“Best Books of 2025: Science Fiction” Award—The Financial Times
The New York Public Library’s #1 Best Horror Book of 2025
“Durbin (A Green and Ancient Light) skillfully combines cosmic horror tropes with American frontier fiction in this standout historical horror novel set in the Old West… This is Lovecraftian fiction at its finest” — Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
“With an almost Jungian perspective of the collective unconscious, Durbin (A Green and Ancient Light, 2016) teaches us that resolution happens deep within all our hearts. Readers of The Country under Heaven will be transformed by this book.” — Booklist, STARRED review
“Verdict: Durbin’s (A Green and Ancient Light) stellar and unique novel combines lots of heart, a plot that replicates the best of classic Westerns, and awesome cosmic horror into one terrifying, thought-provoking, and entertaining package. Recommend to those who enjoyed Lone Women by Victor LaValle.” — Library Journal, STARRED review
“A triumphant snapshot of the hellish fallout in the divided US after the Civil War, The Country Under Heaven makes note of the amorphous individual terrors that those involved in the war carried with them forever after. This is a cosmic Western novel that doubles as a psychological treatise on the hidden wonders of radiant and mysterious inner worlds.” — Foreword Reviews, STARRED review
“Durbin’s novel, his fourth, climbs high to (a) lofty plateau. . . By the book’s end the implicit narrative arc rises up and bites like a cobra.” — Locus Magazine
“Whatever else it is, The Country Under Heaven has been a new kind of storytelling for me. It’s the first time a story or novel has first contacted me not through a place but through a voice: a main character’s steady, gentle, confident voice, speaking to me with a story to tell.” — CrimeReads
“A haunting, violent, touching, episodic fever dream of a novel that spans from the Civil War to the post-war Wild West. I’ve never read anything quite like it.” —C.J. Box, #1 NYT Bestselling Author of Three-Inch Teeth
“The best of the (weird) west. Durbin invokes eldritch terrors to examine the peculiar, lawless hellscape that was the American West following the civil war. Delicately written, beautifully told, and bristling with dark turns of the unexplainable,The Country Under Heaven is a phenomenal read.” —Alma Katsu, author of The Hunger
“It’s just extraordinary, combining elements that would seem to repel one another—historical fiction about the Reconstruction era, the supernatural, and a Western—but that form the most memorable story I’ve read in some time, with writing to match.” —Henrietta Thornton in FirstClue
“The Country Under Heaven is a brilliant exploration of the Old West and even older supernatural horrors. Elegant, thrilling, and deeply satisfying! Highly recommended!” —Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of the Joe Ledger thrillers
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