2025 Reading Challenge 32 The Loney
I bought The Loney in 2016, read a few chapters, got bored, put it away, felt guilty after a few months, started it again, got more bored and decided Andrew Michael Hurley was not for me.
However, the Reading Challenge I started in 2025 is precisely designed for circumstances like this. I’m putting myself through the pain so I can gain a bit of understanding about my reading habits.
So, in returning to this, the familiar feelings of dread also returned, it… was… so… slow. I almost gave up again, but I persevered; something had struck a chord. My grandfather was a vicar in Norfolk, and I remember visiting his house in the 1970s. It was bleak and isolated; the house was all dark wood and low lighting inside. He was a peculiar man, a history, if not of criminal activity, then actions that bordered on what was the very edge of morality. I came away, though very young, with a feeling that I’d had a lucky escape, a person, supposedly holy and good, who didn’t come across like that, cold, cynical, a little bit cruel but with a practised wit and charm.
So, on to the book, it concerns a religious pilgrimage in the 70s to a remote north-west coastal area. The narrator is now much older, looking back on these times. Now, to the slowness, the author focuses on creating atmosphere, focused on the geographical location, but also on religious ceremony and much digression on the narrator’s thoughts and concerns. Major plot events are few and far between, so relaxing and immersing oneself in this style was something I had to learn.
Just over halfway through, I managed to adjust to this style and started to enjoy the subtle elements of horror and especially folk horror; weird charms, local pagan rituals, hidden rooms. I mean, it really is a push to say this is a horror novel. Gothic, yes. The Gothic tropes are very well realised, the old Catholic guilt and its moral and psychological tension, strange secrets, like the hidden room with scrawled names. The house they stay in is decaying and broken down, the damp of the sea infusing the walls and beams, full of creaks and ominous sounds.
The last, I’d say, quarter or third of the book starts to outline what is going on and how various factions are warring or feuding with each other, to create a revelation that does prick your subconscious. Whilst not earth-shatteringly fantastical, it weaves its way into your brain, as you start to consider what has or may have happened to one of the main protagonists in the book. No black and white answers here, just greys of different hues.
I gave this (5.0 up until halfway, I then reconsidered once finished) 7.5 out of 10.
TTRPG Thoughts:
Someone asked me if it had inspired me to write a Folk Horror scenario. At the time, I’d just finished the book, and I said no. But I think, having reconsidered and some of the family history that has floated along beside me, I’d say maybe.
The problem I have with a book like The Loney is that, although it drips with atmosphere and descriptions, not a lot happens. So I keep pondering, what would players do in the scenario? I know some may love that feeling of being in a well-described location, with interesting characters and luxuriate in wandering the scenes, having long, involved conversations, but equally, there would be players who’d burn down the house and shoot the main NPCs in the face, then hole up somewhere expecting Deep Ones to start pouring out of the sea.
Whilst I don’t want to give away too many spoilers, The Loney could be a straightforward murder mystery with some unexplained, but not necessarily supernatural elements.
I do like the idea of revisiting the events of the 1970s, perhaps the PCs are all grown-up, but experienced the events in the book as children. Are they part of a cold case murder or some historical research, or even a reunion? As they explore the area, they start to remember the events in detail, piecing together increasingly horrific and sanity-stripping past happenings.