--- product_id: 69892008 title: "The Croning" price: "Bs.500" currency: BOB in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 url: https://www.desertcart.bo/products/69892008-the-croning store_origin: BO region: Bolivia --- # The Croning **Price:** Bs.500 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Croning - **How much does it cost?** Bs.500 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.bo](https://www.desertcart.bo/products/69892008-the-croning) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description desertcart.com: The Croning: 9781597802314: Barron, Laird: Books Review: Brilliant - The Croning by Laird Barron is a brilliant example of cosmic horror. However, it is much more than just an exciting, masterfully written, and unique novel. It could be said that it is an insightful metaphor for the human experience under a cosmic sky. A cautionary tale. As stated in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men: “You can’t stop what’s coming.” After reading The Croning, readers may begin looking behind their backs, trying desperately to see what’s coming and wondering what omens they had failed to notice. When a text is born to the public, it takes on a life of its own and offers many avenues of entrance and understanding. The reader becomes the co-author. This is very true of The Croning. Barron’s writing style is pristine, high end, and intelligent with no hint of egocentricity. It’s all about the story, and it is a pleasure to read such a skilled, unpretentious application of language—the perfect meeting of style and substance. Readers will be transported into the world of cosmic horror in every sense by the clarity of the author’s voice. Evocative descriptions carry readers to varied locations across the United States and Mexico. The plot is reinforced by an extensive array of characters with varied personalities. Their often suspicious actions leave a trail of breadcrumbs that astute readers might employ in order to deconstruct the plot and to understand the dangers faced by the protagonist. Every character is an important cog in the gears of the universe. Most notable would be the protagonist’s wife whose prophetic last name is Mock. The plot of this novel is a highly complex, nonlinear collection of episodes from the life of Don Miller, the protagonist. Casual readers may become confused after reading the first few chapters, wondering where the story is going, but perseverance will be richly rewarded. The first chapter is an augmented version of the Rumpelstiltskin story. It could be said that this chapter is a unique example of post-modern reading instructions that set the stage for what is to come. It is an integral element of the text that ultimately serves to complete the circle of life at the end. Perceptive readers will notice a disturbing pattern of mysterious experiences that affect the protagonist’s life. He goes on stumbling through life never following the thread of clues that the universe has left for him. Will he be able to reconstruct his fragmented memories? Only the most astute reader will guess what is coming. The stunning double-conclusion comes full circle and ties up all the loose ends, positing the question that perhaps nobody can stop what is coming, not even the brother of a queen. After completing this epic work, readers may be given to look back upon their own lives in fear that they may have missed warning signs that could have helped them come to the realization that they may simply be cog in a larger game they may never win because they had been sleepwalking through life like a slaughter animal that wanders through its short life, totally unaware of the evil that his masters have plotted for him The Croning comes highly recommended and should be considered a brilliant cautionary tale, a wakeup call. The knowing is half the battle. Rougeskireview Review: Entertaining spookiness - Donald Miller is in crisis. He's well into his 70's and experiencing signs of dementia. He's always been absent minded, but he's realizing now that he has significant memory gaps around key events in his life. He's beginning to suspect something sinister is afoot and that his beautiful wife of 50 years is somehow involved. Is he going crazy or does true evil lurk? The Croning is an ambitious novel wrapping the fears of old age around a tale of cosmic horror. There's mystery, intrigue, spy novel adventure, a nice tie-in to the Rumplestiltskin fable, and terrifying horror. Barron is an excellent wordsmith and his prose shines throughout. Unfortunately, the whole thing feels a bit unbalanced. There's a lot of time hopping as Barron peels back the layers via creepy flashbacks. They're entertaining, but uneven, and when you get to the end you realize one of the longer ones made no contribution at all to the larger plot. Maybe it was meant as a decoy to keep us guessing, or perhaps it was meaningful in an earlier draft and the connections were edited away. Either way, the result is clunky (albeit entertaining). I thought Barron missed a huge opportunity with the ending too. He went in a different direction, which was fine, but he somewhat fumbled that too by not providing enough development to make the payoff believable. Barron is considered a rising master in the field of weird fiction with several highly regarded short stories. This was only his first or second novel and was the first of his works I'd ever read. I've since sampled his short stories and he's clearly in his element there. I enjoyed this one a lot, but it should have been better. It has superb ideas and the ingredients for 5-star greatness, but it reads more like a draft than a finished novel. I would still recommend it to fans of weird fiction. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #167,772 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #212 in Horror Collections & Anthologies (Books) #379 in Ghost Fiction #2,453 in Dark Fantasy | | Customer Reviews | 4.1 out of 5 stars 1,175 Reviews | ## Images ![The Croning - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71NBOtoV+NL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Brilliant *by R***S on July 7, 2023* The Croning by Laird Barron is a brilliant example of cosmic horror. However, it is much more than just an exciting, masterfully written, and unique novel. It could be said that it is an insightful metaphor for the human experience under a cosmic sky. A cautionary tale. As stated in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men: “You can’t stop what’s coming.” After reading The Croning, readers may begin looking behind their backs, trying desperately to see what’s coming and wondering what omens they had failed to notice. When a text is born to the public, it takes on a life of its own and offers many avenues of entrance and understanding. The reader becomes the co-author. This is very true of The Croning. Barron’s writing style is pristine, high end, and intelligent with no hint of egocentricity. It’s all about the story, and it is a pleasure to read such a skilled, unpretentious application of language—the perfect meeting of style and substance. Readers will be transported into the world of cosmic horror in every sense by the clarity of the author’s voice. Evocative descriptions carry readers to varied locations across the United States and Mexico. The plot is reinforced by an extensive array of characters with varied personalities. Their often suspicious actions leave a trail of breadcrumbs that astute readers might employ in order to deconstruct the plot and to understand the dangers faced by the protagonist. Every character is an important cog in the gears of the universe. Most notable would be the protagonist’s wife whose prophetic last name is Mock. The plot of this novel is a highly complex, nonlinear collection of episodes from the life of Don Miller, the protagonist. Casual readers may become confused after reading the first few chapters, wondering where the story is going, but perseverance will be richly rewarded. The first chapter is an augmented version of the Rumpelstiltskin story. It could be said that this chapter is a unique example of post-modern reading instructions that set the stage for what is to come. It is an integral element of the text that ultimately serves to complete the circle of life at the end. Perceptive readers will notice a disturbing pattern of mysterious experiences that affect the protagonist’s life. He goes on stumbling through life never following the thread of clues that the universe has left for him. Will he be able to reconstruct his fragmented memories? Only the most astute reader will guess what is coming. The stunning double-conclusion comes full circle and ties up all the loose ends, positing the question that perhaps nobody can stop what is coming, not even the brother of a queen. After completing this epic work, readers may be given to look back upon their own lives in fear that they may have missed warning signs that could have helped them come to the realization that they may simply be cog in a larger game they may never win because they had been sleepwalking through life like a slaughter animal that wanders through its short life, totally unaware of the evil that his masters have plotted for him The Croning comes highly recommended and should be considered a brilliant cautionary tale, a wakeup call. The knowing is half the battle. Rougeskireview ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Entertaining spookiness *by H***N on October 12, 2012* Donald Miller is in crisis. He's well into his 70's and experiencing signs of dementia. He's always been absent minded, but he's realizing now that he has significant memory gaps around key events in his life. He's beginning to suspect something sinister is afoot and that his beautiful wife of 50 years is somehow involved. Is he going crazy or does true evil lurk? The Croning is an ambitious novel wrapping the fears of old age around a tale of cosmic horror. There's mystery, intrigue, spy novel adventure, a nice tie-in to the Rumplestiltskin fable, and terrifying horror. Barron is an excellent wordsmith and his prose shines throughout. Unfortunately, the whole thing feels a bit unbalanced. There's a lot of time hopping as Barron peels back the layers via creepy flashbacks. They're entertaining, but uneven, and when you get to the end you realize one of the longer ones made no contribution at all to the larger plot. Maybe it was meant as a decoy to keep us guessing, or perhaps it was meaningful in an earlier draft and the connections were edited away. Either way, the result is clunky (albeit entertaining). I thought Barron missed a huge opportunity with the ending too. He went in a different direction, which was fine, but he somewhat fumbled that too by not providing enough development to make the payoff believable. Barron is considered a rising master in the field of weird fiction with several highly regarded short stories. This was only his first or second novel and was the first of his works I'd ever read. I've since sampled his short stories and he's clearly in his element there. I enjoyed this one a lot, but it should have been better. It has superb ideas and the ingredients for 5-star greatness, but it reads more like a draft than a finished novel. I would still recommend it to fans of weird fiction. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The promise of Laird Barron's short fiction fulfilled in novel form *by M***N on May 27, 2012* The Croning follows Don Miller, a genial yet seemingly addle-minded older gent whose career in geology has trailed off, along with his mental acuity. Don's wife Michelle, though nearly the same age, continues jetting around the globe, exploring, conferencing, and occasionally vanishing in ways that seem both secretive and suspicious. Don keeps meaning to pin her down about mysterious past events -- where she went, who she was with, what happened to him, what it was all about -- but the gradual deterioration of his mental faculties means all such intentions to learn more about his wife, to understand what happened and why, eventually trail off and fade away. The book begins with an altered and mood-shifted version of the Rumplestilskin fable, which takes place in some indeterminate distant past, and also connects to the later story of Don, Michelle and their families. From there, the story moves from the 1950s to the 1980s to the present day. Time is not merely linear and forward-moving, in fact the looping, repetitive and continuous nature of time is a matter of repeated focus here. We encounter secret agents, corrupt police, weird rituals, and Barron's oft-present bored, wealthy decadents messing with things they oughtn't. The stories of Don, Michelle, their ancestors and the shadowy followers of Old Leach are full of dark mysteries, secrecy and possible betrayals. Don moves past these things, always affable and seemingly balanced despite the accumulated darkness trailing behind. He's essentially an unreliable narrator, whose unreliability becomes clarified as elements of his obscured history are revealed, both to him and to the reader. Much is made about the novella and novelette being the ideal length for tales of horror, the idea being that a short story is too brief to adequately develop a situation, yet a novel is too long to sustain tension for its full length. Recently, Laird Barron has done more with these mid-length forms than anyone else in the genres of weird fiction, horror and dark fantasy. He's also expressed a preference for the novella as his "sweet spot." At the same time, it's difficult for any writer to focus exclusively on short stories or novellas. Most readers are more interested in novels, which is the reason publishers want to see writers write them. It was inevitable that a writer as acclaimed and awarded as Barron would have everyone clamoring for him to write a novel. So how does he handle the larger canvas, hundreds of pages in length? And as a critic, even an informal one, do I compare The Croning against Barron's masterful shorter works, or against contemporary novels of horror and weird fiction by other authors? I'd say by any standard The Croning is a success. That's not to say The Croning eclipses such masterworks as "The Forest," "The Imago Sequence" or "Mysterium Tremendum" in craft, narrative impact or overall quality. Rather he equals the standard set by his own shorter works, and by doing so in the more widely accepted and commercially viable form of the novel, takes that necessary next step toward asserting a more general dominance over the horror/weird genre. Write a powerful novella, or collection of them, and you'll impress the critics, awards panels, fellow writers, and that narrow segment of the reading community that follows shorter forms. Show yourself capable of writing a powerful novel, and the mainstream of genre fandom will take notice, along with publishers who might not have known what to done with a writer like Barron until now. A few years ago, any mention of Laird Barron's work invariably mentioned the word "Lovecraftian," yet over time Barron's work removed any question that his brand of cosmic horror had more going on than emulation of Lovecraft. Barron is in the process of establishing his own mythos with its own geography, including complex legends and interlocking structures of cause and effect. Readers familiar with his previous stories such as "The Men From Porlock" and others, will spot elements in The Croning which echo, either explicitly or implicitly, names, locations or events from earlier stories. With The Croning, Laird Barron steps outside the short fiction arena and proves his style, combining the brisk energy of pulp storytelling with the dense richness of literary prose, translates well to novel length. This broader canvas allows Barron time to accumulate disorientation, build up a painful tension, and gradually lower the reader into cosmic, abyssal darkness. After reading the last page, I felt the need to reorient myself, the way a diver must decompress after delving into deep waters. This is a powerful, affecting work of fiction, and the fact that it's a first novel implies great things are ahead for Barron and his readers. This guy is doing work of the highest order, and any fan of weird fiction, horror or dark fantasy needs to check it out. If you've held off checking out Laird Barron because you don't like short fiction, start with The Croning. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.bo/products/69892008-the-croning](https://www.desertcart.bo/products/69892008-the-croning) --- *Product available on Desertcart Bolivia* *Store origin: BO* *Last updated: 2026-05-11*