Joe Hunter is struggling with depression. He is only just beginning to adjust to life since his beloved wife, Olivia, passed away when he hears her calling from the 'beyond.' "Where am I?" she calls out to Joe. While her body has died, her soul, her essence, is wandering in an afterlife that is made up of her memories. Memories which he mostly shares. But she is not the only spirit inhabiting the afterlife and she wanders to avoid the restless.

Joe journeys into the afterlife each day to lure the restless dead away from his wife, but with each journey it gets harder for him to return and by opening the door to and from the afterlife, Joe allows some of the restless to invade his everyday life.

As his wife gets more frantic, facing increasing horrors among the afterlife, Joe will need to make a decision about whether or not to make the ultimate sacrifice to help his wife.

I've written before about how much I like Ramsey Campbell's slow-boiling horror and how the story creeps up on you and you sometimes you don't realize how terrible the events are until it's too late. But this book is different, and not in the best of ways.

This story moves even slower than usual for a Campbell novel. Some of this might be that it is also much more repetitious than other books from the horror grandmaster. Joe is lonely and concerned. Olivia is dead and afraid. Joe goes to help, then returns. Repeat. The only change is the intensity of the wanderers in the lonely lands.

This is almost not really a horror story as much as it is a novel about grief in a dark fantasy setting.

It's possible, even likely, that I was expecting something very different, given that it's a Ramsey Campbell book, and I'm more than willing to give this the benefit of the doubt that I missed something because of my expectations. The writing is sharp and the characters are so real they don't just disappear when you close the book. It's just ... the horror is too contained and the spiral that we expect to see happen to our protagonist isn't quite there.

Looking for a good book? Ramsey Campbell gives us lots of grief and depression in The Lonely Lands but the dark fantasy/horror is more backdrop than spotlight.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Until recently, I’d merely heard a lot about Ramsey Campbell, the 77 year-old, award winning horror writer who hails from the UK. Having apparently written 30+ books and hundreds of short stories, he’s been downright prolific and one of the mainstays within the horror genre. Now, I’ve actually read one of his books, and it honestly wasn’t what I expected.

Set in the UK, The Lonely Lands by Ramsey Campbell is a book about love, loss, grief and trying to move on after the death of someone close. It centres upon a man named Joseph, whose wife, Olivia, passes away. However, instead of grieving normally, Joseph either has delusions, or is able to visit his wife in the afterlife.

If you’re sick of hearing about Covid, this may not be the book for you. Reason being is that it’s set in the pandemic, which plays a big part in what happens. You see, Olivia doesn’t die of natural causes. She actually contracts Covid-19 after trying to stop a robbery in her friend’s flower shop. The jerk of a robber coughs in her face as he’s leaving, in order to keep her from following him or trying to do anything else.

We also go back in time to when Joe — now the owner of a second hand or thrift store, which is right beside the florist — lost his grandfather. The old man warns Joe not to think about him after he’s dead, saying that paying too much thought to the deceased can have consequences. It’s after this where Joe’s delusions, or his ability to delve deep into the afterlife, begin. He ends up finding his grandfather there, and is shocked to see what he’s turned into; that being something decrepit that’s hiding from the light.

Bothering the dead has consequences for our protagonist, who feels like he’s being followed by his grandfather’s ghost. Meanwhile, he deals with grief over Olivia’s death, tries to keep their shop going and has to interact with her very proper, and downright snobbish parents, who feel like they lost a lot more than Joe did.

Well, all that and the fact that the man who ‘murdered’ his wife is going on trial for his thefts, thanks to a picture Joe took.

Hell, there’s even a chapter mentioning how the couple met.

The Lonely Lands is a well written book, and its prose is quite abstract. The problem I had with this book, and what I didn’t expect, is how hard a lot of it was to follow. Things jump around a lot, and there’s no cohesive thread to the chapters. They can vary pretty wildly, and it can be hard to follow along, understand when something took place and keep it all straight.

However, as someone who’s lost someone very dear to them, I identified with the themes of grief and loss. I’d do anything to talk to said person again, and it’s hard knowing I cannot. That said, the overarching horror story, as light and not scary as it is, is a little messy due to the lack of cohesion.

Overall, I find myself feeling mixed about this book. On one hand, I identify with it and wholly respect it. Then, on the other, I have a hard time saying that I fully enjoyed what I read. A lot of it was too abstract, and jumped around too much for my tastes. Still, I do believe that The Lonely Lands by Ramsey Campbell is a good and respectable novel. It just wasn’t for me as much as I’d hoped.

This review is based on an advanced copy of the book we were provided with. Thank you to NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for the review copy. However, receiving this book free of charge did not sway our opinion.

The way the conversation amongst characters is written felt very bland and repetitive. I tried desperately to get into this book, it had such a good concept, it lacked substance. I guess others could say it's a slow burn but for me it was just bland, boring, and I think it was mostly due to the parts where the characters were conversing. It was almost as if two robots were speaking to each other due to lack of emotional substance. Don't get me wrong, I am certain there is a lot of folks that will love it, I just didn't.

Another enjoyable read from Ramsey Campbell. One of my favorite novelists. This had great characters, great pacing, and a great story. Always look forward to a new book by Ramsey Campbell. #TheLonelyLands #NetGalley

Another hit from the author. You never know what to expect when opening one of his book but what you find is always suspenseful and mysterious. This book was no exception to that. Filled with the usual Campbell intrigue. This is a book which I would recommend to all.

What can I say, the master story teller still at the top of his game. Loved the book. Ramsey takes you hand and walks you through Joe's mind, full of creepy scene had me hooked from the start. As with most of Ramsey Campbell's book it's a slow burner, good characters and plotting. Thank you publishers for letting me read this book.

4.25 stars from me, rounded down to 4. This was my first Ramsey Campbell novel, despite the man being a horror legend, and it's fair to say that it took me a little while to appreciate Campbell's distinctive style - specifically in how he blurs the lines between reality and hallucination, and the 'slow-burn' nature of his horrors.

It's the story of Joe, who loses his wife Olivia in a COVID-related attack and then finds himself drawn into an eerie netherworld where he's reunited with her. Unfortunately, she's not the only one he's reunited with, and things gradually turn nightmarish.

There's a lot to love in this. Campbell is a master of seeding unease into everyday situations, and this comes to life vividly in places - such as an excellent early scene in a pub, which skilfully couples folk horror conventions with the strangeness of the UK's COVID regulations. That's nowhere clearer than in Campbell's dialogue, where double meanings abound, and apparently simple conversations with customers or in-laws contain a backnote of dread.

Even better are the scenes in the Lonely Lands themselves, whose uncanny nature evokes such classics as Kazuo Ishiguro's THE UNCONSOLED. When Joe revisits a hotel that he and Olivia went to on honeymoon, the receptionist speaks only single words, often as baffling non sequiturs, and it's at once recognisable (who hasn't had a conversation like this in a foreign country?) and deeply disorientating. These scenes are where the novel's greatest horrors come to life, too, and the ill-defined rules of the Lonely Lands become a real strength. Joe is pursued by creatures that are disjointed, disfigured, seemingly incapable of resolving themselves into a coherent form - and Campbell draws out the tension in these scenes to impressive effect.

The book's not perfect. There are times when it's frustratingly unclear on timelines - especially on whether something is a flashback - and while this is often intentional, it's possibly a little too confusing in places. Some readers will be put off by the mannered nature of the dialogue, and although this usually works well there were certain scenes (such as one featuring the anti-maskers who cause Olivia's death) that felt less much less convincing. Olivia's attacker also seems to go to trial within a matter of days, which is possibly the most fantastical thing about the book - a small detail, but one which broke the immersion for me.

Nevertheless, this is a thoughtful, sophisticated horror novel that genuinely scared me on more than one occasion. It's a world away from a lot of other recent horror, both in its concept, vision and execution, and worth your attention for that reason.

After the sad loss of his wife Olivia, Joe Hunter begins to hear her voice again, calling to him from the other side. “Where am I?” His grandfather was also a man who passed on information about how the dead need to be thought well of, never included in dire thoughts just before he passed on when Joe was young. A living person could trap the dead in hellish nightmares if the wrong thoughts passed through the living’s minds. Joe hopes though that he might see his wife again. Does he? This draws him into the afterlife, a dark place built by their dreams and memories. The restless dead are attracted to his ded wife. The more that Joe communicates with his lost love, the more he threatens the safety of the barrier separating the two worlds. He comes to realize that the afterlife is a world where darkness dwells and the restless dead strive to return to that of the living world. What will happen to Joe?

This is not a typical ghost story. The novel is about a character that has lost everything, who is trying to “pick up the pieces” and is seeing or hearing uncanny things. It is a god novel. It made me look at what love is, losing it and how one can go a little mad from it. I don’t think of this book as horror but about what happens in the afterlife and the love that doesn’t end.

I admit up front to being somewhat out of touch with Ramsey Campbell's later works, but for me, "The Lonely Lands" is as unexpected a novel from him as, say, "What Dreams May Come" was from Richard Matheson. In evolving out of his early Lovecraft pastiche persona, Campbell has become a master of using a subtle and growing form of discomfort in building his narrative. In this book, he takes the next step forward with that in largely leaving the horror behind by creating something that is, largely, a meditation on loneliness and grief. There are ghosts in "The Lonely Lands", and moments that will chill the reader, but the novel mainly explores how the ghosts that haunt us can be the result of our unresolved attachments to people and places we have known. The drama in this story unfolds from one man's process of resolving those losses, and the dangers that can result from the refusal to let go.
The contrast with Campbell's earlier work was made even more apparent to me because I was also listening to an audiobook of "Hungry Moon" concurrent with reading this new offering. Compared with that more classic and cosmic horror, this book is a Shoggoth of a different colour. "Hungry Moon" has clearly identifiable evils in it, menaces that are external and therefore opposable. "The Lonely Lands" however explores the dark territories that lie within, the things we must resolve with integration, not extinction.
Campbell's work has always had elements of folk horror to it, so there's long been a locality to his work, but this one really feels personal, like the author himself is wrestling with the ideas of grief and loneliness, working out some kind of loss in the pages of fiction.
This is not to say that long time fans of Campbell will not enjoy this work. His use of language is as subtle and effective as ever, and his talent for creating atmosphere continues to grow. Nobody can deliver a sense of unease in a single sentence of dialogue as well as Campbell can, and that skill is used to great effect in this book.
Authors who carry strong genre associations don't always do well when their work aims at "Literature", but with "The Lonely Lands" it definitely feels like Campbell is moving into that rarer air that transcends genre. I am glad as a reader to be able to follow that evolution with such a rich and rewarding novel.

A heartbreaking examination of grief and loss, The Lonely Lands is not an easy book to read. Campbell has always been able to get into the minds and emotions of his characters, and here he wields that ability like a stiletto, slicing delicately in to create the most pain. Nothing seems to go well for our dear hero Joseph Hunter, as he loses his wife and everything around him falls apart accordingly, and we're there for every painful stumble. The way this is told is beautiful, and there are moments of real power within the novel, I just wish it would have been a little swifter out of the gate. Those expecting supernatural spookiness need probably look elsewhere, as at its heart, this is more a tale of the pain and torture of loss, and holding on to something too tightly.

Thank you to NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for giving me the opportunity to review this piece.

I’m sharing my thoughts on The Lonely Lands, by Ramsey Campbell, as part of the book tour hosted by Random Things Tours. Thanks to Anne for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

MY REVIEW

I had been looking forward to Ramsey Campbell's next book and it certainly didn't disappoint. This is a horror story but also a story of grief. The author's unique writing style pulled me into this slow burner which grew in tension right up to the explosive climax.

The characters were interesting although your perception of them is from Joe's perspective so they were difficult to relate to. I liked Joe. His grief was palpable and I had an outpouring of empathy for him. His downward spiral of suffering felt, to me, tragic and unstoppable.

Overall, this book gave me a sense of pain, grief, and horror, which I think was the point. The author's fans will love this. I gave The Lonely Lands, by Ramsey Campbell, four stars.

It's a horror story but it's also a story about grief. There's always a lot of ambiguity as you never know if the MC is sane or allucinating.
It's a slow burning story with an explosive final climax.
Ramsey Campbell can write and this is an excellent story even if very slow at the beginning
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The Lonely Lands, Ramsey Campbell's latest, is a lot of things. A sombre rumination on love and loss, an old fashioned ghost story, a rather bleak extension of his creepy mythos from the excellent The Three Births of Daoloth series (which you should read immediately) and a deeply personal story of a man who would do anything for his wife, even after death has done them part.

Joe Hunter is an odd duck. A bit of a loner, slightly awkward but ultimately good hearted (a classic Campbellian protagonist). He meets and marries Olivia and the pair form a strong bond, which lasts until she tragically dies of COVID-19 related complications. However, when Joe hears Olivia's voice asking where she is, he is unpleasantly reminded of the dark truths about the afterlife imparted to him by his overbearing bully of a grandfather. Joe must venture into a place he barely understand to keep his wife's spirit safe from dangers he dare not even imagine.

The Lonely Lands does that classic Campbell trick of skirting the line between the supernatural and mental illness. Every conversation drips with menace, misunderstanding and people's inability to produce more than an ounce of empathy for one another. Joe's in-laws are particularly grisly, offering nothing but frustrating piousness at every turn. Events are portentous and fraught with potential danger, and the spooky shenanigans - when they do occur - are often surreal, tense and in one spectacular sequence, wonderfully absurd.

This probably isn't the book I'd suggest for first time Ramsey Campbell readers, mind you. I think Ancient Images, The Hungry Moon or The Searching Dead would fit that bill better. However, for longtime fans of the man's work (which seems to be going through a really excellent period at the moment, bravo!), this is gripping, bittersweet and oddly moving stuff.

Just don't think too hard about it, or you might just summon it to you.

Ramsey Campbell's books are one of its kind. The Lonely Lands also fall into the same category. At first, the plot would not at all feel appealing but slowly and slowly the interest develops. The book paints a vivid picture of our society that pokes its nose everywhere. But, the climax felt satisfying. There were moments when the pacing was uneven. But, the intricate plot twists need a reader's full attention to grasp the story. This book will keep you enthralled from start to finish, leaving you wanting more from the author.

This story blends memory and dreams/nightmares with the present-day reality in disorienting and compelling ways. In fact, if I hadn’t read the blurb about the book it would have taken me a bit to figure out what was going on, and there are no seams to the repetitive and overlapping experiences that are all colored and grief and saturated with paranoia.

This story is very slow moving, and it is hard to keep a grasp on it. While our central character is interesting, he is also in many ways an everyman. His life is populated with interesting secondary characters, all of whom we experience through his perceptions and his projections, so none have remarkably rich inner lives. I never felt like this character was easy or simply a stereotype, it was hard to feel much of a connection with him, either, he was just kind of a bland mask for his loss and his downward spiral to be made apparent, and that is kind of the point. Still, it was hard to feel connected to the story, which is already so circular and painted with dream-logic, when there isn’t really the opportunity for an intimate experience with our suffering protagonist. I would have liked to be drawn into his experience more, instead of just observing it. This kind of story really shines when the reader feels complicit, and this felt like it was always keeping me at arms’ length.

That said, it was beautifully written and gives you a lot to ruminate on, especially about the ways anger and loss can warp our perceptions of reality. The story doesn’t give any easy answers, and is better for it. The story feels ephemeral, hard to grasp onto tightly, like it doesn’t want us to see its face too clearly, and it was a fun and contemplative journey to take. It does move slowly,. And even sometimes feels like it is moving backwards, and while there are a few heart-pumping scenes it isn’t a narrative that is structured around set pieces or frights, but instead around that liminal space between knowing, feeling and fearing. There is a really interesting journey to be had here, and so long as you don’t go in expecting some epic or terrifying story then you just might find yourself haunted enough to have a real good time.

(3.5 rounded up).

I want to thank the author, the publisher Flame Tree Press, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

5 Stars!

There are very few things better in life than a new novel by Ramsey Campbell. Or, I guess given his dark style of storytelling, you could say there is nothing wonderfully worse than a new Ramsey Campbell novel. No matter how you look at it, a new book from the master of dark fiction is always a reason to celebrate and, judging by its cover, The Lonely Lands looked to be another deliciously bleak read.



The loss of a spouse is a tragedy at the best of times. The sense of anguish and isolation is magnified when it occurs in the midst of a pandemic. Joe Hunter had a good life even though it was not without its struggles. His wife, Olivia, was the center for him. Joe had come to her defense when she was being confronted by his boss and their lives had intertwined since then. When the pandemic struck, they at least had each other. Then came the day when Olivia confronted a thief in a neighbor’s shop and he took off his mask and coughed on her. His tainted breath made her sick and eventually, she died from the disease plaguing the world. The thief had taken her life, and maybe Joe’s as well, if he could not learn to live with his loss.



Joe is now all alone in the world. He is haunted by thoughts of what would drive a man to intentionally infect another with a deadly disease. His in-laws seem determined to take every form of comfort from him that they can and the memories of his deceased grandfather plague him. On top of that, he just cannot get Olivia out of his mind. Then he starts to hear her voice and wonder if she is still with him. Joe goes on a search for the meaning of life and death and begins to wonder if the dead truly leave the world behind or simply hide in the shadows. Even worse, Joe begins to realize that maybe the living can hurt the dead, trap them in this world with their longing, and that his wanting to be with Olivia may be holding her back. The only problem is that he does not know how he can let her go when she is all that he has ever had.



Ramsey Campbell is a master at crafting a dark novel and The Lonely Lands is yet another masterpiece. This book is very dark and draws upon the recent pandemic to pull the seclusion and fear that many felt to the surface once again. The world had been turned on end and even good deeds will not go unpunished. Joe and his wife are good, simple people. They are the type of couple that all of us know from everyday life. There is nothing special about them. They are “normal” people, but the world does not necessarily value normal people. They are, quite simply, you and me and everyone we know. They do not put themselves in harm’s way. But in a world in which simply breathing the air can lead to death, they do not have to seek out horror. Horror could come looking for them at every turn.



Campbell does not so much write this novel as instead creates the perfectly imperfect world in which the reader can become completely immersed and explore the darkest corners of the mind. There is a touch of the supernatural in the novel as Joe explores the nature and meaning of death, but The Lonely Lands is more of an exploration of the all-too-human horror of the world. It explores the themes that all readers have faced themselves, weighed down by memory and grief, while searching for the meaning of it all. Joe was alone before being saved by Olivia, the shining light of his life, before finding himself even more alone then ever before. What is the meaning of the world and of life if it can all be taken away in one moment? How can the universe be in balance if an act of neighborly kindness can destroy the lives of those who only want to make the world a better place? We all walk the lonely lands of life, and Cambell is the perfect writer to explore the dark paths that we all must travel. The Lonely Lands is a bleak story that can be difficult to read at times, but there is also a beauty in it as well. There is both horror and beauty in the seemingly mundane parts of life and Cambell may be the only author that can expose that in such a visceral way. The Lonely Lands takes a little effort to experience. Those who are brave enough to face their fears in this book, though, will come out the end better for the experience. I cannot give this novel any higher recommendation. It is the best read of 2023 so far.



I would like to thank Flame Tree Press and NetGalley for this review copy. The Lonely Lands is scheduled to be released on August 15, 2023.

I'm sorry, but it didn't work for me. I requested this book mainly because of the author but, although the writing is good, the storytelling couldn't grip me.

We know that Joe is going to lose his wife Olivia (from the blurb), and the actual mystery begins after that. But the Joe-Olivia story goes on for almost 10 chapters. I was not really interested in knowing the details. So, it sounds like an unpopular opinion but I found it a little boring, to be honest.

Thank you for the ARC and I didn't really enjoy reading this book.

Joe Hunter meets Olivia at the library where he works, when his pea brained boss tries to stop her from purchasing used library books. Whether or not she intends to resell them in her own shop is really immaterial. Joe's boss Russell is being a bit of a git, and Joe lets him know this. Siding with an unwanted person instead of his colleague ultimately costs him his job, but Joe finds his own rewards: he meets someone with interests that match his own. Her resale shop, Made of Memories, certainly lives up to its name, rekindling a few of Joe's own. What's more, it serves as the site for more to come. He and Olivia hit it off nicely, eventually become a couple, and share their love, laughs, and lives.

Until the day a bloke uses an anti-maskers march as cover to rob the flower shop next door. When Olivia tries to stop him, he drags down his mask and coughs in her face. If the thief wanted a distraction, that works quite nicely. He makes good his escape, but not before Joe snaps video including his face. It's something the police could use to find him, hold him, bring him to trial. Unfortunately, soon after that day, Olivia succumbs to the disease running rampant, leaving Joe bitter and alone.

During and after Olivia's funeral, Joe grapples with some heavy feelings. Many are due to grief, some are due to the kindness of his shop's neighbor Abigail, others arise from his fraught relationship with his heavily religious in-laws, and several come from dredged up memories of his grandfather. The latter made quite the impact on his grandson, trying to push him into sports and away from girly pastimes like reading. That grandfather was also a man who passed on information about how the dead need to be thought well of, never included in dire thoughts just before he passed on when Joe was young. A living person could trap the dead in hellish nightmares if the wrong thoughts passed through the living's minds.

So, while Joe does his daily chore of work and serves as a witness for the trial of the captured cougher, Darrell Swann, he's also grappling with grief and bad instructions. And when he starts to hear his dead wife's whispers, he wonders if she might not still be with him and if he can somehow see her again …

Ramsey Campbell's The Lonely Lands injects a story of the passage into and through grief with some otherworldly touches. This is not a classic ghost story, per se, it's not a horror novel interested in scaring the bejesus out of us, and the psychological aspects are not about a man going out of his head and turning toward homicide as a healthy outlet. Instead, The Lonely Lands is a commiseration with a character who's lost everything, who's trying to pick up the pieces, and who is hearing or seeing uncanny things. Are the latter real or manifestations of guilt and/or remorse? Hard to say. The novel offers a meditation on the collateral damage death has on those left behind, and it's a piece about rediscovering balance in an off-kilter world.

There are the occasional eerie turns of phrase, the unsettling descriptions, the interacting with unsympathetic characters through awkward or frustrating but excellently penned dialogue, and the sly intrusion of the otherworldly into the mundane that we come to expect from Campbell's fiction. The icing on this cake is a presentation of The Other Side as fascinating as any I've encountered in quite some time.

Needless to say, the book grapples with heavy topics, and it treats them with the weight they deserve. So, readers eager for a fun, rollercoaster ride should certainly look elsewhere. This is a solid entry in the literary horror realm and arguably a straight-ahead literary novel. No matter where you'd stick it in a bookshop, however, Campbell has provided one more of the readable, emotionally honest gazes into the darkest regions of the human soul he always produces. His craft is impeccable, delivering the solid characterizations and quality storytelling we've come to expect.

Instead of a wild, fright filled horror epic like The Hungry Moon, a potent cosmic horror excursion like Fellstones, or a twisted psychological thriller like Somebody's Voice, we get something a tad more melancholic, personal, intimate. There are still plenty of things going on to hold the attention, of course.

The author cannot help but draw unease from the most innocuous parts of life. The occasional glimpses of shadowy figures or faces leave us wondering if Joe is experiencing a trick of the light or seeing something far more disquieting. The interactions with people like Olivia's controlling parents or the law enforcement individuals are unsettling. Conversations don't quite connect between characters, half-intelligible sounds are heard from just around the corner, and even the belligerence of appearing in a courtroom trial all serve as fodder for the author's particular way of injecting sinister overtones into everyday activity.

The Lonely Lands is a book worth returning to, a good yarn well told as well as a potent examination of what it means to love, to lose, and to go a little mad trying to escape grieving. It's a deceptively simple piece, drawing us into some sequences of despair and longing that reveal the lonesome land we reside in, no matter how much we tell ourselves we've found completion or a companion. In the end, each of us is made of the memories we've recorded, simultaneously balms against the dark and reminders of all that we once had and lost.
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Thank you NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for supplying a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Title: A Spiraling Descent into Memory and Madness: "The Lonely Lands" Review

Rating: ★★★½☆

"The Lonely Lands" is a novel penned by the illustrious Ramsey Campbell, an author known for his exquisite skill at manipulating moods to craft a truly terrifying narrative. While his latest effort does not reach the peak of some of his best, it remains an intriguing read, one that ventures deep into the haunting realms of memory, loss, and the afterlife.

The narrative unravels through the eyes of the grieving protagonist, Joe Hunter, who, grappling with the loss of his wife, embarks on a surreal journey through the labyrinthine memories of their shared past. This is a novel that turns the typical ghost story on its head, taking readers on an immersive exploration of the ethereal realm, melding reality and the supernatural in a disorienting dance that both intrigues and perplexes.

Campbell's forte lies in his ability to create an eerie, unsettling atmosphere, and in "The Lonely Lands", this talent shines through. The sense of dread that permeates the book, a spectral echo of Joe's grief, is masterfully rendered. However, this is not a novel that will be to every reader's taste. The frequent shifts from past to present and from reality to dreams can be disorienting, sometimes detracting from the overall flow of the story. There is a lack of a clear delineation between these shifts, which can lead to confusion.

As a long-time fan of Campbell's work, I found this novel a refreshing departure from his previous offerings. It ventures into new territory, weaving a complex narrative around the concept of afterlife communication and the haunting persistence of memory. Despite its compelling premise, the execution might have benefited from a tighter structure and clearer transitions between the different temporal and supernatural planes.

The characterization is strong, with Campbell painting a poignant portrait of Joe, a man torn between the world of the living and the dead. His anguish and desperation lend a profound sense of emotional depth to the narrative, which is a testament to Campbell's skills as a writer. The horror elements are subtle yet chilling, underpinned by the ever-present specter of loss.

Published by Flame Tree Press, an imprint known for bringing forth unique voices in the genres of horror and suspense, "The Lonely Lands" further cements Campbell's reputation as a master of dark fantasy.

In conclusion, "The Lonely Lands" is a haunting exploration of grief, memory, and the boundaries between life and death. Its compelling concept and strong character work outweigh its occasionally confusing structure, earning it a respectable 3.5 stars out of 5. Fans of Campbell and new readers alike will find much to ponder in this atmospheric tale of love, loss, and the specters that linger in the lonely lands of memory.

A surprisingly desolate tale here; I’m not sure whether the narrator is simply suffering from severely unpleasant delusions, or whether the supernatural is simply a matter-of-fact occurrence in the context of this novel. Certainly, the journey of reading the novel was as mysterious and confused as some of the protagonist’s experiences, and I found that I had to work harder than I’d like to figure out what was passed for reality and what might be unreliable narrator. It was nice to see Christian Noble appear again, albeit only in passing, although his mention brought a desire for more detail which remains unrequited. Characters’ speech, as ever, was ambiguous and interpretable, and at times this became exhausting. I’m a big Ramsey Campbell fan, but for me this book’s narrative, alas, didn’t really give me what I’ve come to like from him.

Description, though: amazing. Such redolent prose, with exceptional simile and metaphor. The chilling descriptions of horrific events are marvellous, and Campbell’s use of language is as wonderful as ever.

A mixed review from me, then, but of course we all bring our own preferences to the table. Perhaps this one, sadly, just wasn’t for me.