A Night in the Lonesome October

I wanted to know why so many people reread this in October. Now I know why!

Ah, what a romp! What a delight! What a homage to everything gothic, to horror fiction, to sensational Victorian fiction… Name a supernatural thing or a cosmic horror thing, it looks like this book has them all. (No ghosts, though.)

Our POV character is Snuff, a very special watchdog. He is badass! I have a strong suspicion that Snuff used to work as a hellhound. Nowadays Snuff fetches master Jack’s wand, makes sure Things they have around the house don’t get out, does his rounds, investigates, makes friends with/enemies of other animal companions. Other animal companions? Yes, the little English village where we are has a very high concentration of people show more and animals that meddle with stuff they really shouldn’t meddle with. They are playing a dangerous game – our whole universe is at stake. Ooops. Come on, can’t you do regular everyday magic instead?

There is so much to love here:
That scene in the graveyard is to die for (ha ha). You’ll know what I mean if you read the book.
There is a Great Detective (and his friend). They are lurking about trying to understand what everyone is up to.
Is there a cat? Of course there is a cat. Her name is Graymalk and she is awesome.

The ending is perfect!

Favourite quotes:

”When I was near enough to catch it with a short lunge I said, ”I trust you are finding your last moments amusing.”

”I took Jack his slippers this evening and lay at his feet before a roaring fire while he smoked his pipe, sipped sherry, and read the newspaper. He read aloud everything involving killings, arsons, mutilations, grave robberies, church desecrations, and unusual thefts. It is very pleasant just being domestic sometimes.”

”’Creature of the Night,’” he said. ”’Living Blasphemy.’ You are safe here. You can even have a peach if you’d like.”

”…a cat may know that which Elder Gods do not.” show less

"Loyally accompanying a mysterious knife-wielding gentleman named Jack on his midnight rounds through the murky streets of London, good dog Snuff is busy helping his master collect the grisly ingredients needed for an unearthly rite that will take place not long after the death of the moon. But Snuff and his master are not alone. All manner of participants, both human and not, are gathering with their ancient tools and their animal familiars in preparation for the dread night. It is brave, devoted Snuff who must calculate the patterns of the Game and keep track of the Players—the witch, the mad monk, the vengeful vicar, the Count who sleeps by day, the Good Doctor and the hulking Experiment Man he fashioned from human body parts, and show more a wild-card American named Larry Talbot—all the while keeping Things at bay and staying a leap ahead of the Great Detective, who knows quite a bit more than he lets on.

Boldly original and wildly entertaining, A Night in the Lonesome October is a darkly sparkling gem, an amalgam of horror, humor, mystery, and fantasy. First published in 1993, it was Zelazny’s last book prior to his untimely death. Many consider it the best of the fantasy master’s novels. It has inspired many fans to read it every year in October, a chapter a day, and served as inspiration for Neil Gaiman’s brilliant story “Only the End of the World Again.” show less

‘A Night In The Lonesome October‘ was my first Roger Zelazny novel, which is surprising given I've been reading Science fiction since the 1970s Zelazny won six Hugo awards, three Nebula awards and two Locus awards between 1968 and 1986.

I picked up 'A Night In The Lonesome October' because it was a good fit for Halloween Bingo, especially the Halloween square. To my surprise, I fell in love with the book. It's original, engaging and quietly uplifting.

It tells the story of a strange metaphysical struggle for the fate of mankind that occurs each time there is a full moon on Halloween. It’s a conflict that repetition and ritual have turned into a deadly game with rules and traditions that the players must obey or suffer show more consequences.

The game draws monsters and villains from classic horror stories to become players. Each player has an animal as a familiar. At the start of the game, players don’t know which of their fellows is an enemy or an ally.

I liked that the story was told in the form of a chapter for each day in October, building to the final conflict on Halloween.

For me, the story worked as well as it did because it was told entirely from the point of view of Snuff, the dog, familiar to Jack, a man who carries a very large knife when he goes hunting in London’s East End. I liked Snuff. He was calm, rational, as friendly as circumstances would allow and treated players and familiars fairly. He accepted the importance of winning the game for his side and was determined to do his duty, but he didn’t allow that to become an excuse for treating others badly.

I liked that Snuff's main interactions were with the other familiars rather than the players. It gave Snuff more agency, allowed him to develop alliances and even friendships, and kept the famous personalities at arm's-length.

I had fun trying to work out who all the characters were based on. It didn't take me long to decide that the characters included Jack The Ripper, Sherlock Holmes, Victor Frankenstein and Count Dracula but I couldn't name the rest. A friend pointed me at a post in The Lovecraft eZine which offers some interesting suggestions "Fallen Books and Other Subtle Clues in Zelazny’s “A Night in the Lonesome October”, by Dr. Christopher S. Kovacs"

The book was imbued with quiet hope and gentle humour, and I admired the boldness and originality of the story. I think it is one I will come back to in another October and read a chapter each day.

I listened to the 2025 audiobook version, narrated by Matt Godfrey. I was a little surprised that the book was narrated in an American accent (Yes, I know Zelazny was American, but the characters in the novel aren't). I was soon won over by how easy Matt Godfrey was to listen to and how well he managed the large cast of character voices. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hII4yppWvbw show less

The Game is afoot! This chapter-a-day story is set in a year when there is a full moon on Halloween, and the Door between our world and another dimension can be opened, allowing the Elder Gods to cross over. The Players gather in a remote area near London where, they have calculated, the Door can be found, but who exactly are the Players? Which of them are Openers and which Closers? Will any of them still be alive when the time to Open/Close the Door arrives? And where the heck is that damn Door anyway? This fun story is a paeon to classic horror books and films and is one of my favorite annual Spooktober reads. Note that the first time I read it in 2021 was as a hardback, with the wonderful Gahan Wilson illustrations. Next I read it as show more an ebook, also with Wilson's illustrations, and finally I bought the audiobook, narrated by Matt Godfrey, who did a fantastic job with all the voices. show less

Then came a tale to fit my reading mood ....

Requested this Hallowe'en story on impulse from library loan, perhaps the very day I learned of it, uncertain I would retrieve it once arrived -- or if I did, that I'd take time away from several books underway. Once begun, though, there was no going back.

Zelazny's tale is at once a pastiche of Hallowe'en icons across a variety of traditions (cinema, horror fiction, supernatural folklore & myth) and a genre mashup of detective yarn / whodunnit / sword & sorcery quest. The prose is serious, the tone is arch, and Zelazny's very much taking the reader for a ride. Yet the result is anything but throwaway, more like the pleasure of a good pop lyric and how marvelously it does what you knew it show more would do all along.

The story is best enjoyed as revealed on the page, I'll note no details here. I will state, however, that having turned the final page, I was sufficiently motivated to devote an hour or more researching hinted allusions and to figure the rules. The tale is simple at heart, yet like an elegant game its premise affords a multitude of outcomes, and once in motion it's not clear how the pieces will fall nor who will triumph. Atop all this, it is a tale cleverly told, both in structure and in the elegance of individual lines, so there are layers to be enjoyed.

//

2017: I picked up Zelazny's A Night In The Lonesome October at the same time as Bradbury's The Halloween Tree, wondering which of these two books would best fit my impulse for a Hallowe'en read. Intriguingly, I'd not heard of either title before and then they were mentioned almost together. Though clearly different novels, each was warmly recommended in its own way. I was somewhat surprised Zelazny's impressed me more. An oddly poignant reminder that a text will offer an individual experience to each new reader, no matter how similar or sympathetic the interests or backgrounds those readers may share.

2021: Attempted communal read-aloud with family, and started strong but collective interest fragmented and finished with my Other Reader late. show less

I am so not the audience for this book. I don't find monsters fun for their own sake and it would have taken amazing characters and wizard pacing to have overcome my complete boredom with the we will all contest on the night of the full moon to determine if the elder gods will return plot, and 31 daily updates from a pooch made it a tedious drag. Zelazny wrote many books I love, but not this one.

This was my second attempt at reading Zelazny, and although I enjoyed this one more than the last one, I am beginning to think that Zelazny's style just doesn't agree with me.

The best way that I can think to describe it is that I feel like I'm seeing the events of the story out of the corner of my eye, that I can never quite get the full picture. We're given hints, references to puzzle out, dialogue that both reveals and obscures, and a narration that is restrained and secretive. Everything is parceled out in small increments of info... a hint here, a clue there, which matches the fact that most of the characters are also figuring it out, but there is knowledge and history that our narrator has but doesn't share with us. At the same show more time, we're just thrown into it and expected to either sink or swim, get it or don't, or just go with it and hope it makes sense by the end.

This is really frustrating for me, because I want to be drawn into the story and live in it a little while and just enjoy it for what it is. But Zelazny's style, in both this story and the previous one I read, requires the reader's having external knowledge in order to understand what's going on. The previous one required quite a bit of classical Greek history and mythology knowledge, and this one requires quite a bit of classic mystery and/or horror and lore knowledge as well. If one is not a classic reader, they will not get or understand many of the references here. And there are MANY, MANY references to be found. I have read many of the classics referred to, and I still felt like... well, like I could only see part of the picture.

I'm sure that this kind of style works for a lot of people, especially those who like to puzzle things out and find those little Easter Eggs and such. And usually, I am that type. I like stories that don't give up all of their secrets all at once, that allow you to find something new with each reading. It's one of the things that I loved about the Harry Potter series, seeing all the mythological and historical references and figuring them out and trying to see if they signified anything that was to come in the main storyline. But the difference, at least as I see it, is that even if one didn't see those references at all in Harry Potter, there was a story to be enjoyed anyway. The characters were well developed on their own, the history was provided, and we knew what was going on, and the storyline made sense without needing to know that Albus means "white", etc. In a story like Harry Potter, those references are like the edible glitter on top of the icing of a cake. They add depth and something special... but without them, you still have a damn delicious cake.

I don't feel like that was the case here. I got quite a lot of the references, because I HAVE read many of the books hinted at, and have at least a semi-passing knowledge of other types of lore, but I know that were I to have more knowledge, I would have enjoyed this story more. I have nothing against Zelazny, but I do feel like he kind of has an "ideal audience" in mind for his stories. I'm just probably not in it.

Anyway, I did like this story, after I hit the halfway mark and the chapters got longer than 1 or 2 pages. I did like the references to the classics, and enjoyed the overall concept itself. I liked the Lovecraftian feel of the Things and the slitherers, and the 'through the stones' section. I liked how the mystery kept building up, but I would have liked for the resolution to be more complete and explained.

Overall, I thought the story was good, but I would have liked it to be more fleshed out as a whole. I'm glad that I read it, it's a good Halloweenish story, but giving a bit more background and filler knowledge would have benefited it, I think.

Horror October 2011: #6 show less