Jeffrey E. Barlough

Hooting Grange returns us to Fenshire, in the town of Market Snailsby, where we meet the usual range of Dickensian-named characters, many with secrets, some with missions, and some just there for comic relief.

The main character, more or less, Captain Surtees, has inherited the ill-omened Hooting Grange from his aunt, and is fruitlessly seeking to get people in to refurbish some of its rooms. A mysterious stranger is poking around, asking questions and raising suspicions. A visiting academic show more is cataloging the Captain's aunt's library (or is he?). An invisible creature is disrupting village life with its nightly howling and smashing of water butts, troughs, boats, and the like.

Meanwhile, ordinary life goes on: people visit with each other; gossips gossip; shops are perused; taverns and inns serve ale, tea, cakes, and more. As usual, some of the animals provide useful and amusing commentary on the proceedings, and others appear merely as themselves.

Eventually the various mysteries come together and are resolved. Life goes on, a bit quieter again, but those gossips are still eagerly stirring the pot, eager for the next mystery.

I don’t understand why the Western Lights series isn’t a lot more popular than it is, as they’re always delightful, with a balanced mix of quirky characters, weird happenings, and humorous side roads. Hooting Grange continues the series as expected, and is a nice addition to the history of the Sundered World.

The only real criticism I have of Hooting Grange is that I felt like the ending was a bit rushed. The various mysteries slowly revealed themselves (often turning out to be one sort of misunderstanding or another), and then there's a visitation that abruptly ties together the remaining threads, and closes the story. I would have enjoyed a slower bit-by-bit revelation more, as reaching the end of one of Barlough's books is always a bittersweet moment, often all the sweeter after a longer run. show less

3rd in a well, not quite a series, I guess, but a set of interconnected books that begin with Dark Sleeper then followed by The House in the Dark Wood, both of which are excellent & fun novels of fantasy.

The author has created an incredible world here: Victorian society continuing to exist after an event called widely "the sundering," in which for reasons I will not go into here (because Barlough reveals the source of the event in this episode), they live side by side by creatures that would show more have been at home in prehistoric periods, and where they live pretty much surrounded by other areas which are caught up in a new Ice Age. For their own intents and purposes, they ARE the world now.

It is a difficult story to capture in only a few words; there are several main subplots here, including a young woman who is terrified when a locked trunk that she's tried to dispose of keeps following her wherever she goes, no matter how many times she tries to get rid of it; a man and his wife who try to get to the mystery of why his grandfather would leave a fourth of his fortune to a total stranger that no one anywhere can seem to locate, and a mysterious flying object that has been seen from a lighthouse and cathedral in the coastal community of Nantle. All of the subplots merge together and become one hell of a great story.

It is so much fun to see the author piece this world together, and I can see Jules Verne, HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and other great writers in his writing. I LOVE this kind of stuff!

I would caution that anyone interested might wish to go through the books as they were written chronologically; while it's not necessary to do so, you will have already gained an understanding of this crazy world with its Victorian population and that does tend to help as you progress through the books.

Are there more of these on their way? I definitely hope so...the best fantasy I've read in a VERY long time. show less

When I first read a description of Barlough's Western Light's series many years ago I YEARNED to read them: a community, stuck in the beloved Victorian era, clinging to the edge of a hostile continent after a largely undetermined cataclysm called the Sundering destroyed the rest of the world.
Europe, Asia, Africa, South America - all gone: all that remains is a strip of fairly sparsely inhabited land in North America, New England perhaps? Catholicism, Romance Languages, racial diversity, even show more rational scientific enquiry, all gone with the continents drowned by the asteroid storm or whatever stopped history so abruptly at some unspecified time in the early 19th century.
Most of the action takes place in a comfortable Dickension millieu, with coachmen and inns and snow and dozens of faitful retainers with cheery red cheeks serving substantial meals and spoiling the cat. Stone walls, mullioned windows, cornices, chimneys, turrets and steeply gabled roofs dominate town while in the wild and dangerous countryside, rural gentry enjoy stately homes, hunts, hunt balls and roaring fires. It's all delightfully true to the upper middle class Victorian ideal.
The height of progress is the fact that travel by mammoth is being phased out, despite the ever-present danger of attacks by sabre toothed tigers as soon as the cities are behind one, and a mammoth team is being repossessed by a cruel miser and money lender who is in many ways the unwitting dupe of the real villain, an Etruscan immortal with evil designs.
Slow-moving and with a host of characters which include a learned scholar, his niece and her governess, and his secretary; the doctor - something of an amiable buffoon, a corrupt and obese lawyer, his mute clerk, and pair of unmarried sisters, various landladies and their staff, not forgetting the rich young gentleman from the counrty who enjoys a huge mansion and a large staff, plus a couple of mysterious strangers, several enforcers [one with a soft heart] and the team of Mammmoth men. And the university professor and his admirable wife, the professor's excellent cook and his loyal man servant - plus various pets most notably the miser's dog [which becomes possessed by an evil entity] and a couple of beloved cats...
Enough. The point is there are three or more pages of Dramatis Personae at the start of the book - thank Heavens, because in the course of 500 off pages I had course to refer to the list frequently - and the plot consists of diverse threads in true Victorian style, all coming together [sort of] at the end.
It should have been grand, a wonderful, cosy, comfortable read: the concept is entrancing, a beguiling as a roast chicken dinner on a cold day. The execution not so much. I hesitate to say it but I was bored. I ordered the first three volumes of the series through ABE books, a somewhat costly exercise when paying with rands: however, were it not for the fact they are bought, paid for and beside my bed, I doubt I would bother to continue with the series. As it is, all I can do is pray that they improve or, to be fair, 'grow' on me. show less

This entry in the wonderful Western Lights series takes a sharp turn into very dark science fiction. We learn the cause of the Sundering, and, while much of the book is that fine balance between humor and good cheer and darker undercurrents, we are left facing a very dire future.