The Insides

by Jeremy P. Bushnell

“With The Insides, Jeremy P. Bushnell doesn’t so much mash genres together as slice them apart to find the filets. It’s a literary urban fantasy with sharp things to say about the way we live now, darkened by a touch of Scandinavian rich and urgent and weird, a novel that defies categorization but demands to be consumed.”—Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore“The Insides begins with all the freewheeling magic and humor of The Weirdness, then ups the ante with danger, suspense, and rich emotional resonance. If you love fierce, witchy leading ladies, facing down evil, and traveling to strange realms that will explain your life before they haunt you forever, this is the book for you.” —Alyssa Harad, author of Coming to My Senses   Ollie Krueger’s days as a punk kid practicing street magic are are mostly behind her. Now she’s a butcher at Carnage, a high-end restaurant offering deconstructed takes on meat. On busy nights Ollie and her partner, Guychardson, race to see who can produce the most finished cuts. Ollie’s the better butcher, but somehow Guychardson always wins ... and Ollie thinks maybe it’s because the mysterious knife he uses is magic.   Before she knows it, Ollie’s interest in the knife has thrown her square in the path of a dangerous ex-marine called “Pig” and his hired psychic, Maja, who are on the hunt for the knife too—who want it so badly, in fact, that they might kill for it.   Now, magic is back in Ollie’s life and she’s being chased through New York City, with the fabric of space-time tattering around her and weird inter-dimensional worms squirming their way into her kitchen.  And before it's all over she’s going to need to face up to the Possible Consequences of some bad decisions, to look at the uncomfortable truths that she stuffed away long ago, deep down ...  inside . . .

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Magic, Horror, Urban Fantasy, Magical Realism, Audiobook

304 pages, Paperback

First published June 7, 2016

Reviews

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bushnell's first novel, THE WEIRDNESS, was one of my favorites of 2014. It took me completely by surprise with its crazy story and gleeful style. So I knew I wanted to read THE INSIDES to go for another crazy unexpected romp. And it is, though it's certainly darker than WEIRDNESS. The body count certainly gets up there, and there's a malevolent villain who ranks right up there with McCarthy's Anton Chigurh in terms of evil. So maybe it lacks the glee, but I really enjoyed the gravitas, the feeling of real stakes, and the tortured dual protagonists of Ollie and Maja.

I don't really want to tell you much about this book at all, except to say that it's a good fit if you like books that mess with your head. Bushnell's novels are the closest readalikes I can think of to THE LIBRARY AT MOUNT CHAR, for example. The rulebook goes out the window, and you just have to buckle up and go on the ride.

[Hanka Jirovská · Rating 4 out of 5]

a quirky and unique story of modern magic. at one point, I was afraid that the plot was getting too close towards some "saving the world" cliché but the characters remained true to their (imperfect and selfish) motivations which was refreshing.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very weird and unusual book but also very interesting and entertaining. I enjoyed it. And overall a book about regrets, a book about facing one’s mistakes, and about relationships. I’m sure it won’t be a book for everyone but if you’re looking for something different this might just be the one!

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I noticed it right away, this book with the disembodied head stylized on the cover of a shabby paperback for some reason on an end row display shelf in the library. The empty eyeholes seemed to follow me when I passed on my weekly visits, daring me to pick it up. After a month of resisting the impulse, I realized that it was meant to be and the reason it was still there was that it was waiting for me. I checked it out that day without even looking at the date of publication.

She knows what to do, when something has scared her. She has one strategy: she looks into it more deeply. It doesnt matter what the thing is...she looks into it until she can understand it. Just like anything can be found, anything can be figured out, and once you figure it out, it loses it's power over you. p84

Ollie has given up magic for domesticity, and domesticity for independence. But magic hasn't entirely given up on her, even with her gruesomely mundane job. and as it turns out, that can be handy. Especially when the space time continuum has been breached by unscrupulous persons after something they have tracked right to her vicinity.

If you just give yourself over to being bumped and jostled, it can become a kind of peace, like being tumbled by the sea. p137

It's hard, isn't it, being good all the time....You should give yourself a break from it more often. p163

[Thom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book of life and consequences, magic and violence. It has two strong female characters and you just know their stories are going to clash in the end.

Bushnell has built a world beside our world, The Inside. In the opening paragraphs one of our two main characters learns that there is magic in this world, but all magic has consequences. Over the course of the volume, we see that life has consequences as well, and neither of those are direct.

After the intro, we get two characters with more or less alternating chapters. We soon find one matches the intro, and the origin of the other is revealed through flashbacks. The other characters (nearly all male) are interesting, though not deep.

This is the author's second book, and it is a very quick read. The audiobook is narrated by the incomparable RC Bray, who gives a fantastic performance. I'll have to seek out his first book soon. If you want a fairly quick read that defies traditional labels, cut into this one soon.

[Ali · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. An imaginative concept, but hampered by underdeveloped and mostly unlikeable characters — especially the main character, which is never a good thing. It’s a pretty short, easy read that feels like it should have been a much longer novel: filled throughout with seeds to good ideas that never get the chance to fully grow.

[SEL · Rating 4 out of 5]

IT FEELS SO GOOD TO FINISH A BOOK QUICKLY!

Albeit not as long as most of the other books I take on, this book was still a huge ride from start to finish. I didn't realize until reading this book how starved I am for urban fantasy that defies even the norm of that not-so-popular genre by incorporating crime and thriller elements. The mechanics of how the world were great, the characters diverse, and left an overall fresh feeling among the collection of books I've recently read.

It was a great little book that I read in two big chunks, reading the first 100 pages late at night when I couldn't sleep and the other 188 pages today.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reminds me a bit of Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein, more spiritually than content-wise or tonally. A narrow-focus, high-stakes ripper of a yarn.
A woman in her early 30s, having grown up on the streets of New York and having learned a bit of real magic there, finds herself in proximity to a very powerful magical item -- one that's being sought by a deranged former Marine and a woman who can track anything. Chaos, bloodshed, and life-revelations ensue.
Also there's a strange meat-space Cosmic Horror space that functions as a backstage to our world! Neat!

[Elena Alvarez Dosil · Rating 3 out of 5]

My original The Insides audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Ollie Krueger discovers magic when she is eighteen, and she sees people using magic to go to a place called 'the Inside'. She was never able to go there because she was just learning, and only the ones opening the rift were allowed to pass to the other side. Time goes by, and Ollie gets married, has a child and stops practicing magic. Things get complicated, and she leaves home and gets a job as a butcher at the Carnage, a high end restaurant. There she will compete with her colleague Guyrichardson about who will work faster. Ollie is an excellent butcher, but Guyricharson has a special knife. So special that Ollie will start practicing magic again, and will have to escape from a villain called 'Pig', and Maja, a psychic specialized in finding things.

I did not know what to expect from this book, but let me tell you that it is a weird story. Weird does not mean bad, but you will need to keep an open mind for this one. There are strange elements and characters with unexpected motivations. Ollie is not even a likable character, and she makes quite some bad decisions, but she and her friend Victor feel real people. I think the weirdness of the characters is what made them interesting. I wish the author would have explored more this.

There is also Maja's story, underdeveloped, in my opinion. I have the impression that there were too many storylines in this book and Bushnell failed at tying them together. There is also the subject of 'the Inside' that was not completely explained, and the open end, that I always feel like an easy way out.

I think the concept was great and original, but it could have been much better exploited and developed. I enjoyed the book but it left me with the feeling of expecting more.

The narration was ace. R.C. Bray was my first narrator, and he is still one of my favorites. He juggles voices and accents in a way that makes it sound easy. Bray is a five star narrator.

I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone who would like to listen to something different. I would have liked to learn more about 'the Inside' and the character's decisions, but by the way this book was written, it does not look like the author will expand on it.

[Tellulah Darling · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Insides is both weird and wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed myself reading it. It’s a short book, and my one complaint is that the ending felt very abrupt.

I love interesting magic systems and magic societies, be it the pure awe of Hogwarts or the darker glamour of a world like in The Magicians. (Which, by the way, has been adapted into a fabulous TV series.) Both the magic and the magic society are almost tangental in The Insides. Yes, they flavour how Ollie knows magic, and why people are coming after this knife, but it’s as much about Ollie dealing with the consequences of choices she’s made in her life, as it is about a magic adventure.

That was a large part of the charm for me. She’s screwed up, and badly. I couldn’t understand how she’d made the choice that she did, but I enjoyed her working her way through it, and her realizations at how her selfishness had hurt other people.

Either the offbeat charm of this book will really work for you, or you’ll just scratch your head at why I so thoroughly enjoyed it. It was this slice of a woman’s life that I had fun navigating. I suspect that if you enjoy the work of Matt Ruff, like his book Bad Monkey, then you’ll enjoy this.

[LJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stopped reading this because I could not sympathize with the main character. She had it rough when she was a kid, her parents were drug addicts, she got tossed from foster home to foster home, she had sex with an adult when she was thirteen. Then she becomes involved with "street magicians" who teach her some rudimentary magic. She states that all she wants is a family, a "real" family, which she does create with a man named Donald. They have a child named Jesse and become the sunshine family, growing and selling vegetables. Fine, but then she goes and blows it because she just wants to have sex with someone, just the once, that she's really feeling passionate about. Later, as a butcher for a fancy restaurant in NYC after having left Donald, she begins to have regrets. Maybe she does want to have a happy family once more. Ugh! The story of Maja, the other female character is more interesting, but still pretty thoughtless and cruel. I like characters with flaws, but I like them with realistic ones, not ones due to some sort of stereotypical shitty childhood. I also like characters to learn and grow. You won't find much of that here.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's a lazy review for this book: I had really high hopes for this book and it was extremely disappointing. The only redeeming quality was the Maja character and I wish the story was centered on her. Too much time was spent on name dropping obscure musical genres and trying to show the reader how cool Ollie was rather than making her likeable or sympathetic enough to want her to succeed. Parts seemed derivative (bottle rockets scene a la Boogie Nights) and others just a contrivance to show how many weird hipster references the author could cram in (Jesse appears as a juggalo...but Ollie wouldn't know anything about that). The who thing is a great premise with poor execution.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating! Great plot, extremely well-rounded characters with common themes of personal dilemmas, great mix of real and another expanded aspect of reality. I loved thinking about this book. Very unique and enjoyable. As I told my 9 year old, I think this book is good enough to be made into a movie.

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://criticalflame.org/infinitely-w...

[Erin Tuzuner · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Insides are ironically lacking in depth.

[Ruby Tuesday]

It was a quick read, but a good one to read while on surgery recovery!

[William Adams · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel starts well with an interesting main character, Ollie, a young butcher who works at an upscale restaurant in modern New York. She’s an ex-street kid, still quasi-punk, unconventional, and separated from her husband and child, thrown out after being caught in a marital infidelity. She used to practice “street magic” (whatever that is), but has given it up. She works with a guy who uses a special knife.

Main character number two is Maja, a psychic who can read the vibes of inanimate objects and people. She can learn who touched an object, under what circumstances, and where it is now. Hence, she hires out as a high-dollar finder. She’s hired by a psychopathic creep called Pig who needs to find a special knife.

The chapters alternate mechanically between those two completely independent stories until they finally begin to interact at the two-thirds mark, although the eventual intersection was obvious from the start.

After the first two chapters, interesting characterizations are abandoned and the silly story surges and that’s where I began to lose interest. We end up with a fantasy of battling magicians. The knife itself is also magic, able to “cut space and time” as well as meat so watch out when it carves a hole into another dimension. Anything goes at this point.

Pig, the murderous pursuer of the magic knife is also a magician, it turns out, as is Ollie’s boyfriend, though her husband is not. He tries to use a bow and arrow to fight off Pig at the end. It’s always good to have a bow around the house, but against a magician, well...

Pig wants the knife so he can take over the world, of course. Ollie wants the knife so she can be a better butcher? I wasn’t clear. Maja doesn’t really want the knife, only to be paid for finding it. But I don’t think she got paid. The knife is an implausible MacGuffin.

Can these threads be tied up by the last page? Only by arbitrary plot turns untethered to any known world, not even the one constructed for this story. This is magical realism without the realism.

There was some promise in the first 50 pages but then the novel went to flashing lights and bright colors, but what do I know? Flashing lights and bright colors may be sufficient to entertain readers. Not my genre, I guess.

[Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable story about a magic blade, the people who have it, and the people who want it. Ollie is an ex-magician, ex-farmer, ex-wife, ex-mother, though none of these are quite dealt with in her past, especially the mother bit. Her son lives with her estranged husband in their farm far away from the city and she's been avoiding going back, pretending she's exiled. There's also the complication of Ulysses, the farm neighbor Ollie slept with and who found her the butchering job in the city. So, Ollie's life's a bit of a mess, but she pretends it's not. she lives with her semi-famous dessert chef friend, Victor, a friend from Ollie's foster home/street magic days. And then there's the blade. Ollie's convinced her fellow butcher uses a magic knife, and soon her worries are confirmed. A white supremacist called Pig and the witch, Maja, who's hired to find the blade are hot on the butcher's heels and soon the body count rises.

The story is told from Ollie's and Maja's voice, both strong and smart. Maja's story is perhaps the more unusual one, and throughout she transforms from cold and unaffected to worried. Perhaps she makes her decision a bit too late, but we're to believe that she's used to a body count and she doesn't care, as long as the item she's set out to find is found for her clients. Ollie makes some interesting choices and eventually leads the assassin and the witch to her farmhouse, which, obviously, was a mistake.

Thought Ollie's relationship with Ulysses has its scenes, her relationship with her husband and child are not really explored too much. Most of the exploration is done in the form of Ollie rehashing the past, but even that isn't very much or deep.

The ending is a bit surprising, especially in terms of the choice Maja makes. You could almost call it an uncharacteristically emotional, not very rational decision.

Recommended for those who like meat, archery, monsters, and dessert.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fantasy book featuring two complex female lead characters!! Ollie and Maja are both women who are interested in going their own way and are very honest with themselves about their faults. I wish there had been more (actually, I wish there had been ANY) female supporting characters, but baby steps.

I liked this book, but ultimately, it felt like it was "Part 1" of a larger saga, and a predictable start too. The whole plot is basically guessable from the first couple chapters and all of the plot "twists" were (for me, at least) not surprising. The world that is constructed is a common one in fantasy - specifically, it reminded me of American Gods, but clunkier and without the nobility or charm of Gaiman.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had so much fun reading The Weirdness by Jeremy Bushnell a few years ago. The Insides is also filled with action-packed ridiculousness and supernatural elements. Ollie works as a butcher in a fancy New York City restaurant. Her coworker always does better because he has a magic knife. Villains are willing to kill to get the super special knife. Ollie gets caught in the middle and has to survive being hunted by a goon and his psychic consultant/contract worker. Whoever gets the knife can rule the world! Muahahaha! The psychic is my favorite character.

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[Adrienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would be a 4 star rating if more was written about the INSIDE. A majority of the story was written about the outside.

However, I did enjoy this book. It was strange. It also had some similarities to other books I have read. But in a really strange way. I just wish there was a little more magic and a little more about the Inside.

Ollie use to practice some street magic. Now she works at Carnage as a butcher for the restaurant. And yet... Magic seems to call to her. She stumbles upon a knife that seems ordinary. An ordinary knife that others would do anything to get. What exactly is it about this knife that is so special?

I did like the writing. But it fell flat with the overall story.

[eclaire de lune · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was getting into this book; however, I think the ending really let it down. The different moving pieces never came together to form a coherent whole, and some of the character decisions felt disjointed and arbitrary. As a villain, Pig was a little flat; I liked Maja and Ollie but both of them needed just a little bit more of an arc to make the ending feel earned. The imagery in this book is very good from a sensory perspective, but I found it a little one-dimensional, and it wasn't exactly clear what tied together the theme of butchery and devouring or what that was meant to represent. A lot of good building blocks here, but not assembled as well as they could have been.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a very enjoyable reading experience albeit not a great book. I absolutely could not put it down even though it made some narrative leaps, there was minimal character growth and the magic system was barely explained. It could have been a longer book to both prolong my enjoyment and explain some characters/creatures/histories more. But I really enjoyed the time we had together, and I'm interested in reading Bushnell's other book.

[Heather Bode · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Really liked this one. Read it in a weekend.

It’s a fantasy novel, but also a drama, but also a thriller, and it’s also about magic and mistakes and relationships and heartache. There’s so much condensed into this quick little read.

I didn’t expect a book about a magic knife to have such poignant message about loss, mistakes and bad choices, and moving forward from it.

Like many of the books I’ve read this year, this book hit me right when I needed it to.

[Danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A former magician in New York City gets dragged back into the scene by a suspicious knife. Across an ocean, a criminal clan dedicated to white supremacy seeks the help of a woman whose gift is to find things, wherever they are.

Read this if you liked "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman, but were more interested in Julia's storyline as an amateur / self-taught magician.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick read that drew me in from the first page. The characters are original and compelling, and the story line has some clever twists. My only criticism is that there wasn't enough of it . . . I wanted more of the characters, more back story, more everything. Here's hoping there is a follow-up novel, either a prequel or sequel, I'd be happy with either!

[Deedee Gonzalez · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting read for sure. I enjoyed the storyline and liked seeing it in an adult read. Usually this sort of plot is heavily written in YA. It wasn’t a particularly “deep” read & you won’t be finding the hidden meaning of life - however, it was an enjoyable read that’s easy to devour. If your looking for a light yet enjoyable read, I highly recommend.

[Chris Devine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a good quick read. Lots of action, a little bit of magic and kind of sci fi elements, and a pretty cool plot. I liked the characters, but I could kind of tell it was a guy writing the female parts, there was just something off. It ends alright, but it kind of left me wondering what happens next. I guess that's like most books though, you just want it to continue.

[Gorbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book accomplished a lot for coming in at just under 300 pages. Obviously, I think if certain characters and plot lines were given more page time it would feel much more intricate, detailed, and nuanced. But you have to give the author credit for packing quite a punch into a short book. This was a really fun read.

[Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

While they might not be directly comparable other than for having the same author, I thought this book was better than The Weirdness. The plot was cleaner and the format of focus shifting worked well. It was a fair bit more serious and that worked. I enjoyed it and would recommend to a friend or loved one, but never to an enemy or even a frenemy.