The Wilding, by Ian McDonald
30 Sept 2024The Book
Synopsis:
Five kids are on a sleepover in a restored wilderness project in Ireland. With them, three teachers and one Ranger: Lisa. She is 26, longing to leave her job, out of her depth and soon to find herself mired in a nightmare.
Strange things have been happening at Lough Carrow, a vast rewilding project on the site of a former commercial peat-bog. Livestock mutilations. Rumours, myths from the neighbouring villages. Strange, unidentifiable tracks. On the trek in to the sleepover site they sight animals that have not yet been introduced to the park - wolves, wolverines, things older. Things thought long extinct.
As they near the centre of the wilding a boy realises he's forgotten his meds. A teacher volunteers to take him back to the visitor centre. Sure, what could go wrong?
That night the camp is attacked. A teacher is dragged away. Lisa's group is marooned in the wild. It is night, the four remaining kids are terrified, they need to get back to the ARK, but the wilderness seems to be playing with time and distance and something is out there. Something hungry and hunting...
My Review
The Wilding is a horror novel written by Ian McDonald, and published by Gollancz. A slow burn story that blends together elements from folk horror with a more modern terror, including a group of well-fleshed characters that are put in an extreme situation, becoming the prey of an ancient force.
Lough Carrow is a rewilding project in the depths of rural Ireland; Lisa, a Ranger that is longing to abandon this place, is taking a group of five kids and their three teachers for a sleepover night. However, after they are attacked by an unknown creature, they are forced to run deeper into the bog; progressively running into stranger manifestations, realising that the project has brought back something really ancient that is now hunting them.
In a first third of the novel, McDonald does an excellent job building the characters and preparing the atmosphere for the chaos that will be unleashed after; as a consequence, the initial part can be a bit rough in terms of pacing, but the payoff makes it worth-it. Lisa is a broken character after a traumatic event, that is alone in the world, and that however, will have to take the responsibility on this situation; a weight over her shoulders that, at many points, will logically take her to the border of collapse (I saw this novel comped with Midsommar, and I could see a bit of Danny in the character of Lisa). While the group that accompanies her is a bit secondary, I still enjoyed that, especially in the case of the children, they are fully developed, they are not just caricatures put there to die.
The atmosphere is excellently built, creating that oppressive and wild nature sensation that, when you are not in control, instils that fear of the unknown; McDonald weaves it together with folk elements to create an insuperable combination. As previously said, the pace is a bit of slow burn at the start, but once we overcome the first third, the story flows.
The Wilding is a great novel, especially if you want a modern take over folk horror; an excellent atmospherical proposal which I absolutely loved. I'm curious to see what brings McDonald in next novels!
The Author/s
Ian McDonald
Ian Neil McDonald was born in 1960 in Manchester, England, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father. He moved with his family to Northern Ireland in 1965. He used to live in a house built in the back garden of C. S. Lewis’s childhood home but has since moved to central Belfast, where he now lives, exploring interests like cats, contemplative religion, bonsai, bicycles, and comic-book collecting. He debuted in 1982 with the short story “The Island of the Dead” in the short-lived British magazine Extro. His first novel, Desolation Road, was published in 1988. Other works include King of Morning, Queen of Day (winner of the Philip K. Dick Award), River of Gods, The Dervish House (both of which won British Science Fiction Association Awards), the graphic novel Kling Klang Klatch, and many more. His most recent publications are Planesrunner and Be My Enemy, books one and two of the Everness series for younger readers (though older readers will find them a ball of fun, as well). Ian worked in television development for sixteen years, but is glad to be back to writing fulltime.