Briardark

Harian’s debut follows a hiking expedition that goes well off the beaten path. Dr. Siena Dupont and her team have long awaited the chance to explore California’s Alpenglow glacier and the surrounding Deadswitch wilderness. Their journey isn’t what they expected, however, as they encounter unsettling, even horrifying anomalies, from landmarks that don’t appear on the map, to a dead woman found in a tree. While Siena and her team try to escape the Deadswitch, Holden Sharpe is pulled into the mystery when he discovers something that’s not usually part of his humdrum IT job: a flash drive containing audio files from Siena’s expedition. Fans of Mark K. Danielewski’s House of Leaves will find a lot to love here, from the epistolary storytelling to the unnerving atmosphere. Although the pieces of the story don’t perfectly connect, Brenda Scott Wlazlo’s understated voicework unifies the narratives and maintains an atmosphere of steadily creeping dread.