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The Coffin of Honey
Not yet published
Expected 12 May 26Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Annihilation in this poetic space-age fable of proletarian internationalism.
At the end of the twenty-first century, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, a minor Marxist politician’s speech is interrupted by the arrival of an iridescent, pill-shaped object. It brings him, briefly, to another world, and to a state of ecstasy he will struggle to interpret upon his return. Soon, many others will be offered the same incantatory opportunity. Rival states attempt to capitalize on these developments, and a cynical spy sets an elaborate psychological operation in motion. Thousands of miles away, on an agricultural commune near the Caspian Sea, a young poet spends her nights troubled by prophetic dreams. The politician, the spy, and the poet will be ineluctably drawn into one another’s orbits, as will the mysterious Bell Letterist, author of a text about “the interdimensional will to the aesthetic” – a powerful motive force that requires human solidarity in order to thrive.
The Coffin of Honey is inspired equally by apocryphal stories of Alexander the Great, Bolaño-esque tales of literary vanishings, thousand-year-old Persian poems by exiled princesses, and the fever-dream conclusions of every parapolitical conspiracy theory that might just be true.
At the end of the twenty-first century, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, a minor Marxist politician’s speech is interrupted by the arrival of an iridescent, pill-shaped object. It brings him, briefly, to another world, and to a state of ecstasy he will struggle to interpret upon his return. Soon, many others will be offered the same incantatory opportunity. Rival states attempt to capitalize on these developments, and a cynical spy sets an elaborate psychological operation in motion. Thousands of miles away, on an agricultural commune near the Caspian Sea, a young poet spends her nights troubled by prophetic dreams. The politician, the spy, and the poet will be ineluctably drawn into one another’s orbits, as will the mysterious Bell Letterist, author of a text about “the interdimensional will to the aesthetic” – a powerful motive force that requires human solidarity in order to thrive.
The Coffin of Honey is inspired equally by apocryphal stories of Alexander the Great, Bolaño-esque tales of literary vanishings, thousand-year-old Persian poems by exiled princesses, and the fever-dream conclusions of every parapolitical conspiracy theory that might just be true.
- GenresFiction
304 pages, Paperback
Expected publication May 12, 2026
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156 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Did Not Finish
April 2, 2026DNF @13%
Did Not Finish
April 24, 2026It might be early to drop this one at 18% but I personally didn't enjoy the writing style. We have a Stream of consciousness chapter - sometimes in second-person POV, we have chapters where's there's a lot of unnecessary real-world information - like dugongs/manitees mistaken as mermaids, Pliny and the volcanic eruption. I felt exhausted and with my long TBR, I decided to drop this.
And it seems the (at least in the 18% of the book I've read) - it's going to be more focused on the socio-political themes with history lessons scattered throughout, which is not really my genre. I focused on the Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Annihilation part of the blurb - with the 18% I've read and some skimming, I'm still don't get why this book is compared to those. But the focus should be on the poetic space-age fable of proletarian internationalism.
And it seems the (at least in the 18% of the book I've read) - it's going to be more focused on the socio-political themes with history lessons scattered throughout, which is not really my genre. I focused on the Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Annihilation part of the blurb - with the 18% I've read and some skimming, I'm still don't get why this book is compared to those. But the focus should be on the poetic space-age fable of proletarian internationalism.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
The thing that really got me about this book was its snappy dialogue and characters that leapt off the page at me. The different perspectives and the way it was paced was compelling. It was unlike any book I've read before.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
A major contribution to Canadian literary sci-fi, and future classic.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews