Whilst I can't for certain tell you what is behind the horrific events that take place in this book (something that I love) I'm pretty sure I can say that it's not a monster. Ghosts, a force of evil, the spirit of Antarctica itself? I don't know what it is, but it's not something that our heroes can physically fight, and that, along with how it haunts and torments people, make it all the more frightening. I should have loved this, having a fascination for cold, lonely places (from my sofa) where I can spook myself with the immense and indifferent to man, frozen landscapes. I really wished I could have liked this more. I was intrigued by the ‘if you liked’ references to Michelle Paver and to Phillip Pullman, both of which I liked enormously. Several days into the journey Jonathan is discovered hiding on the ship, and thanks to an impassioned defence, gets the chance to prove himself to the crew. Now he has to show them that he's a capable young man, ready to face the harsh reality of a trip into the darkness of an Antarctic winter. And whilst he does well, winning over the crew and feeling like he's who he's always meant to be, strange things begin to happen on the ship as they journey ever southward. When disaster strikes and the crew is forced to abandon their ship, heading out into the frozen wilderness, things get even worse.

On a positive note, the writing was deeply atmospheric. I could feel the cold and the despair of this crew stranded in a brutal and unforgiving place. As the days and nights pass it gets colder and colder. The men begin to suspect something is watching them in the icy shadows. A supernatural force that knows their greatest fears, and preys upon their weakness. Ally Wilkes created a superb atmospheric novel. At times I truly felt as if I was with Jonathan in the artic. I loved the fact that the main character is a transgender young man. I enjoyed following him as he became comfortable in his skin. As far as the element of horror, it's nothing violent or too graphic whatsoever. So these 6 characters are covered by the list in the second regex, \u180B|\u200B|\u200C|\u200D|\u2060|\uFEFF. To strip all spaces from a string in Python3 you can use the following function: def remove_spaces(in_string: str):But as I was reading it, “Thing” vibes or not, I realized that Wilkes was doing something unique with a story theme we’ve seen before, because our main character, Jonathan Morgan, is a trans man during the World War I era. And I’m going to start with characters and time period because of that uniqueness. I liked the character set up of Jonathan as a trans man, and how he has found himself on an Arctic exploration ship after the death of his older brothers Rufus and Francis in the War. It gives him the perfect motivation, as he felt left behind when they went to war and he had to stay behind because his family and society did not understand his gender. I thought that Wilkes did a really good job of portraying a realistic and in the time trans man who has immense guilt over his older brothers death. His grief makes him want to connect to them in ways that he never did when they were alive, and decides stowing away on an expedition team that they had always been interested in is the way to do it. I also thought that Jonathan’s class privilege still being a blinding factor as well as his general naïveté due to youth and said privilege made him well rounded and complex (and at times very frustrating, which I imagine was the point). His interactions with the other men on the ship as a trans man in hiding was at times tense because of the secret we know Jonathan is keeping, as is the general idea of Antarctic travel during a time when said exploration is dangerous and enthralling. We get to see a little bit into the motivations of the other men, though it adds a bit to the mystery as well. I especially liked the character of Tarlington, an ostracized member of the team due to his scientific role as well as his conscientious objector status in the wake of the First World War. The tidbits of the time period, both in societal themes and characterization, felt well researched. One quote: "But now my brothers would never see Antarctica. Never know a clear day on the South Atlantic, or the jeweled ice of the floes. Their dreams had come to nothing, but I was the last Morgan sibling, and I knew where I'd find them. Overall, an impressive and bone-chilling debut by an author whom interests and style seem right up my alley. Unfortunately, I could never quite believe in Wilkes’ central character, and so never got taken into their experience of a post First World War doomed exploration of the Antarctic In CSS3, the white-space property is literally going to follow that chart and map the properties to text-space-collapse and text-wrap accordingly. More information

With only family friend Harry on his side and the winter ice threatening to trap them, Jonathan's adventure is much more than he bargained for. Then disaster strikes and the crew must winter over at at Expedition Point, a place where something evil is waiting.... With a strong and interesting cast of characters to play with Wilkes could have easily crafted a compelling story or survival and adversity with them. They could have told the story of these people and their struggle to survive the winter and it would have been engrossing enough. However, they also decided to add horror into the mix, and the quiet way that they did this was so much better than what I was expecting. In other horror stories set in frozen locations there tend to be physical threats for the heroes to contend with. There's the titular creature in The Thing, Tuunbaq the spirit bear in The Terror, and In The Mountains of Madness have the Elder Things. As such, I was waiting for some kind of creature to turn up in All The White Spaces. There are some moments of overt horror, shadowy figures standing watch, as well as some truly awful moments of body horror thanks to the harsh reality of surviving in such an environment, but for the most part the real terror of All The White Spaces is built up in nothing happening. It's the slow accumulation of unease, of the mounting tension of waiting for something terrible to appear that makes the book so effecting. It gets under your skin and keeps you on edge as Jonathan and the others keep a wary watch on the darkness around them, knowing that something's out there, watching them, but that they're unable to do anything about that makes this such a scary read.

Browse articles by tag

However \s DOES NOT cover characters not classified as whitespace, which are de facto whitespace, such as among others: Some of the best survival horror we’ve read in years, with a uniquely menacing adversary at its heart.” — Vulture , The Best Horror Novels of 2022 There's one thing I want to talk about, but as it's something of a spoiler I'm going to give a warning here. So, if you've not read the book yet and don't want to know please skip on to the next paragraph. One of the things that I was expecting to happen in this story was for Jonathan's status as a trans man to come up at some point. I was waiting for some scene to happen where someone on the expedition discovered the truth of who Jonathan is and for things to suddenly go wrong for him. I thought that he'd be challenged in his identity, for all of the hard work he'd done to prove himself would go out the window, and he'd suddenly be having to defend himself from a group of desperate men who suddenly see him as a woman. But this never happened. Ally Wilkes didn't craft a story around Jonathan's trans status, and I absolutely loved that. I loved that he never had to face the awfulness of being outed, that he never had his validity of a man denied to him. It would have been easy to go down that route, to use the horror of that situation to make things even worse for him, but it would have felt too awful. As such, the scene where Jonathan does try to explain who he is to one of the members of the expedition that person doesn't seem to care. He doesn't want to know more, and doesn't want Jonathan to tell him anything he's not comfortable revealing. And most importantly, he doesn't see Jonathan as any less of a man after it. For me, that's the perfect way to tell a trans story in this kind of scenario. Ally Wilkes debut novel brought some genuine shivers to my spine, and they weren’t just because of the vivid Arctic setting… I have found Paver’s books in such territory particularly heart stopping, beautiful and terrifying. Also Georgina Harding has successfully left me in the isolation of such a landscape.

In the wake of the First World War, Jonathan Morgan stows away on an Antarctic expedition, determined to find his rightful place in the world of men. Aboard the expeditionary ship of his hero, the world-famous explorer James “Australis” Randall, Jonathan may live as his true self—and true gender—and have the adventures he has always been denied. But not all is smooth sailing: the war casts its long shadow over them all, and grief, guilt, and mistrust skulk among the explorers. Once the men are in the abandoned huts, wondering what happened to the German party that passed this way a year earlier, I found myself more invested in the story. The underlying tensions within the party are exacerbated by the events surrounding them. Voices are heard. People find themselves lured into the open, following something they believe. Strange things start happening. Who, or what, is behind this soon becomes our focus. All the White Spaces forces its characters to confront their fears as they struggle to survive a seemingly doomed expedition to Antarctica. stars for a book of horror and fiction, set in Antarctica in 1920. The narrator, Jo, sister to 2 brothers killed in battle in WWI, is determined to fulfill her 2 brothers lifelong dream, i.e. to explore Antarctica. She disguises her self as a man and stows away abroad an Antarctic expedition ship. She is eventually discovered, but the expedition leader allows her to stay.

Latest articles

When the ship is found on fire we know someone has done it. We don’t know why, but it forces the men into a situation that is fraught with danger. Slowly, details are revealed that show just how dangerous this area can be…and the creeping sense of horror was well-conveyed.

At times reminiscent of The Terror by Dan Simmons for its polar landscape and cruel icy conditions, we are plunged into Jonathan’s perilous life on board the Fortitude as he joins the crew’s Antarctic expedition. Jonathan is a well rounded and brave character and we find ourselves rooting for him to make it to the Antarctic and also to finally be able to embrace his identity as a man. The dynamic between the wider group is tense and we get a real sense of them all as people and of their secrets and fears. Great God, this is an awful place,” said British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on his disastrous 1912 expedition to the South Pole, and Ally Wilkes has one of her characters say something almost identical in her absorbing alt-history horror debut All the White Spaces. If you’re going to write a horror story set in Antarctica, you pretty much have me at hello. And this isn’t just because, like anyone of taste and refinement, I have an enduring love of John Carpenter’s The Thing.

Browse reviews by Period

Hang onto your seats, All The White Spaces is one wild ride! Full of unexpected twists and turns, this book is full of entertainment. Mixed with equal parts of historical fiction, coming of age, thriller, mystery, and even horror this genre-bending novel is filled with so many elements that it's impossible to nail it down to just one. Something deadly and mysterious stalks the members of an isolated polar expedition in this haunting and spellbinding historical horror novel, perfect for fans of Dan Simmons’s The Terror and Alma Katsu’s The Hunger . Is it a cliché to say 'this book is creepy as hell and kept me up all night?' Yes, Does that make it any less true of Ally Wilkes' stunningly atmospheric, creeping-dread-filled debut All The White Spaces? Absolutely not! It's almost 2am here and I am exhausted, having spent night after night telling myself I'd read 'just a chapter or two' before bed, only to look up and discover it's almost 3am. Beautifully crafted horror with a compelling cast of characters, a chillingly vivid setting and a plot that grips you, vice-like, and pulls your mind on a terrifying journey will do that, though, won't it? Accomplished prose conjures up rich imagery that transports us to the end of the First World War. We meet Jonathan. Assigned female at birth, he faces challenges to behave in a certain way and his choices are constrained by his family's expectations. But when a telegram arrives and declares his brothers dead, Jonathan decides to run away. Free of those limitations, he is able to live as his true self and find his own adventures. Note: I received an ARC of this book through a giveaway hosted on Goodreads. I was not compensated for this review, and the thoughts expressed here are mine and mine alone.