The House in the High Wood: A Story of Old Talbotshire

Barlough's style is very different from a lot of books I've read. It's all about outrageous memorable characters. There was definitely a story there, but it's almost like you can tell he would rather talk about characters than make up some interesting plot. My wife and I enjoyed it a lot, but we both would have loved there to be some kind of action in the first 3/4ths of the book. It kind of sped to an (very unexpected) ending.

This is Barlough's second book in this series, where the setting is some alternate time after an event known as The Sundering, in which a giant meteor or comet fell to earth, leaving in its wake only a small part of the planet liveable. Here it is no surprise to find the occasional saber-toothed cat or mastodon. The people that live here are characters with Victorian characteristics -- the innkeeper, the vicar, the occasional country squire --- and as you read the dialogue you get that Victorian sort of feel.

The House in the High Wood begins with a man taking a coach for a business trip. The coach drives through a town called Shilston Upcot, and as it does, the man recalls to his neighbor a story of why this once beautiful little town show more is now hauntingly empty and dead. The story he tells takes place some 20+ years earlier, and comprises the remainder of the book outside of the last chapter, which is kind of like the epilogue. The story begins with a new family taking residence in the House in the High Wood, and of all of the strange occurrences which follow shortly thereafter. If you like supernatural stories, you are absolutely going to love this one. Now it's off to buy the latest installment, Strange Cargo. I hope this author keeps writing for a LONG time!!! show less

A deserted village with an eerie atmosphere, a forbidding house, a strange and reclusive family, and a vanished population - all set in a cosy hamlet marooned in the Victorian era. An excellent read.

Set in an alternate England of the past, this novel is part mystery, part dark fantasy with a cast of characters and a village that Dickens could have
invented. What happened to the once bustling village that now standsdeteriorating and vacant of human life? (recommendation originally written in '01).