The House Between the Worlds
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Today I'm reviewing The House Between the Worlds by Marion Zimmer Bradley. The copyright is 1980-1981. NOTE: This book is fiction.
I read a lot more nonfiction than fiction, so naturally, my book reviews are mostly for nonfiction books. However, lately there has been a growing interest in fiction (novels, etc.) that feature out-of-body experiences or astral projection as a main theme. So I decided to re-read and review this book, which is one of my favorite novels dealing mostly with OBEs.
Many people know the author, Marion Zimmer Bradley, from her 1982 epic The Mists of Avalon, a very big book about the legends of King Arthur, but from a woman's perspective. Bradley wrote The House Between the Worlds just prior to Avalon.
When it comes to fiction, I love a book that keeps "upping the stakes" so to speak. In other words, things go from good to bad, bad to worse, worse to catastrophic, catastrophic to...Well, you get the picture. And this book "kind of" follows this formula.
It's difficult to describe the book and plot without spoilers, and I don't want to ruin it for you. So I'll do what I can.
The main character of the story is a man named Cameron Fenton, a University professor at the (mythical) parapsychology department at the University of California at Berkley, United States. Fenton is contacted by his older colleague, Dr. Garnok, who has a breakthrough: scientists discovered a new drug called "Antaril" that gives people super ESP powers. Under the drug, people can go through a whole deck of ESP cards with 100 percent accuracy. Garnok gets Fenton to be part of his laboratory study. After Fenton gets the injection of the drug, he discovers that reading the cards is not really ESP: it induces and out-of-body experience in which he can just walk through the barrier and watch the cards being flipped, reporting what they are in real time. Everyone is amazed.
But after a few runs of ESP cards, Fenton loses hold of this reality and finds himself in another reality, the world of the Alfar, a race of beings that resembles elves or human-sized faeries. The Alfar are assaulted by a race of hideous creatures, the Ironfolk, from a different reality, and Fenton witnesses the abduction of the Alfar queen. Since he's out-of-body and therefore non-physical, what they call a 'tweenman, he can't really do much about it.
When Fenton returns from his OBE, his colleagues, including Dr. Garnok, believe it was all just a hallucination. But it seemed so real!
Fenton gets involved with a colleague, Sally, who doesn't believe him, so they argue and such.
In further experiments with Antaril, Fenton returns to the world of the Alfar and is able to help them in a limited way. But he learns there's a lot more going on, with inter-world problems. Now he needs to find a way to help the Alfar. His fellow parapsychologists believe the drug may have affected him badly and he's having a psychotic breakdown, losing touch with reality, etc. So they take him off the study and cut him off from the drug. So he turns to a local drug dealer who gets him some illegal black market antaril.
At one point Fenton stays out of his body too long and when he returns to the lab, his body is gone! Eventually he gets forcefully pulled by his silver cord all the way to the hospital where his body was taken because the scientists couldn't revive him.
Eventually he uncovers a sinister plot devised by an evil "Lord Commander" named Pentarn. Pentarn is from another physical world like ours, and he's causing all these problems for a very good reason: The Alfar have his son and won't give him back. Fenton learns that Pentarn has somehow found technology to open portals between the worlds so that people, and creatures like the Ironfolk, can travel to the other worlds, but physically. Eventually there are incursions from other worlds into our physical Earth, and like I said, things escalate. Truths get uncovered. People get killed. The police get involved. Fenton gets arrested. It's a fun ride.
The book is 313 pages with small print and tight margins, so there's a lot of content.
The writing and editing are professional and I found no mistakes in the book. I give this book 4 and 1/2 stars out of 5. I didn't want it to end. Out-of-body experiences play a prominent part in this book. About 4/5ths of the book talks about OBEs. There are definitely some things in the book that are unrealistic, but it's still very fun.
Bob Peterson
19 August 2025
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