M.J. Johnson's Reviews > The Terror

What a brilliant story. I read this novella at bedtime over seven days and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. It is well-paced, containing more dialogue and is consequently less descriptive than a great deal of Machen's earlier work. Written in 1915 during WWI, it has an edge of the twentieth century about it and less of a more florid nineteenth century style that will appeal more to modern tastes, I think. I would describe it as more of a horror/thriller than the fantastic world of fauns and (bad) faeries that populate so many of his tales which I've read previously. I think this story has probably had great influence on many other writers of horror fiction. I wonder if Daphne Du Maurier, either consciously or unconsciously, used it as something of a template for her classic story The Birds. Simply excellent.