These are stories imbued with the power and mystery of nature. You do not read the stories, you get lost in them like in your most fantastic dreams. You eyes open wider, and you start seeing new boundaries you haven’t noticed before.
The book consists of three novellas and two short stories. The five pieces in "Incredible Adventures" are almost impossible to be defined as a particular book style, because they have both horror and adventure elements. This book was not easy to write and it’s not easy to read. Blackwood was trying to help readers to understand their real relation to Nature. The collection starts with a bang with one of the novellas, "The Regeneration of Lord Ernie." In this tale, a tutor tries to breathe some much-needed spirit into his young ward by exposing him to a pagan ceremony in the Jura Mountains. But something goes wrong. Next up is "The Sacrifice," one of the shorter stories, in which a mountaineer who has just undergone some severe life setbacks goes climbing. This story is symbolic, surrealistic and ambiguous. "The Damned" is the next to be read, and it is the longest novella in the collection. At first glance this is a traditional haunted-house story, the tale is soon revealed to go much deeper than that. As the author tells us repeatedly, "nothing happens" in this tale per se; atmosphere is everything. But it really is remarkable how Blackwood maintains and magnifies this ominous atmosphere over the length of this novella. The last of the three long tales, "A Descent Into Egypt," immediately follows. In this tale, a group of men in nowadays Egypt find themselves being helplessly drawn back in time by the glamour of that ancient land. In this Egyptian tale, the land and time of the ancients is the reality; the present day is only the skin on the surface. The book ends on a lovely note with the short story entitled "Wayfarers." Here, a man awakens after an auto accident and finds himself in bed a hundred years ago! This is the story about love and reincarnation.
Every piece of the book is fabulous and breathless. "Incredible Adventures" amazes by author’s talent and unbelievable plots. This book is really worth reading.