The Lighthouse Keeper by Alan K. Baker
In December 1900, three lighthouse keepers vanished without trace from the remote Scottish island of Eilean Mor.
An emergency relief crew was sent to man the lighthouse, and at the end of their month-long duty, they resigned from their posts, never to speak of what they had experienced.
The mystery of Eilean Mor has never been solved. Until now.
In the present, a group of environmental researchers arrives to observe the wildlife. While exploring the lighthouse, now deserted, one of the team discovers a manuscript written by one of the relief keepers, a man named Alec Dalemore. As a sudden storm cuts off their escape, the researchers come to realise that Dalemore wrote the manuscript as a warning to all who would come after him -- a warning of something ancient and powerful and strange beyond imagining…
The Lighthouse Keeper is a supernatural tale based on the Flannan Isles mystery, one of the greatest unsolved enigmas in maritime history.
The book has a lot going for it. I like stories based on a true event of the past, an event which has never been satisfactorily explained. And though I seem to keep running into stories which have taken the Lovecraftian world to heart, I think it was well done here. The island seems to exist out of time, drawing those who venture there, both past and present, into a horrifying place that should not exist but does.
It’s interesting how differently the two groups of people handle the situation; the three lighthouse keepers of the past, and the five researchers of the present. Oddly enough, it is the lighthouse keepers who are better at handling the situation. It seems easier for them to accept what is happening without being able to explain why it is happening. They see the danger, and react accordingly. The group in the present, however, appear less successful in their attempts to ward off that danger.
At the same time, the book has two major flaws: the beginning and the end. While the middle portion of the book is intense and kept me totally involved, the beginning portion was slow, and not as well done as the rest of the book. I nearly quit reading.
Conversely, the ending seemed rushed, in that the fate of one group happens suddenly, and is never explained. It was if the author was unable to come up with an explanation for what he had created, so simply pulled the plug.
Mount TBR 2024 Book Links
Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.
1. Bone Walker (Anasazi Mysteries #3) by Kathleen O'Neal Gear, W. Michael Gear
2. Holly by Stephen King
3. Inferno (Inferno#1) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
4. Fallout (Lois Lane #1) by Gwenda Bond
5. The Secret People by John Wyndham
6. Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
7. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
8. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
9. Psyche and Eros by Luna McNamara
10. Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts by Shanna H. Swan, Stacey Colino
11. Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
12. Night Songs by Charles L. Grant
13. President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier by C.W. Goodyear
14. The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin
15. Mine by Robert R. McCammon
16. Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt
17. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
18. The Plots Against the President: FDR, A Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right by Sally Denton
19. The North Woods by Douglass Hoover
20. NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
21. Upon Dark Waters by Robert Radcliffe
22. Dread: 22 Tales of Terror by Kevin Bachar
23. Escape from Hell (Inferno #2) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Jennifer Hanover (Illustrator)
24. Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy by Donald L. Miller
25. The Portent by Marilyn Harris
26. Just After Sunset by Stephen King
27. The Lighthouse Keeper Kindle Edition by Alan K. Baker
