The Crossed Keys Chronicle

Solace House

Cover

As I've mentioned in past reviews, I'm really not into actual horror or very disturbing types of novels, but especially around this time of year I do like a little bit of spooky or atmospheric creepiness in my books. I had heard a lot of advance praise for Solace House by Will Maclean going into this spooky season, so I had some high hopes, and I'll spoil the suspense here: I really loved it.

Our story begins in 1993 England, where Alex Lane has just finished his term at university and while his wealthy friends are spending their summer going on exotic trips, he has left his summer plans utterly and completely open. He doesn't have enough money to actually move off campus, but the school isn't keen on students living there during the summer. After meeting with someone with the school, he learns of an exciting summer opportunity to help clear out a potential future university housing building, where not only will he get a place to stay for the summer, he'll make a good amount of money in the process.

Alex quickly arrives at the Marshlands property and meets up with a ragtag bunch of other students who have been working on clearing the building for a short while already. After a week or so, the plan for the summer changes as the group's mission changes targets to the extremely spooky Victorian mansion adjacent to the property, known as Solace House. The mansion is going up for sale and the university has an interest in it after the death of its reclusive owner, Edwin Flayne. The mansion is stuffed full of decades upon decades of newspapers, books and ephemera stacked from floor to ceiling. As the students work through cleaning the house, they uncover more and more about the creepy life that Edwin lived and why even after his death, the house and its surroundings have secrets to be discovered.

As I started with, I really loved this book. Maclean gives the story a lot of room to breathe, and we get a great sense of the main characters and their motivations. Just the setting alone gives the story a general background level of unsettledness that the reader always feels in the back of their mind. I could often picture in my mind how creepy some of the settings in the book would be in real life, or even your typical A24 horror movie.

The main mystery in the story centers on Edwin Flayne and his lifelong obsession with performing a ritual he believed would allow him complete mastery over time, and in turn enperpetuate himself and the mansion, which as an aside is an amazing neologism. He detailed his manifesto and explanations for how to accomplish this in a giant set of journals that the students find in the mansion. One thing I really loved, which is only a minor spoiler, was the incorporation of acrostic poems into the story. In fact, towards the end of the book we even get nested acrostic poems! Which I have to say is a really fun idea and now I want all my spooky found poetry stories to feature it.

Even though the novel is just three pages shy of five hundred, it's the rare long book that I really wanted even more of. The pacing was perfect for a good slow burn spooky story, but it never felt plodding. I personally would have liked the last section of the book to flesh out its ideas even more, but alas, as they say, always leave them wanting more. Despite the fact that the calendar says the official end of spooky season is upon us, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a great atmospheric read and I look forward to whatever Maclean comes out with next.

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