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The Book of the Juke #2
Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination
At the dawn of the twentieth century in the Idaho logging town of Eliada, orphaned farm boy Jason Thistledown and black physician Andrew Waggoner came face to face with monsters: the human sort, in the form of American eugenicists seeking to perfect the human race through breeding and culls; and the inhuman, a parasitic species named Juke, that lived off the hopes, dreams, and faith of humanity, even as it consumed it from within.
The year is 1931 . . .
In a remote valley in the Bavarian Alps, the Germanic students of those eugenicists seek to uncover the secret of the Juke and the promise of the Übermensch. In Paris, Dr. Andrew Waggoner enters his third decade of unravelling the mystery of the elusive organism. Jason Thistledown, now a veteran pilot of World War I, gets ready to embark on a new career flying mail and passengers in North Africa and, he hopes, forget the profound horrors that have shaped him.
Soon, they will all have to reckon with one other: a terrible synthesis of those horrors, which moves among humanity with an inexorable and terrible purpose—obliterating and reshaping that humanity until there is only one thing left:
Die volks.
David Nickle is a Toronto-based author and journalist whose fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies like Cemetery Dance, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, the Northern Frights series, and the Queer Fear series. Some of it has been collected in his book of stories, Monstrous Affections. His first solo novel, Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, led the National Post to call him “a worthy heir to the mantle of Stephen King.” His most recent novel, Rasputin's Bastards, was called supernatural eeriness at its best. He also works as a reporter, covering Toronto municipal politics for a chain of community newspapers.
The year is 1931 . . .
In a remote valley in the Bavarian Alps, the Germanic students of those eugenicists seek to uncover the secret of the Juke and the promise of the Übermensch. In Paris, Dr. Andrew Waggoner enters his third decade of unravelling the mystery of the elusive organism. Jason Thistledown, now a veteran pilot of World War I, gets ready to embark on a new career flying mail and passengers in North Africa and, he hopes, forget the profound horrors that have shaped him.
Soon, they will all have to reckon with one other: a terrible synthesis of those horrors, which moves among humanity with an inexorable and terrible purpose—obliterating and reshaping that humanity until there is only one thing left:
Die volks.
David Nickle is a Toronto-based author and journalist whose fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies like Cemetery Dance, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, the Northern Frights series, and the Queer Fear series. Some of it has been collected in his book of stories, Monstrous Affections. His first solo novel, Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, led the National Post to call him “a worthy heir to the mantle of Stephen King.” His most recent novel, Rasputin's Bastards, was called supernatural eeriness at its best. He also works as a reporter, covering Toronto municipal politics for a chain of community newspapers.
376 pages, Paperback
First published August 22, 2017
19 people are currently reading
634 people want to read
About the author
David Nickle
62 books173 followersDavid Nickle is the author of several novels and numerous short stories. His latest novel is VOLK: A Novel of Radiant Abomination. His novel Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism (to which VOLK is a sequel) was a finalist for the Aurora Award, the Sunburst Award and the Compton Crook Award. His story collection Monstrous Affections won the 2009 Black Quill Reader's Choice Award. He's a past winner of the Bram Stoker Award and Aurora Award. He lives and works in Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 16, 2019
NOW AVAILABLE!
and on the table
and if you look closely, you can see that greg's fox table is still alive and kicking. FOXEN!
if you read Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism and thought to yourself “i liked it, but it coulda used more nazis,” then you are in luck, friend! this sequel is LOADED with nazis! and, yes, since i know you are thinking about asking me - i do think you should read eutopia before reading this one. i was surprised (but thrilled) to learn about this sequel, but with six years of forgetting-time between the two books, i was concerned that i would be lost. fortunately, he does a really good job hitting the touchpoints of the first book, memory-refreshers that don't come across as exposition-dumps. he also gets the reader up to date, bridging the timeline between where eutopia left us in 1911 and where this one picks up in 1931 with a few key moments. however, i do not think there’s enough in the refresher bits to catch a complete newbie up to speed. that’s not to say you can’t enjoy this as a standalone, but i think you will miss out on a lot if you try to be some kind of “i only read sequels” renegade.
this is the rat king of genre-blends - it’s science fiction, horror, and historical fiction, where historical personages like goebbels and that other guy coexist with familiar fictionals from eutopia as well as ghosts, jukes (which you will know to fear from having read eutopia), and the menacing new-to-the-scene orlok, whose taxonomy is…complicated. for now, just think of a combination of charles manson and drax - surrounded by naked and adoring hitler-jugend, bellowing "Joseph Goebbels is a man that I would not ever fuck" with a dave bautista belly laugh.
it’s only natural that a story with its roots in eugenics would become filled with nazis once it became era-appropriate, but it’s not the kind of nazi horror i’m used to, which is admittedly awesome, but a bit sillier.
this is much more literary - the grown-up dark chocolate of horror writing where the historical detailing is as considered as the horror-bits and which highbrow manners you can pretty much tell from the titles; stiff and formal, invoking (involking?) brittle browned paper:
Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism
Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination
it's not dry, just ... respectable. although it's true that the horror in this one is less front-and-center than in eutopia. there’s one really creepy scene, but for the most part, it’s closer to supernatural historical than true horror. whatever it is, it is a very good book, which you will discover when you come to it after having diligently read eutopia.
because you have been so well-behaved, you may read the prologue for free here:
https://sites.google.com/site/davidni...
******************************************
this is available TODAY. i am still reading it, so you guys can go out and get it and lap me and then make fun of me for my slow reading of late. <---- LIES - it has been DELAYED!
******************************************
I DID NOT KNOW THAT THIS SEQUEL WAS HAPPENING, AND NOW I CAN'T EVEN CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT!!! WWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH
come to my blog!
and on the table
and if you look closely, you can see that greg's fox table is still alive and kicking. FOXEN!
”When was the last time you saw Molinare’s ghost?” asked Andrew.
Dominic set the cup down before Andrew.
“Just now,” he said. “Just a moment ago. He was at the bar, over there.” Dominic pointed to the far end of the bar, toward the Liberty’s street entrance. “He warned me, as he often does.”
“What did he warn you of?”
“Calamity,” said Dominic. “Always calamity.”
if you read Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism and thought to yourself “i liked it, but it coulda used more nazis,” then you are in luck, friend! this sequel is LOADED with nazis! and, yes, since i know you are thinking about asking me - i do think you should read eutopia before reading this one. i was surprised (but thrilled) to learn about this sequel, but with six years of forgetting-time between the two books, i was concerned that i would be lost. fortunately, he does a really good job hitting the touchpoints of the first book, memory-refreshers that don't come across as exposition-dumps. he also gets the reader up to date, bridging the timeline between where eutopia left us in 1911 and where this one picks up in 1931 with a few key moments. however, i do not think there’s enough in the refresher bits to catch a complete newbie up to speed. that’s not to say you can’t enjoy this as a standalone, but i think you will miss out on a lot if you try to be some kind of “i only read sequels” renegade.
this is the rat king of genre-blends - it’s science fiction, horror, and historical fiction, where historical personages like goebbels and that other guy coexist with familiar fictionals from eutopia as well as ghosts, jukes (which you will know to fear from having read eutopia), and the menacing new-to-the-scene orlok, whose taxonomy is…complicated. for now, just think of a combination of charles manson and drax - surrounded by naked and adoring hitler-jugend, bellowing "Joseph Goebbels is a man that I would not ever fuck" with a dave bautista belly laugh.
it’s only natural that a story with its roots in eugenics would become filled with nazis once it became era-appropriate, but it’s not the kind of nazi horror i’m used to, which is admittedly awesome, but a bit sillier.
this is much more literary - the grown-up dark chocolate of horror writing where the historical detailing is as considered as the horror-bits and which highbrow manners you can pretty much tell from the titles; stiff and formal, invoking (involking?) brittle browned paper:
Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism
Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination
it's not dry, just ... respectable. although it's true that the horror in this one is less front-and-center than in eutopia. there’s one really creepy scene, but for the most part, it’s closer to supernatural historical than true horror. whatever it is, it is a very good book, which you will discover when you come to it after having diligently read eutopia.
because you have been so well-behaved, you may read the prologue for free here:
https://sites.google.com/site/davidni...
******************************************
this is available TODAY. i am still reading it, so you guys can go out and get it and lap me and then make fun of me for my slow reading of late. <---- LIES - it has been DELAYED!
******************************************
I DID NOT KNOW THAT THIS SEQUEL WAS HAPPENING, AND NOW I CAN'T EVEN CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT!!! WWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH
come to my blog!
February 2, 2019
Well hot damn, this was a mighty fine read. The first Juke novel Eutopia had a certain level of, I'm not sure of the right word, zaniness or absurdity for lack of anything more appropriate, permeating throughout and it lent it a somewhat fantastical feel. It was weird fiction that reveled in its weirdness. This one, to me at least, was a little more serious, a little somber if you will. Gone are the redneck wannabe klansmen Nazis only to be replaced with actual card carrying Nazis and everything gets ratcheted up a notch in terms of scope, size, and potential. This was a more mature novel as well, the structure and timelines were a little more scattered and Memento-like in their presentation instead of the more traditional one thing follows another delivery of the first, and I loved the way the flashbacks filled in the years of what happened to our bunch of characters since we last left them, really superbly done. The author's imagination really flourishes in this and all the bizarre happenings are realistically explained and made sense of even when I thought there was no way these things could be defined. Eutopia was one of my favorite reads from last year and because of that I remembered almost everyone and everything even though it had been months since I read it and Mr. Nickle gave me just enough to jump start my memory without resorting to infodumps or wasted pages spent on catching up the more forgetful reader. Buying these books was money well spent IMO and I will be spending more of my hard earned cash on the other things he has written, I'm looking at you next Rasputin's Bastards. Seriously though, if you're looking for not your average run-of-the-mill fiction, pick these two books up and experience something unique.
November 21, 2017
Pros: interesting setting, fascinating story, complex depictions of and around black and gay characters
Cons: not particularly scary
Jason Thorn (aka Thistledown) flew planes over the trenches in WWI. After some bad times, he’s landed a job flying post in Africa. But the flight there is diverted to Bavaria, Germany, where an experiment has gone wrong. An experiment with a creature Jason has faced - and survived - in the past.
This is a direct continuation of Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, picking up 20 or so years after that one ends. All of the survivors show up and play major roles in the book. It’s interesting seeing how their lives have progressed, but also sad, as some of them don’t recover from their ordeal as well as others.
It’s very interesting learning more about the jukes and their parasitic nature. Unlike with the first book, when you knew when the characters were under the creature’s influence, in this book characters often reexamine their memories to discover they’ve forgotten things or were completely unaware of them. It make most of them unreliable narrators, but imparts their feelings of confusion and hesitancy very well.
The plot is pretty interesting, trying to figure out what happened to Jason, who and what Orlok is, and whether the Nazi’s will get their ubermensch.
Several of the newly introduced characters are gay, which was handled well considering the location and period the book takes place (Germany and France in the 1930s). One of the gay characters considered it a disease and was looking for a cure, while others were more comfortable with who they were. For the most part the principle characters around them were supportive or, at least, not derogatory regarding them.
Race, obviously comes up given Doctor Waggoner is black and married to a white woman. Again, I was impressed with how that was handled, especially entering Germany. The introduction of the jazz band and the treatment of its members was well done, showing racism in a more individualistic rather than stereotypical manner.
I didn’t find the book particularly terrifying (unlike with the eugenics of the first one) despite the presence of Nazis and some horrible things going on. There are some uncomfortable scenes and the ending was unsettling.
It is a good sequel. It answers a lot of questions raised in the previous book and shows what happens to everyone. It also shows that however much you run, sometimes you can’t escape your past.
Cons: not particularly scary
Jason Thorn (aka Thistledown) flew planes over the trenches in WWI. After some bad times, he’s landed a job flying post in Africa. But the flight there is diverted to Bavaria, Germany, where an experiment has gone wrong. An experiment with a creature Jason has faced - and survived - in the past.
This is a direct continuation of Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, picking up 20 or so years after that one ends. All of the survivors show up and play major roles in the book. It’s interesting seeing how their lives have progressed, but also sad, as some of them don’t recover from their ordeal as well as others.
It’s very interesting learning more about the jukes and their parasitic nature. Unlike with the first book, when you knew when the characters were under the creature’s influence, in this book characters often reexamine their memories to discover they’ve forgotten things or were completely unaware of them. It make most of them unreliable narrators, but imparts their feelings of confusion and hesitancy very well.
The plot is pretty interesting, trying to figure out what happened to Jason, who and what Orlok is, and whether the Nazi’s will get their ubermensch.
Several of the newly introduced characters are gay, which was handled well considering the location and period the book takes place (Germany and France in the 1930s). One of the gay characters considered it a disease and was looking for a cure, while others were more comfortable with who they were. For the most part the principle characters around them were supportive or, at least, not derogatory regarding them.
Race, obviously comes up given Doctor Waggoner is black and married to a white woman. Again, I was impressed with how that was handled, especially entering Germany. The introduction of the jazz band and the treatment of its members was well done, showing racism in a more individualistic rather than stereotypical manner.
I didn’t find the book particularly terrifying (unlike with the eugenics of the first one) despite the presence of Nazis and some horrible things going on. There are some uncomfortable scenes and the ending was unsettling.
It is a good sequel. It answers a lot of questions raised in the previous book and shows what happens to everyone. It also shows that however much you run, sometimes you can’t escape your past.
October 22, 2023
It's usually a bad sign when Joseph Goebbels enters a narrative, but in this case I felt it was quite all right. The setting and historical context are so well established in "Volk" that this pinched little fellow's brief appearance doesn't seem out of place. His Nazi colleagues have been busy little bees, establishing nudist übermenschen colonies in Bavaria and having fun with eugenics. And because Nazis can't help themselves, they've also been meddling with those Jukes from "Eutopia".
The Waggoners, now living in Paris, can't abide this nonsense and gather their posse for some world-saving. It's as entertaining as it sounds, in a chilling sort of way, and the ending was quite intriguing (what is this devilry? will there be a third book?). There is a shocking lack of reviews of this book on GR so far, and I can only assume it's because people are busy reading "Eutopia" before starting on this one, which, I must admit, is the right and proper thing to do.
The Waggoners, now living in Paris, can't abide this nonsense and gather their posse for some world-saving. It's as entertaining as it sounds, in a chilling sort of way, and the ending was quite intriguing (what is this devilry? will there be a third book?). There is a shocking lack of reviews of this book on GR so far, and I can only assume it's because people are busy reading "Eutopia" before starting on this one, which, I must admit, is the right and proper thing to do.
October 24, 2017
David Nickle writes complex, intelligent books about intelligent people. They aren't always good people, some of them are monsters. This isn't light reading. The story is complex and the characters are many leveled and sometimes confounding. It is a book that will resonate with our current state of affairs in the United States. It is a horror story. It might also be seen as a kind of an offhand comment from Canada that we had best mind our Ps and Qs and reread our history books. For those who like to sink their teeth into a story, this is definitely your cup of tea; or actually, it is a hard slug of a dark whiskey. Nickle is one of those writers who take you down dark hallways, and then leave you gasping for breath and grasping for balance.
November 19, 2017
Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination should have been called Volk: A novel of Radiant Boredom. I rarely DNF a book. If feel if I am stupid enough to pick up a book, then I share some responsibility to finish it. This book has caused me to shirk my responsibility.
Now to be fair, this a sequel to some other novel and there might have been more interest had I been more involved with the story (bear in mind the book nowhere really states that it is a sequel). This time the events occur in early 1930's Germany. The SA is out in force. One would think this would be a great setting for a novel. The most unfortunate part of this book is the terrible name of the monster-it's called a "Juke". Ummm ok. Sounds like a Madden football move or an even more unfortunate reference to the the German term for Jew- Jude. Not really sure where the author was headed with this idiotic name (as bad as another fantasy novel where the main anti-heroes were called "wetboys") but it does detract from the ambient horror. Sort of like chasing a demon named "Bubbles"-yeah it IS a demon, but it IS named "Bubbles". Same thing here with the Juke.
The Juke can take over your mind and make you see things. It also may have other powers. It's never really talked about (I read about 200 pages of this). The entire thing is some sort of psych style horror that never really seems to be more than a strange tale (with a lot of random homosexuality thrown in). Now I know that there were gay members in the SA (Rohem, the Oberster SA-Fuhrer, was gay) but considering we are talking about the nascent Nazi movement-homosexuality is not going to go over well (something Rohem and other members of the SA learned on the Night of the Long Knives , Nacht der langen Messer, in 1934 when they were liquidated). Now I don't care if there are homosexual characters-it's a part of life and completely normal. But this book seems to revel in rouge penis' being randomly displayed,groped or molested and made me wonder where the author was going with this (and no I am no prude).
But it was the utter lack of the Juke's presence, the silliness of trying to pass off Neanderthal man as some sort of ubermench and the relatively confusing and downright bizarre conversations the characters have. I just lost interest and read became a chore. I am not in school anymore and thus am irritated by feeling like I "have" to read something. So I looked at my stack of other books, all of which have the potential to be far superior to this abomination. So this is a DNF. David Nickle has now become, to me, a synonym for "not worth my time". How's that for a juke move?
Now to be fair, this a sequel to some other novel and there might have been more interest had I been more involved with the story (bear in mind the book nowhere really states that it is a sequel). This time the events occur in early 1930's Germany. The SA is out in force. One would think this would be a great setting for a novel. The most unfortunate part of this book is the terrible name of the monster-it's called a "Juke". Ummm ok. Sounds like a Madden football move or an even more unfortunate reference to the the German term for Jew- Jude. Not really sure where the author was headed with this idiotic name (as bad as another fantasy novel where the main anti-heroes were called "wetboys") but it does detract from the ambient horror. Sort of like chasing a demon named "Bubbles"-yeah it IS a demon, but it IS named "Bubbles". Same thing here with the Juke.
The Juke can take over your mind and make you see things. It also may have other powers. It's never really talked about (I read about 200 pages of this). The entire thing is some sort of psych style horror that never really seems to be more than a strange tale (with a lot of random homosexuality thrown in). Now I know that there were gay members in the SA (Rohem, the Oberster SA-Fuhrer, was gay) but considering we are talking about the nascent Nazi movement-homosexuality is not going to go over well (something Rohem and other members of the SA learned on the Night of the Long Knives , Nacht der langen Messer, in 1934 when they were liquidated). Now I don't care if there are homosexual characters-it's a part of life and completely normal. But this book seems to revel in rouge penis' being randomly displayed,groped or molested and made me wonder where the author was going with this (and no I am no prude).
But it was the utter lack of the Juke's presence, the silliness of trying to pass off Neanderthal man as some sort of ubermench and the relatively confusing and downright bizarre conversations the characters have. I just lost interest and read became a chore. I am not in school anymore and thus am irritated by feeling like I "have" to read something. So I looked at my stack of other books, all of which have the potential to be far superior to this abomination. So this is a DNF. David Nickle has now become, to me, a synonym for "not worth my time". How's that for a juke move?
December 20, 2017
Volk is a follow up to one of my favorite novels Eutopia by David Nickle. Eutopia captivated me with its great set of characters and its insightful weaving of racism in early 20th century America. Also, The Juke is one of the most interesting and creepy monsters I have read about in a horror/weird fiction novel, and I have read my fair share. It is a huge genetic freak that mesmerizes its victims into thinking it is God and should be worshipped. There is a new mutant introduced in this book, by the name of Orlok, who keeps things interesting as well.
Volk picks up around 20 years after the calamities in Eliadia, where most of Eutopia is set. Nickle brings back the amazing cast of characters from the first book which I immediately sunk back into like a broke in recliner when I started reading. Eutopia tends to focus more on Dr. Andrew Waggoner and Jason Thistledowns survival from The Juke and Nazi Eugenicists, while Volk has more focus on Annie Rowe (Waggoner in this book) and Ruth Harper and their heroics after Dr. Waggoner and Thistledown are roped back into The Juke’s presence. Since I am a huge fan of this group of characters I enjoyed the first part of the book which provides some background on what is happening with the characters. The action really picks up around page 200 in this incredible scene where Annie Waggoner poisons a doctor to get information about what is going on. The scene provides important context and really sets the book off, I couldn’t put it down after that.
I loved Volk and found it to be a skilled follow up to an amazing first novel. There are some names and places that may not make sense until later in the book if you haven’t read Eutopia first. I honestly think if you want to get the full effect of this novel then you need to read Eutopia first. I don’t want to give anything away but Nickle has left it open for further sequels and I hope he finds time to do it. Nickle is now one of my favorite writers. Whether it be novel or short stories, Nickle has a knack for writing weird thought-provoking fiction. If you are a fan of Laird Barron, Jeffrey Thomas, or other writers of dark thought-provoking mythos, then check out David Nickle.
Volk picks up around 20 years after the calamities in Eliadia, where most of Eutopia is set. Nickle brings back the amazing cast of characters from the first book which I immediately sunk back into like a broke in recliner when I started reading. Eutopia tends to focus more on Dr. Andrew Waggoner and Jason Thistledowns survival from The Juke and Nazi Eugenicists, while Volk has more focus on Annie Rowe (Waggoner in this book) and Ruth Harper and their heroics after Dr. Waggoner and Thistledown are roped back into The Juke’s presence. Since I am a huge fan of this group of characters I enjoyed the first part of the book which provides some background on what is happening with the characters. The action really picks up around page 200 in this incredible scene where Annie Waggoner poisons a doctor to get information about what is going on. The scene provides important context and really sets the book off, I couldn’t put it down after that.
I loved Volk and found it to be a skilled follow up to an amazing first novel. There are some names and places that may not make sense until later in the book if you haven’t read Eutopia first. I honestly think if you want to get the full effect of this novel then you need to read Eutopia first. I don’t want to give anything away but Nickle has left it open for further sequels and I hope he finds time to do it. Nickle is now one of my favorite writers. Whether it be novel or short stories, Nickle has a knack for writing weird thought-provoking fiction. If you are a fan of Laird Barron, Jeffrey Thomas, or other writers of dark thought-provoking mythos, then check out David Nickle.
October 13, 2024
I had no idea this was a sequel, so take that information for what it’s worth.
While I enjoyed this, I felt like parts absolutely dragged on and on. There’s a lot to take from it, some obvious and pieces well hidden in the writing.
I honestly can’t say my opinion is whole, bc again, I didn’t realize this was a sequel when I picked it up, and so maybe unfair to the author.
I will say it was well written, if long, edited exceptionally well, and I think would make a good book or short series. The descriptions lend themselves to excellent mental images, and if done right, could be captivating.
While I enjoyed this, I felt like parts absolutely dragged on and on. There’s a lot to take from it, some obvious and pieces well hidden in the writing.
I honestly can’t say my opinion is whole, bc again, I didn’t realize this was a sequel when I picked it up, and so maybe unfair to the author.
I will say it was well written, if long, edited exceptionally well, and I think would make a good book or short series. The descriptions lend themselves to excellent mental images, and if done right, could be captivating.
April 9, 2018
Well written and carefully crafted--which is why I gave four stars. However this story is deeply disturbing with how closely the yucky parts parallel known religions, and it gets pretty yucky. Totally messed with my head. I'm not sure if I liked it, no matter how well it was written. Definitely "good" horror.
November 10, 2020
Excellent and I'm usually the last one to want more explained in a text but I hope there are further books that reveal what exactly was going on with a certain Juke slaying hero.
Very good cerebral horror. Do read Eutopia first but do it looking forward to this novel which is better.
Very good cerebral horror. Do read Eutopia first but do it looking forward to this novel which is better.
July 7, 2020
What did I just read...
January 5, 2021
This was really quite good, far better than the first book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
December 12, 2017
Sequel to his previous EUTOPIA - but you don't need to have read that first to get into this, though you will want to search it out after finishing it. Fucking amazing!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews