This is a B-movie of a book, and I mean that in the good way. It’s a good exciting horror novel, with some solid characters, an atmospheric setting, and an ending that goes darker than I was expecting. It’s been a long long time since I read a Mark Morris book, but it might be time to dive back in.

Todd starts a romance with Yrsa in London. Everything is great until they visit her home Nordic island where things get very strange.

That Which Stands Outside is a great horror book based on Nordic Folklore. The folklore elements were unlike any I have read before. Despite a slow start this novel tense, claustrophobic, and creepy.

I would recommend this novel to fans of folk horror who don't mind a slow burn.

That Which Stands Outsideby Mark Morris is a gripping horror novel rooted in Nordic folklore. The story kicks off with Todd Kingston, a struggling actor in London, who rescues Yrsa Helgerson from a mugging. Things go romantic and the two travel to Yrsa's isolated Nordic island hometown.

And they’re not welcome there. The locals are hostile and superstitious, especially towards Yrsa, whom they believe to be cursed. As Todd and Yrsa dig deeper into the island's mysteries, they uncover dark secrets and face terrifying entities from Norse mythology.

I liked how Morris blended folk and body horror, as well as a slow-build of the story that later on erupts into intense, gruesome action. The gradual revelation of mythological elements enhances the horror and kept me guessing about Yrsa's true nature and the island's secrets.

Overall, That Which Stands Outside is a thrilling horror story.

5 Stars!

When I see a novel based on Nordic Mythology being released by the best horror publisher in the business right now, I know the novel is a must read. That was all it took to get me hooked into reading That Which Stands Outside by Mark Morris. It does not hurt that Morris has been writing for a long time and is well versed in dark fiction, and this paired with Flame Tree Press's history of great dark fiction, this one was an immediate must read for me.

When Todd met Yrsa, it felt as if fate had brought them together. After all, it is not every day you rescue a beautiful woman from muggers. The two quickly fell in love with each other and things seemed to go well until Yrsa met Todd's friends. Todd saw the warning signs that something was off and thought about breaking things off with her, then disaster struck. Yrsa's mother died and she asked Todd to return to her homeland, a small island in Northern Europe, with her. Todd could not refuse and the two went to lay her mother to rest. Unfortunately for Todd, something had brought them together, but he is soon to find out that it was not fate or the promise of a bright future.

Upon arriving at the island, Todd is immediately struck with how out of place he feels and how distrustful the people are of Yrsa. When Yrsa begins to act strangely, he again begins to wonder about her and her motives. She tells him of how she was lost in caves beneath the island for days as a child and how this brought about the towns mistrust of her and their belief that she may be a witch. She also tells him a story of treasure she saw in the caves and they launch an excavation to prove that it was not just a child's imagination. What they find beneath the island, though, may not only destroy them but destroy the entire island as well, for what lies beneath the rock is not a buried treasure but an evil more ancient than time itself.

That Which Stands Outside is a longer novel but it never seems to lag at all. Morris handles the story with a deft hand so that there is never a dull moment and builds a world that is dark and oppressive. The atmosphere of the novel is the star for much of the story as it is so bleak that it seems to wear upon the reader. It is obvious that something terrible is coming, but it is approaching like an oncoming train so all that can be done is to keep reading and wait for impact. The characters are fleshed out so that they seem like real people. Even the residents of the small island come to life through their bleak existence and their stuggle for survival. The island seems doomed to eventually succumb to the modern world and yet they still keep moving forward. Everything about the novel feels real which makes it even more horrific when things begin to unravel. And when they begin to unravel, it is not a slow descent into darkness as much of the novel seems to be. It is complete hell on Earth.

That Which Stands Outside is, quite simply, an amazing work of dark fiction. Morris pulls from Nordic mythology to create a unique story that was thrilling from the beginning until the last page (which is sure to leave the reader wondering well past the final period). The book takes a very bleak approach to the mythology as the old gods come to light and the reader is left cheering for the heroes of the story while fearing the worst. The twists and turns this novel throws at the reader, even while the main thread of the plot is fairly straightforward, kept me guessing throughout and eager to turn the page to see what was going to happen next. Todd is the perfect character to lead the novel and Morris contrasts the evil in the story with his seeming innocence in the events surrounding him. I cannot recommend this novel more and am sure that it will be one of the best, if not the best, novel that I read this year (and a quick note that this is the second Flame Tree Press novel based on old myths that have now been my two favorite reads of the year to date). Do not hesitate to pick this novel up, but be prepared to leave a nightlight burning to ward off the darkness that is sure to follow you from its pages. Oh yeah, and beware of the water. This is not a novel to be read on the beach. I can only give my highest recommendation.

I would like to thank Flame Tree Press and NetGalley for this review copy. That Which Stands Outside was released today, so grab your copy now.

Todd first meets Yrsa when a pack of brutes are stealing her purse. Having just been humiliated following a run in with a group of entitled gits at the bar he tends, Todd is thrown into a righteous fury. He storms forward, expecting the thieves to bolt like the cowards they are. Unfortunately for him, they are a braver lot than he expects, and he winds up beaten for his efforts and troubles. At least he makes a good impression on the pretty girl …

Soon enough, he and Yrsa are an item, finding joy and romance. It’s all great until she learns her mother has passed away and she needs to go back home for the funeral. On spur of the moment, Todd offers to come with her, and she is only too happy to accept his company.

The island of Eldfjalleyja is pretty enough, but the rough country is peopled with standoffish sorts. They have some kind of issue with Yrsa, and therefore that issue spills over onto Todd. No one wants to associate with them. Of course, Yrsa does not help matters any when she reveals a judgmental, standoffish, and snarky manner with them. To her, they are a superstitious pack of idiots. To them, she is nothing less than a full blooded witch.

Some of this fear has to do with a childhood incident, which found Yrsa lost in a local cave system. What the locals never believed, however, was her clear memories of finding an item of archaeological and scientific significance—a Viking seagoing vessel ladened with treasure is down there. Although Todd is an aspiring actor, his father and brother are the crème de la crème of builders and therefore have access to equipment and personnel that might help. If he were to call in a few favors and convince his brother Robin to come out and assess the caves, Todd might well let Yrsa have the last laugh over these superstitious jerks? After all, there can’t be any truth to the locals’ beliefs that the cave system is really home to monstrous entities from folklore . But as the work commences, Todd soon discovers more on heaven and earth than allowed for in his philosophy …

Mark Morris weaves together Norse myths, folk horror elements, and a wonderful sense for both slow burn build ups and anarchic horror explosions in his supernatural thriller, That Which Stands Outside.

Some horror novels explode into action from page one and keep up the adrenaline for a good while, let it peter out a bit to allow the audience to catch their breaths, and then rockets back into action for the denouement. That Which Stands Outside is a much more controlled book than such fare. Here, we have a slow but steady build up as Todd meets the possible love of his life, eats crow a couple of times, finds himself a fish out of water in an unfriendly environment, finds himself discovering sides to his lover that he never expected, and soon discovers the truth behind local legends can be far more gruesome and horrifying than he could have ever expected. It’s a slow accrual of information and a steadily increasing sense of wrongness that propels Morris’ book. The author has a solid eye for details that serve double duty, layering on information about character or plot while subtly laying the groundwork for chills to come.

This slow build start with a surprisingly fast paced conclusion echoes some of the most entertaining offerings from writers of 1970s/1980s horror fiction. I’m thinking of folks like Rick Hautala, here. That Which Stands Outside is a solid flipside to books like Night Stone and Winter Wake, which also found people drawn outside their comfort zone of city life into a more insular, working man’s world of remote small towns. Here, as there, we get a sense of the horror early on as tucked away behind a dam. Through trickles or leaks, the sense of that horror is established. Eventually, the barriers will collapse in grand fashion, and all hell will break loose. Morris presents some chilling and nevertheless entertaining visions of a small community besieged by nightmarish elements, but he never loses sight of the heart of his story. We want to follow Todd, Yrsa, Robin, and a handful of others, seeing how they process all this strangeness. We want to bear witness to how they will overcome adversity leading up to the finale where they may succeed or fail, and we want to feel for them. Mark Morris never lets us down on that end. The concluding events won’t necessarily win over the whole audience—books of this sort have a built in split for readers: some will not be satisfied with anything but a happy ending, others will not accept anything but a doom laden one, and even the intersection of these Venn diagrams, which find some characters surviving and others not, may leave a large part of the readership gnashing their teeth. While I will not spoil the actual ending (or even the mood that’s to be had there), I can say that the engine chugging along in Morris’s book is one that runs toward a fitting conclusion to what we’ve seen, properly raising the stakes and paying off the setups.

That Which Stands Outside won’t necessarily satisfy folks looking for horror rollercoasters from page one. It does get into the spirit eventually, but Morris’ book is much more interested in taking its time to develop the setting, the mood, and the characters before throwing everything into the blender and hitting puree. It’s not a book that’s afraid to show some gruesome events, but it certainly lets us build up sympathies for the people that are slated to be involved in those events. All the better to let us fear for them, of course. Readers looking to settling in for the slow accrual of solid characterizations, weird events, and gathering oddness before the inevitable tipping point will find plenty to enjoy here.
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A special thank you to both Flame Tree Publishing and NetGalley for offering an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love Nordic tales and this was a super creepy one. I read it in two days. It really kept me interested. Great characters, and a slow burn treat.

That Which Stands Outside was a folk horror novel, complete with old gods and underground dark monsters.

The island that Yrsa brings Todd too is isolated and strange. A superstitious fishing village with a whole cast of weird and sullen villagers. No one seems to like Yrsa and must seem afraid of her. Todd doesn’t understand why until Yrsa begins to show him what happened to her as a child, when she got lost in an abandoned cave system.

A slow burn with major creep factor.

*Huge thanks to Flame Tree Press & Netgalley for the digital ARC!*

Back in 1989, Mark Morris’ debut novel, ‘Toady,’ was released heralding the arrival of a new and exciting voice. Now, some thirty-five years later, Mark is still releasing thrilling, can’t-put-down books. Recently, he’s been working more in the Dr. Who realm, but has been putting out some critically acclaimed anthologies through Flame Tree Press. When this, his debut with Flame Tree, was announced, I was very excited. I haven’t read ‘Toady,’ though it is buried somewhere on my Kindle currently, but this one sounded right up my alley and I was excited to dive in.

What I liked: The novel starts out with a bang, Todd, a down-on-his-luck actor, comes across a woman being attacked one night after leaving his job as a bartender. He intervenes, and while he saves her from worse injury, he himself gets his ass kicked, putting him in the hospital. Waking, he finds the woman there, and that she’s been coming to make sure he’s ok daily. Her name is Yrsa and quickly the two of them fall in love.

Morris sets the stage nicely with that moment bringing them together, but Todd’s feelings for her are solidified after she gets word her mother has died and she’ll need to return to a small Nordic island off the coast where she’s from. She hates the place, hates her hometown, but Todd volunteers to come and the story takes off.

Once there, it becomes apparent immediately that the townsfolk have no love towards Yrsa, no sympathy that her mother’s died and after a short time there, Todd finds out why. When Yrsa was a child, she fell into a cave on the outskirts and was missing. Almost a week later, she was found, but none of the towns people believe that the child they pulled from that hole was Yrsa.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not widely read on the 80’s and 90’s UK authors. I’ve read some Ramsay Campbell and more recently a lot of Adam Nevill. I’ve read Tim Lebbon’s work, and many of the ‘new’ breed of UK authors – Kevin J. Kennedy, Gemma Amor, V. Castro, David Sodergren, Phil Sloman, Dave Jeffery, David Watkins, Joseph Sale etc. etc. – and ignoring them (not maliciously) I’ve found that the UK writers coming from that time period have a very pragmatic approach to developing their story. They take their time giving us lush descriptions (read detailed not purple prose) but also have this uncanny ability to leave a drip or two of dread within every paragraph. Such is the case here. Morris sets up the bowling pins well – Yrsa tells Todd about the caves, they go there, and she shares that she saw something when she crawled through as a child. Todd then gets his brother, who has a drilling company, to come and drill through, to see what she saw – and even in that statement alone, there’s a desire to know what it is, that the reader is intrigued.

Morris continues the trend of giving us plum location and character descriptions, while teasing out this change in Yrsa. The rain comes and she dances naked outside. Strange things happen around the town and she seems to be energized. Small little figures are seen and she smirks at the notion. It all leads to the final quarter of the novel being full on bonkers. The drilling breaks through, the terror is realized and characters begin to fall like confetti.

For me, it was a tale of two parts. The first half worked wonderfully to set the stage. I felt like I was walking the streets with Todd, meeting the people and enjoying the remoteness, even if the people were not outwardly friendly to Todd. The second half was the classic horror novel. We get carnage, bloodshed and tangible chills. Morris takes this time to knock down those bowling pins he set up, hundreds of pages ago, and boy does he knock them down.

The ending was remarkable in that it gave us closure. That’s a rare thing these days in the world of expected sequels and readers want more and more. I personally, was very happy with how it was wrapped up.

What I didn’t like: While I personally loved it, in the novella age of fast releases and faster reads, I’m hopeful that the readers who love these dark, burning, quality stories find it and it explodes, because everything is fully developed. I can see this one being set aside by those readers who think a three hundred page book is too long, as this one really begins to pick up steam right around that mark.

Why you should buy this: I’m actually shocked I’m not seeing this novel all over my social media pages as it was fantastic. Morris gives us amazing characters, a phenomenal back drop and some truly wonderful lore. Todd is a character every single reader will root for, even when he seems to be completely oblivious to the dark omen he’s in a relationship with, and the action is here is masterful.

An absolutely face-smacking good time, this one had me hooked from page one and never let go. Now, I really should give ‘Toady’ a read.

Mark Morris delivers a fun, fast-paced mythical horror novel set on a small Nordic Island with That Which Stands Outside.
A compelling tale about ancient evil, vicious gnomes - known as Jotnar - and a clash of new and old worlds, it's a tense and thrilling page turner that ratchets up the tension before an action-packed final act.
Morris brings the story to life with rich, rounded characters that leap off the page.
His trademark horror is here too, with some memorable scenes including one in which some unfortunate workmen are deboned and filleted by the Jotnar.
Well worth a look.

That Which Stands Outside by Mark Morris it’s an epic horror story that I thoroughly enjoyed! It usually takes me half a day to read a book it took me over three days to read this one and every time I put it down I couldn’t wait to go back to it. Todd saved Ursula from a robbery that put him in the hospital. When he wakes up, the girl he saved is there they soon become friends and then so much more. soon after her mom dies and they have to go back to the little island where she grew up but when they arrive Todd is taking a back by the way the local people treat her. That night at the pub he meets Carianna who went to school with Ursula but she isn’t happy to see her either in fact she gives Todd a warning and a note with her phone number on it soon things on the island only get crazier from how his girlfriend acts to the fear he sees on the faces of the Islanders they’re even suspicious of Todd himself when people start going missing and a death occurs on the island Carrie Anna tells Todd this doesn’t happen when Ursula is gone what really starts things rolling however is when Ursula brings Todd to the cave where she went missing as a teen and explained to him what happened and tells him about the fortune of gold she seen in the cave, Todd whose family owns a construction company has everything needed to dig behind the cave wall to find the treasure, but when he calls his brother and a small crew to do the job this is when things go from bad to worse they then go from worse to catastrophic but when everything reaches devastating Todd wonders if he’ll even make it off the island at all.There is so much I am leaving out this review the book is just too long the story too complex trust me when I say this is a very talented writer and this is a very awesome monster story. If you’re a fan of monster horror then you’ll definitely love this book I believe the origin story is one from Nordic mythology and I believe the author did a wonderful job executing it. I want to thank Flame Tree for my free arc copy via NetGalley please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

A thoroughly entertaining horror novel from a master of the craft that has a little bit of everything. Mark Morris packs a tonne of good stuff into That Which Stands Outside. At times it’s playful, at others it’s creepy and in the end it’s ferociously exciting. The tension gradually ramps up as he teases out the mystery of what’s going on and expands the cast of believable characters for the reader to get invested in. The slow burn is skilfully done and pays off beautifully in the climax. Great stuff.