Turbine 34

by Katherine Clements

PART OF THE NORTHERN WEIRD PROJECT

In the near future, England is experiencing the hottest summer in living memory. An unnamed environmental scientist is tasked with evaluating the impact of a controversial new wind farm on the West Yorkshire moors. Camped out alone by the base of Turbine 34 – the most remote of the new turbines, built on an ancient peat bog – she spends her days gathering samples. But when she discovers signs of the devastation caused by the construction, she begins to see things – things that shouldn’t be there. She has dedicated her life to protecting the moor, but will it protect her?

Inspired by a real-life proposed wind farm in the North of England, Turbine 34 is for readers of Dark Matter and Wuthering Heights with a dash of folk horror.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Novella

92 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 6, 2025

About the author

The official bio...

Katherine's debut novel, The Crimson Ribbon, was published in 2014 and her second, The Silvered Heart, in 2015. Her third novel, The Coffin Path, became an Amazon bestseller and was nominated for the HWA Gold Crown Award and The Guardian's Not the Booker Prize in 2018. Her writing has won and been shortlisted for many prizes, including the Winchester Writers' Conference First Three Pages Award and the Weald & Downland Museum/Jerwood Prize for Historical Fiction.


Katherine spent over two decades working in training and education and led the development and launch of the UK’s first A Level in Creative Writing. She spent three years as editor of Historia, the online magazine of the Historical Writers’ Association, and is a member of the HWA Committee. She’s a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, having held fellowships at both Sheffield and Manchester Universities, where she worked with students on academic writing. She was the first Royal Literary Fund Fellow in the History department at Manchester University.

In 2018 Katherine was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award and spent a year living and working in New Orleans, while researching her next novel. She is based in West Yorkshire where, alongside her own writing projects, she works as a writing coach and mentor, and as editor of the Royal Literary Fund magazine Collected. She’s a qualified coach, has led workshops for hundreds of writers, both in person and online, and was lead tutor at the Historical Novel Society Academy where she launched the first online historical fiction masterclass programme.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

An environmental scientist is sent to evaluate the impact of a wind farm close to her Yorkshire hometown. Camping on the moors, she reminisces on the past – her past, and the land’s. We cut back and forth between her schooldays and a nebulous future-‘present’ in which remnants of history keep bleeding through. Clements weaves together all the elements of the plot incredibly well within a short pagecount. I thought I knew what was going on here from the beginning, but as it turned out, I’d only guessed about half of it. The story involves a trope I usually go out of my way to avoid, yet I still found it totally absorbing – a testament to the author’s skill.

This is the final book in Wild Hunt Books’ Northern Weird Project novella series, which I’ve been reading, and writing about, all year. Turbine 34 is a great way to wrap it up, one of the most accomplished of the lot.

[unstable.books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Turbine 34 is part of The Northern Weird Project. We meet an unnamed environmental scientist who is tasked with evaluating how a controversial new wind farm is impacting the area. Set in the West Yorkshire moors in the near future and during the hottest summer England has experienced in living memory, we are immersed in a bleak and unforgiving landscape. I mean, to build a turbine on an ancient peat bog seems like a terrible idea but you know … the powers that be. Our protagonist is just doing her job. She spends the days taking samples and minding her business. She starts to discover … problems that have resulted from this construction. Then, she starts to hear and see things that aren't supposed to be there. Katherine Clements sets this desolate stage and freaked me all the way out. Am I coming out of the tent if I hear barking? Absolutely not. What is calling out to her? What lurks right outside her door? The fact this is based on a real-life wind farm in Northern England makes this even more compelling. Our protagonist is also plagued by memories of her past lover, who is a piece of work if I have ever read about one. YUCK. How the creepy and decaying environment intertwine with these memories will be left up to you to find out, so go preorder this immediately. Thank you so much Wild Hunt Books for sending me the ARC. This little beauty releases November 06, 2025.




Inspired by a real-life proposed wind farm in the North of England

[Marguerite Turley · Rating 4 out of 5]

“He was The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Velvet Underground and Jeff Buckley. He was Robert Smith’s kohl. He was Sylvia Plath’s grave. He was – she decided – a poet.“

I’m feeling sad that this is the last of the northern weird project! I’m going to miss them so much. They were all incredible and this one is no exception! We follow a scientist as she goes to explore the bog around a new wind farm under a specific turbine 34. We learn about a time in her life when she was in school many years ago, and this takes place in the near future. Something always seems off, but never to be revealed until the end. Katherine gives us this tragic tale of the girl with no name, and pulls us into mind. Again, that sense of dread is always lurking in the background, making you question everything that’s happening. A quick read, and one I won’t soon forget! Thank you to wild hunt books for the arc!

[Jamie Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Turbine 34 follows an unnamed environmental scientist who is collecting samples from the ground to test. After her first night she starts to see and hear things that can't possibly be real and her fear brings up old memories from her past.

A deeply unsettling little novel about how we treat the land and the impact of our actions. I loved the style of this it feels slightly off balance leaving the reader feeling out of time and place and then everything weaves together so sadly but so beautifully. Katherine's writing style hooked me instantly and I read it in a single train ride through the North West.

It's bittersweet to have now finished reading the Northern Weird Project, each novella is so special within its own right.

[Alix · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This novella explores the catastrophic toll the modern world has taken on the natural landscape and the long memory of the land itself. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, since we follow our main character reflecting on her past, particularly a former relationship, while also slowly unraveling in the present. It’s a story about memory, destruction, and the lingering spirit of a place, and you can really feel the love she has for the bog that was once full of life. Overall, this was an interesting read, but it felt a little uneven at times, as if it wasn’t entirely sure what it wanted to be.

[Hannah Boyland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Turbine 34 follows an environmental scientist (who is unnamed throughout) investigating the impact of a local wind farm on the local environment.
Our environmental scientist is taking samples in an unforgiving landscape, during the hottest summer England has ever experienced.
Flipping between the now (or, technically, the future) and memories of a past relationship, this story is so incredibly weird, terrifying, beautiful and tragic.
This book is very hard to review without spoiling, but I really recommend checking it out.

[Steph Mckenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second read from the Northern Weird Project, a fantastic initiative from Wild Hunt Books, which has published six novellas by authors based in the North of England. With climate fiction and folk horror (bog people!!) both surging in popularity, Turbine 34 will appeal to readers drawn to landscape, folklore, history, hauntology, environmentalism, and the uncanny relationship between humans, animals, and our environment.

In Katherine Clements’ short but chilling novella, an environmental scientist returns to the West Yorkshire moors (a landscape she knows intimately) to assess the ecological impact of a new wind farm. As she spends her nights camping alone on the heaths, strange sounds and visions from another time (both personal and societal) begin to bleed into the present. These eerie manifestations seem to tap into something primal, menacing, and unresolved: a kind of Stone Tape-like haunting reverberating through the land itself.

Turbine 34 is the perfect bite-sized read for a winter’s evening: atmospheric, unsettling, and deeply rooted in place. Highly recommended for fans of Picnic at Hanging Rock, Sarah Moss, M.R. James, and anyone fascinated by the wild, haunted edge where history and nature intertwine.

[she.reads.between · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Nature has no mercy. It will yawn and stretch and resettle itself, like an old barn tom, concerned by nothing but its own primal desires"

I went into Turbine 34 thinking it would be one thing, and it turned out to be something entirely different. Set in a near-future England suffocating under drought and heat, the novella follows an environmental scientist sent to monitor the effects of a wind farm built on an ancient peat bog. Alone on the moors beside Turbine 34, she records data and observations, but the longer she stays, the less certain she becomes of what she’s really witnessing.

What begins as scientific fieldwork slowly twists into something far more uncanny. Katherine Clements creates an atmosphere thick with tension and ambiguity, and a landscape alive with whispers, echoes, and presences that can’t quite be explained. The ghostly elements are never overt, but shimmer just beneath the surface, leaving the reader (and the protagonist) caught between the rational and the supernatural.

Clements seamlessly blends environmental horror, folklore, and psychological unease, and her writing is lyrical and immersive. The moors are rendered with such detail that they feel both a sanctuary and a threat. Beneath the hum of the turbine lies a meditation on loss, guilt, and the uneasy relationship between human progress and the natural world.

So much was packed into this short story, by the time I turned the last page I felt that shiver you only get from a story that has crawled under your skin. Clements leaves just enough unanswered to make you question what’s real, and what the land itself might remember. Turbine 34 hums with dread and wonder long after the final line.

5 ⭐️

I am so grateful to @wildhuntbooks_uk for sending me an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Turbine 34 is out on the 6th November, and is the final book in the 6 part Northern Weird Project- i'm looking forward to picking up the physical copy to add to my collection! 🤎

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Turbine 34 follows the journey of a scientist investigating the impact a controversial wind farm has had on the West Yorkshire Moors.

This was wonderfully written and so atmosphere with a creeping sense of confusion and dread. Although short, this felt longer because of the slow burn nature of the tale unfolding.

I really enjoyed this and I plan to read through the rest of the Northern Weird Project.

Thanks Wild Hunt Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Stephen Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully written, engrossing story about the land and the people that live on it, of memories and the environment. Following a scientist as she takes samples and does field work out on the moors, this is a slow-burn, dreamlike, and atmospheric novella, always keeping the reader off-kilter. In parts it reminded me of Laird Barron’s story, ‘30’.

Highly recommended.

[Curtis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't read Turbines 1 through 33, but I manged to follow the 34th one just fine.

And, that's a wrap on the Northern Weird Project! Six novellas released over the course of the year, it made a fun series to follow. If anyone is scrambling to finish their reading goal, all these books are short enough to read in a day, but not so short where you'll feel short-changed.

[The Blog Without a Face · Rating 3 out of 5]

BWAF Score: 7/10

TL;DR: A climate-anxious moorland novella where turbines whine like banshees and the past won’t stay buried. Clements fuses cli-fi unease with bog-body folklore and a very human scar that never healed, and the result lands, clean and mean, for readers who want their horror to smell like peat smoke and bad decisions.

Katherine Clements is already known for historical chillers and moor-wrung atmospheres, and Turbine 34 reads like a tight, contemporary cousin to The Coffin Path: fewer candles, more carbon, same bleak romance with the land. The Northern Weird Project frame suits her. You can feel a writer in home terrain, both literal and thematic, and you get that hit of location-as-inevitable-fate that her work does so well.

A middle-aged environmental scientist returns to the Yorkshire moors to evaluate the impact of a vast wind farm. She plants her tent by Turbine 34, a skeletal giant that hums like a headache and keeps whispering at night. She wants data and distance, but what she finds are absence where birdsong should be, a renovated farmhouse that used to anchor her memories, a boy and dog that act wrong, and the pull of the bog itself. The mission is science, the stakes are flood and failure, and the texture is gritstone, heat, infrasound, and a chorus that might be wolves or might be her nerves. The turbine shrieks, the valley siren wails, and the peat remembers what people forget.

Clements braids three horrors into one rope: ecological collapse, a community economically bled white, and a personal history that curdled into a secret grave. The book’s best set pieces work because they are observed like field notes and felt like confession. You get the turbine’s industrial music up close, the scar of aggregate and hardcore under your knees, the hush where curlews should be. You also get uncanny beats that click only later, like the keeper’s “dog whistle” she thinks she hears, then remembers humans can’t. Clements lets that detail sit in your teeth until it aches.

The novella is patient and tactile. The prose keeps a steady gait, sentence by sentence, like someone walking tussock to tussock, testing every step. Clements loves sensory specifics, and she lays them in like lichen: heat shimmer, diesel tang, peat stink, the turbine’s rhythm that resets the narrator’s breath. Structure is modular, “Day” and “Night” movements that escalate the uncanny without cheap jumps. When the writing wants to soar, it does, but the book mostly trusts clear sightlines and clean description. Even the flashbacks are cut like thin slices of muscle, giving you just enough blood to taste what went wrong without drowning the present plot.

Themes arrive slow, then stamp the heather flat. This is a story about what landscapes store. Peat stores carbon, yes, but it also stores culture, bodies, and the parts of us we refuse to name. The wind farm is not a cartoon villain. It is an intrusion that tries to fix one crisis while worsening another, which is exactly the messy human way. The narrator’s old entanglement with a charismatic teacher brews beneath everything, and the bog becomes both archive and avenger. When the weather finally breaks and the moor slides, Turbine 34 goes down like a toppled idol and the book reveals its cruel mercy: reunion, not rescue. The last images are intimate, earthy, and chilling, a surrender that reads like coming home.

Turbine 34 sits right in the pocket of modern British eco-gothic, shoulder to shoulder with the best moorland hauntings, but pointed at 2030s heatwaves and flood sirens. The Northern Weird brief promises uncanny Norths; Clements gives you a North where the uncanny is simply what you get when you pile unresolved history under urgent fixes and hope the weather behaves. The turbine isn’t the monster. It is a tuning fork that makes the old monster sing.

The prose is flint, the atmosphere is thick enough to chew, the ending clicks like a trap, and the book has that distinctiveness test that matters most: I kept hearing the blades after I was done. Recommended often, especially for readers who like their cli-fi haunted and their hauntings muddy.

Read if peat bogs and turbines and ghost forests all light up the same part of your brain.

Skip if eco-arguments in your horror feel like homework, or if you want clean moral arithmetic where industry is evil and nature is saintly. This book refuses that comfort.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty decent long story, though the twist was telegraphed, for me, on p.27. The evocation of the earthy local culture, the windiness and smell of the moors, the straitened prospects for the residents, and the general vibe of almost peasant hopelessness, are all vibrant and deeply felt. They're also thematically connected to the big reveal of the novella, about the bucket-of-crabs culture that resents and actively resists anyone who dares to dream of climbing out...though part of me wonders to what extent contemporary Yorkshire is truly like this, and how much is taken from older depictions of provincial life. We also get a powerful sense of the environmental and spiritual violation of the...culture? the moorness? of the moors these huge wind turbines represent (and the author notes highlight how much protest they've incurred), though that doesn't strike me as deeply linked to the story's core thematic concerns, which feel underdeveloped--the notion of a violent pagan past still alive in the marrow of residents is nodded at toward the end, but it comes across more as an idea about Yorkshire than a completed link.

Not entirely successful for me as a literary endeavor, then, but an atmospheric tale, especially good for a rainy night when the howls of the wind outside, even here in San Francisco, remind you of all that is in the world that we only pretend to grasp.

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

This last installment of The Northern Weird Project dropped through my letterbox this morning.

I eagerly anticipated the reading of another amazing story with Northern connections.

I was somewhat disappointed sadly. To go a bit arse roads round, I must say I absolutely loved the ending. Those final few sentences really resonated with me and I thought the ending perfect. The rest of the story however felt a little too disjointed and fragmented to be completely enjoyable. We had the protagonist careening back and forth through time (and space? and portal?) and her teenage relationship with her teacher seemed a little irrelevant to the story.

I don't know, I just wasn't as enthused with this one as some of the other Northern Weirds. I liked the setting of the peat moors and the eeriness of the wind turbines, but it was a middle of the road 3 star read for me.

[Elaine Frieman Herbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterclass in how powerful and packed a short novella can be. I don't love the horror genre but I do love anything and everything Katherine Clements writes. Her writing is page-turning and compelling. Her diction and prose are beautiful, and I read this novel in a sitting. It was utterly delightful to have that sort of attention span again in an era of social media. I was lucky enough to see her speak at the Todmorden Book Festival, too, and the interview was brilliant. For writers, her publication and community on The Inkwell on Substack are well worth subscribing to.

[Dan Howarth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Close to a 5* book but not quite. Probably the novella in the series I was most excited about but I did feel a little disappointed by it. Superb writing and character, just plotwise it felt a little thin and I hate to say it, predictable.
That said, some excellent imagery which would have me picking up the author's other books straight away in future.

[Helen Bookwoods · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written ghost story, which doesn't quite add up. Absorbing and sad.