors were being opened.
>The wind blew wildly, and it came up through the woods with a noise like a scream, and a great oak by the roadside ground its boughs together with a dismal grating jar. As the red gained in the sky, the earth and all upon it glowed, even the grey winter fields and the bare hillsides crimsoned, the waterpools were cisterns of molten brass, and the very road glittered. He was wonder-struck, almost aghast, before the scarlet magic of the afterglow. The old Roman fort was invested with fire; flames from heaven were smitten about its walls, and above there was a dark floating cloud, like a fume of smoke, and every haggard writhing tree showed as black as midnight against the black of the furnace.

>>25350147
Still need to read this and Great God Pan. Late 1800s/early 1900s weird fiction is so richly written. Fortunately the reading public seems to be waking up to the existence of horror writers between the gothics and Lovecraft.

>>25350252
Great God pan is overrated IMO. Good for sure but his other story the white people exceeds it in every way.

>>25350289
I'll bear that in mind but since it's his best known story I want to try it. The Inmost Light and The White People are probably my favorites so far.

>>25350147
Is it as good as The Great God Pan tho?

been awhile but I remember the first 50 pages or so being great and then it getting tedious to the point that I could barely finish it.

William Hope Hodgson is also based.

>>25350301
Better

>>25350430
Nuh-uh. I bet it ain't even horror :/

Which collection of Machen stories includes The Hill of Dreams?

>>25350453
Only a few, it's a full length novel not a short story like most of his other work.
The library of wales edition is cheapest and able to find anywhere

>He had been driven out that day as with whips, another hopeless attempt to return to the work had agonised him, and existence seemed an intolerable pain. As he entered the deeper gloom, where the fog hung heavily, he began, half consciously, to gesticulate; he felt convulsed with torment and shame, and it was a sorry relief to clench his nails into his palm and strike the air as he stumbled heavily along, bruising his feet against the frozen ruts and ridges. His impotence was hideous, he said to himself, and he cursed himself and his life, breaking out into a loud oath, and stamping on the ground. Suddenly he was shocked at a scream of terror, it seemed in his very ear, and looking up he saw for a moment a woman gazing at him out of the mist, her features distorted and stiff with fear. A momentary convulsion twitched her arms into the ugly mimicry of a beckoning gesture, and she turned and ran for dear life, howling like a beast.
>Lucian stood still in the road while the woman’s cries grew faint and died away. His heart was chilled within him as the significance of this strange incident became clear. He remembered nothing of his violent gestures; he had not known at the time that he had sworn out loud, or that he was grinding his teeth with impotent rage. He only thought of that ringing scream, of the horrible fear on the white face that had looked upon him, of the woman’s headlong flight from his presence. He stood trembling and shuddering, and in a little while he was feeling his face, searching for some loathsome mark, for the stigmata of evil branding his forehead. He staggered homewards like a drunken man, and when he came into the Uxbridge Road some children saw him and called after him as he swayed and caught at the lamp-post. When he got to his room he sat down at first in the dark. He did not dare to light the gas. Everything in the room was indistinct, but he shut his eyes as he passed the dressing-table, and sat in a corner, his face turned to the wall. And when at last he gathered courage and the flame leapt hissing from the jet, he crept piteously towards the glass, and ducked his head, crouching miserably, and struggling with his terrors before he could look at his own image.
>To the best of his power he tried to deliver himself from these more grotesque fantasies; he assured himself that there was nothing terrific in his countenance but sadness, that his face was like the face of other men. Yet he could not forget that reflection he had seen in the woman’s eyes, how the surest mirrors had shown him a horrible dread, her soul itself quailing and shuddering at an awful sight. Her scream rang and rang in his ears; she had fled away from him as if he offered some fate darker than death.
He is LITERALLY me.

>>25350317
I'm usually okay with "stiff" prose but The Night Land has been very slow going. The narrator repeats himself a lot and uses the most circuitous language possible. Despite that it has many wonderful ideas and passages, and I'm very invested in the journey.
I know my gripes aren't about Hodgson generally. The edition I have features some of his romance short stories, which are fun and comfy.

>>25350542
House on the Borderland is great. Much better than Night Land.

Arthur Machen was a big influence on Lovecraft.

>>25350542
The Night Land is very, very good until the hero meets the woman. Then it's exhausting. Then the woman goes into a coma and it gets very, very good again. There is a lesson here for all aspiring writers.
The prose style was a deliberate choice to sound like a writer from 300 years before Hodgson's own day, it's supposed to have a similar appeal as the prose of the King James Bible, it shouldn't come off as "stiff" at all. Try harder to imagine as though it's being read out loud and you'll realize that it sounds very good, it's got a very appealing rhythm.

>>25350621
bigger than chambers

File: IMG_1628.jpg (28 KB, 612x408)

28 KB JPG

>tell wife about Lucian’s romanticism of Annie and the circumstances that lead to his obsession
>is immediately repulsed by him and shows no sympathy

>>25350147
A good companion to it is The Secret Glory which has a very similar sort of protagonist and hits a lot of the same beats but ends up being a very different story.

My favourite thing about Machen is that unlike pretty much everyone who's been ripping off lovecraft for almost a century now he understands the attractiveness of the kind of destructive spiritual obsession he depicts and how there's a very thin line between it and the more conventionally positive/constructive spiritual transformation. It's not just "I read a weird book and went crazy woooooo".

>>25352442
Is the secret glory as good as the hill of dreams?
Been wanting to read it but unlike hill of dreams there aren't that many cheap physical copies to buy out there