Briardark by S.A. Harian – Review

Published: January 16, 2023

Publisher: Compass and Fern

Series: Briardark #1

Genre: Horror

Pages: 362 (Paperback)

My Rating: 4.0/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
Survival and cosmic horror collide in this new series, perfect for fans of LOST and House of Leaves.

For Dr. Siena Dupont and her ambitious team, the Alpenglow glacier expedition is a career-defining opportunity. But thirty miles into the desolate Deadswitch Wilderness, they discover a missing hiker dangling from a tree, and their satellite phone fails to call out.

Then the body vanishes without a trace.

The disappearance isn’t the only chilling anomaly. Siena’s map no longer aligns with the trail. The glacier they were supposed to study has inexplicably melted. Strange foliage overruns the mountainside, and a tunnel within a tree hollow lures Siena to a hidden cabin, and a stranger with a sinister message…

Holden Sharpe’s IT job offers little distraction from his wasted potential until he stumbles upon a decommissioned hard drive and an old audio file. Trapped on a mountain, Dr. Siena Dupont recounts an expedition in chaos and the bloody death of a colleague.

Entranced by the mystery, Holden searches for answers to Siena’s fate. But he is unprepared for the truth that will draw him to the outskirts of Deadswitch Wilderness—a place teeming with unfathomable nightmares and impossibilities.

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The cover for this book really caught my eye whiles I was browsing NetGalley and then when I read the synopsis I absolutely had to get my hands on a copy. Just for the record, it is probably weirder and more terrifying than you might expect from the synopsis, though the first chapter is likely to clear up any misconceptions. It begins with a group of women on a backcountry hike in the Deadswitch Wilderness and they are trying to escape from something horrifying and it quickly becomes clear that they’re not going to make it out alive.

Immediately following, we jump to Dr. Siena Dupont and her expeditionary group setting out to a remote cabin in the same wilderness to study the Alpenglow glacier. The team starts off for their multi-week research project in good spirits, but it quickly becomes apparent that not only is not all well with the team members, but they find a dead woman in the branches of a tree not far into their journey which immediately sets the whole team further on edge. Upon their arrival at their research base, the unsettling occurrences only get more frequent and disturbing – hallucinations, a disappearing glacier, a threatening stranger – and the team’s personal history starts to rear its ugly head. There is a darker side to the Deadswitch Wilderness, a hidden world called the Briardark, and Siena and her team have to escape without becoming trapped which may not be possible

The other POV chapters belong to an IT guy named Holden Sharpe, who is supposed to be going through some old hard drives to make sure they aren’t about to toss anything valuable or important. On one of these hard drives he finds a video journal that Dr. Dupont made during the Alpenglow expedition. All the files but one are corrupted and as the story progresses, more videos unlock. It seems normal enough at first, but there’s an exciting twist a bit later in the book. 

This book was honestly creepy as hell and deserves the comparison to LOST. The Alpenglow team had loads of believable, well written drama and personal history that added to the tension. Holden Sharpe’s perspective was fascinating because you think you know where things are going and then everything you think you knew gets turned upside down. The Briardark is this dark and terrifying other world that has left me with so many questions. It’s not explained in detail, but you get the gist of it in this book. Fortunately this is a series, so the next book is probably going to give us more details. This was an unexpectedly cool reading experience and I would definitely recommend it.