The Night Land

It has been a very long time since I've sat down and created a blog post. My intent in the beginning was to post much more frequently. Hopefully at some point I can do that.
I've been deep into various occult books as of late but always have at least one fantasy, sci-fi or weird fiction book that I am reading in parallel. I've also become more of a collector these days.
I just finished up The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson. The edition that I have was published as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series and was split into two volumes. Many mentions of this story in print or online say to just skip the first chapter but I actually feel like you should read it. While it's true that it really doesn't add anything to the rest of the story, I felt like it was a mini-story within the novel. It also gives you a more detailed background on the character of Mirdath who is mentioned often in the story. However, I did not like the way the story transitioned into the main plot line as you will see.
There are two things about this story that I didn't really enjoy. First, there is the transition into the world of the Night Land. The main character enters the world through a dream/vision. This is very similar to the way that the main character in The Worm Ouroboros enters into Demonland. In my opinion, both books would have been better if the story left this detail out and just started in the fantasy world. The second thing I didn't like was all of the detail given to the romance between the main character and Naani/Mirdath. I felt like a lot of this could have been left out without hurting the story. Some readers have complained about the prose style used in this book but I didn't have any problem with that.
The world and mythology of The Night Land is rich and expansive. Like Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, the potential stories of this world are infinite. I've already discovered blogs (i.e. http://williamhopehodgson.wordpress.com/) and anthologies of fiction set within the Night Land (i.e. http://www.thenightland.co.uk/). Wildside Press has already released the first collection of stories and I plan to pick this up soon. You can find it at http://www.wildsidebooks.com/William-Hope-Hodgsons-Night-Lands-Eternal-Love-edited-by-Andy-W-Robertson-Hardcover_p_777.html.
This story is definitely worth reading.