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The Cipher
"Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive." When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says, "We're not." But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.
236 pages, Paperback
First published January 5, 1991
659 people are currently reading
26997 people want to read
About the author
Kathe Koja
130 books934 followersKathe Koja is a writer, director and independent producer of live and virtual events. Her work combines and plays with genres, from horror to YA to historical to weird, in books like THE CIPHER, VELOCITIES, BUDDHA BOY, UNDER THE POPPY, and CATHERINE THE GHOST.
Her ongoing project is the world of DARK FACTORY https://darkfactory.club/ continuing in DARK PARK, with DARK MATTER coming out in December 2025.
She's a Detroit native, animal rights supporter, supporter of democracy, and huge fan of Emily Bronte.
Her ongoing project is the world of DARK FACTORY https://darkfactory.club/ continuing in DARK PARK, with DARK MATTER coming out in December 2025.
She's a Detroit native, animal rights supporter, supporter of democracy, and huge fan of Emily Bronte.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,246 reviews
June 10, 2020
Man, I hate reviewing books when it's a premise you love and writing you love but the story itself leaves much to be desired. I have wanted to read this book for years and when Edelweiss had a copy of a new edition available I jumped at the chance to FINALLY read this and it pains me to say I was disappointed.
As I said Koja can write. What a wordsmith. I wish I could put words to paper as eloquently as she does but sadly that was not enough to save this story for me.
Let's get to the premise - Nicholas and his on-again off-again girlfriend Nakota find a portal to another dimension in the utility closet of his apartment building. They begin to put things in the "Funhole" only to have them returned different. As is the case when Nicholas decides to put his hand in. From here this story began to remind me of the movie Groundhog Day and not in the Bill Murray belly laugh kind of way but in the every page is the same fucking thing kind of way. Nicholas' stream of conscience descent into madness got seriously tedious and just downright confusing. At one point Nicholas is making a phone call with his phone balanced on his hip? I try to conjure this image and I just can't. How is it even possible? Is he a contortionist?
This book is a cult classic so don't take my word for this. Take a looky-loo at the Funhole yourself and tell me what you see. 3 stars!
Thank you to Edelweiss and Meerkat Press for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
As I said Koja can write. What a wordsmith. I wish I could put words to paper as eloquently as she does but sadly that was not enough to save this story for me.
Let's get to the premise - Nicholas and his on-again off-again girlfriend Nakota find a portal to another dimension in the utility closet of his apartment building. They begin to put things in the "Funhole" only to have them returned different. As is the case when Nicholas decides to put his hand in. From here this story began to remind me of the movie Groundhog Day and not in the Bill Murray belly laugh kind of way but in the every page is the same fucking thing kind of way. Nicholas' stream of conscience descent into madness got seriously tedious and just downright confusing. At one point Nicholas is making a phone call with his phone balanced on his hip? I try to conjure this image and I just can't. How is it even possible? Is he a contortionist?
This book is a cult classic so don't take my word for this. Take a looky-loo at the Funhole yourself and tell me what you see. 3 stars!
Thank you to Edelweiss and Meerkat Press for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
May 6, 2020
THE CIPHER! I don't even know what to say.
I've only recently joined the church of Koja. It may not be as big as some, Stephen King's say, but there are joys to be found in smaller congregations.
This is the story of Nakota and Nicholas who one day found a black hole, named it the funhole, and changed their lives forever. They stuck different things into the hole, (getting uncomfortable yet?), including bugs, a mouse, and then a hand. What happened to these items when they were thrust inside? You'll have to read this to find out!
I absolutely adore Ms. Koja's prose, and Joshua Saxon the narrator brought it home with flare. This must not have been an easy performance due to the style of the aforementioned prose-especially in the second half of the book because it's a stream-of-consciousness narrative. His voicing was phenomenal.
I'm a bit irritated with myself because the few clips I made of the audio that highlighted the prose apparently did not save. There were short, staccato-like descriptions that...stabbed at my heart. Beautiful, honest and evocative words that my brain immediately transferred to a visual-like a direct injection. For instance "...the flat was full of drizzly day." 7 words that draw a perfect scene. Brief, staccato, BAM: there's the picture-full and complete.
I could go on and on about this prose but I'll leave it at what I've written. Kathe Koja's writing probably isn't for everyone; the reviews seem pretty split on Goodreads. For me, however, I feel like I have been missing out out an author that is perfect for my dark and black heart. I'm on a mission to read everything she's written. I'm a Koja missionary, baby!
My highest recommendation!
You can get your Kindle copy here: https://amzn.to/2A56ERn
*I received the audio-book from Audiobook Boom! and the narrator, in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it!*
I've only recently joined the church of Koja. It may not be as big as some, Stephen King's say, but there are joys to be found in smaller congregations.
This is the story of Nakota and Nicholas who one day found a black hole, named it the funhole, and changed their lives forever. They stuck different things into the hole, (getting uncomfortable yet?), including bugs, a mouse, and then a hand. What happened to these items when they were thrust inside? You'll have to read this to find out!
I absolutely adore Ms. Koja's prose, and Joshua Saxon the narrator brought it home with flare. This must not have been an easy performance due to the style of the aforementioned prose-especially in the second half of the book because it's a stream-of-consciousness narrative. His voicing was phenomenal.
I'm a bit irritated with myself because the few clips I made of the audio that highlighted the prose apparently did not save. There were short, staccato-like descriptions that...stabbed at my heart. Beautiful, honest and evocative words that my brain immediately transferred to a visual-like a direct injection. For instance "...the flat was full of drizzly day." 7 words that draw a perfect scene. Brief, staccato, BAM: there's the picture-full and complete.
I could go on and on about this prose but I'll leave it at what I've written. Kathe Koja's writing probably isn't for everyone; the reviews seem pretty split on Goodreads. For me, however, I feel like I have been missing out out an author that is perfect for my dark and black heart. I'm on a mission to read everything she's written. I'm a Koja missionary, baby!
My highest recommendation!
You can get your Kindle copy here: https://amzn.to/2A56ERn
*I received the audio-book from Audiobook Boom! and the narrator, in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it!*
October 8, 2021
Kathe Koja is an artist who writes like no one else I've ever read. As I sometimes do, I read this more for the writing than the story, which isn't a criticism at all, but rather a compliment to the writing. Koja conjures words and phrases that are at turns poetic and grotesque. Her feel for language is truly impressive. And, of course, The Funhole is a fascinating concept. I'd heard about the novel for years and am so glad I read it. Highly recommended!
March 13, 2025
"Maybe when you give yourself over to an anomaly it automatically negates all the rules ..." and with no boundaries appears to be "an incipient malignancy. “ Damn, this book was good. A novice's introduction to the void. Dingbats need not inquire.
September 5, 2021
Was the darkness always there? Was all it needed to infiltrate a lack of determination to keep it out?
The Cipher tells the story of Nicholas and Nakota, who discover a mysterious black hole/portal in the utility closet of Nicholas' apartment building. The book involves Nicholas' deterioration after he puts his hand into the hole and ends up with a black hole of his own, on his right hand (this may seem like a spoiler, but it's really not, the hand with a hole in it is literally on the front cover of the book).
This book isn't too common, and is therefore somewhat scarce in physical form, so I read the e-book version, the editing of which is absolutely dreadful. It's the worst I've ever seen. There are all the usual mistakes that result from poor editing: the wrong word used somewhere, a misspelled word here and there, an occasional missing word, etc. That being said, there are also a plethora of far more obvious and baffling mistakes, like periods in the middle of words (e.g. "so.me" instead of "some"), the number 1 instead of the letter "i" in words, random periods after a word in the middle of a sentence, as if the sentence is ending. One word even had a "(" character in it!
These editing blunders are frequent, and at times actually interrupted the flow of the novel. That aside, the story isn't great either. Nothing very interesting ever happens, which is somewhat impossible to believe, given the great premise of the book. The character Nakota is absolutely horrible; she is a terrible person that you come to hate very strongly, and it's hard not to DNF this book any time she is even mentioned, which is often. The atmosphere of the book is also pretty off-putting; everything is dirty and decaying, the characters live in their own filth, they act like obsessive, oblivious morons all the time, they abuse drugs and alcohol, they don't bathe for days, etc. It's gross.
Anyway...disappointing. Great premise, nothing more...
Next!
The Cipher tells the story of Nicholas and Nakota, who discover a mysterious black hole/portal in the utility closet of Nicholas' apartment building. The book involves Nicholas' deterioration after he puts his hand into the hole and ends up with a black hole of his own, on his right hand (this may seem like a spoiler, but it's really not, the hand with a hole in it is literally on the front cover of the book).
This book isn't too common, and is therefore somewhat scarce in physical form, so I read the e-book version, the editing of which is absolutely dreadful. It's the worst I've ever seen. There are all the usual mistakes that result from poor editing: the wrong word used somewhere, a misspelled word here and there, an occasional missing word, etc. That being said, there are also a plethora of far more obvious and baffling mistakes, like periods in the middle of words (e.g. "so.me" instead of "some"), the number 1 instead of the letter "i" in words, random periods after a word in the middle of a sentence, as if the sentence is ending. One word even had a "(" character in it!
These editing blunders are frequent, and at times actually interrupted the flow of the novel. That aside, the story isn't great either. Nothing very interesting ever happens, which is somewhat impossible to believe, given the great premise of the book. The character Nakota is absolutely horrible; she is a terrible person that you come to hate very strongly, and it's hard not to DNF this book any time she is even mentioned, which is often. The atmosphere of the book is also pretty off-putting; everything is dirty and decaying, the characters live in their own filth, they act like obsessive, oblivious morons all the time, they abuse drugs and alcohol, they don't bathe for days, etc. It's gross.
Anyway...disappointing. Great premise, nothing more...
Next!
October 2, 2020
We're (and by we, I mean me, Richard, and Matt) are taking a deep, spoiler-filled dive into the Funhole in our latest episode of Staring Into The Abyss! As my review below inidicates, this was a pretty polarizing read for some of us. LOL You can listen to our episode on your favorite podcatcher or stream it now at https://staringintotheabyss.libsyn.com/.
Originally published over 30 years ago, The Cipher was the debut title in the Dell/Abyss horror line and earned Kathe Koja a Bram Stoker Award for Best Debut Novel, as well as a Locus Award, and has been routinely mentioned on various lists as one of the best horror novels ever written. Out of print since the Dell/Abyss line collapsed in the late 90s, available only as an ebook, The Cipher finally returns in paperback thanks to Meerkat Press (publisher of Koja's recent short story collection, Velocity) this September.
The premise is as simple as it is odd - Nicholas, and his sometimes lover Nakota, discover a black hole in his apartment building's storage room. There's no rhyme or reason to its existence, and the whys and hows of its being remain unexplored. Over the course of the book's 260 pages, the two become increasingly obsessed with the void Nakota has named, strangely, the Funhole. Although neither are scientists (he's a video store clerk, she's a bartender), they conduct their own brand of experiments on the Funhole, lowering a jar of bugs inside, a detached hand from their morgue attendant buddy, and then a video camera in search for more information. The Funhole changes things, and, in turn, Nicholas and Nakota begin to change as well.
The Cipher is a dense, dark, grungy, complex read and it's definitely not for everybody. It certainly wasn't for me, I have to admit. The Cipher is a slog to read through, the race through its pages less a marathon sprint and more a challenge of plodding endurance and a single-minded determination simply to finish, just so you can say you competed. Koja's writing style is very stream-of-conscious, narrated via Nicholas's first-person-perspective. He drones on for incredibly long stretches of time in paragraph after paragraph of oddly constructed, jumbled, punctuation be damned, run-on sentences. His thoughts are a challenge to tackle, and Koja really makes you work at understanding his ideas and concepts, as he circuitously guides you through one weird moment after the next. A poet when he's drunk, we get glimmers of his literary stylings through his speeches and Koja turns some rather marvelous phrases, like "a good morning is still a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night."
Throughout The Cipher, there's a strong focus on art and artists. Koja, herself an artist who creates immersive performances, attempts to apply a similar aesthetic over the course of this work. For better or worse, when reading The Cipher, you exist within it, breathing the same dank, stale air as its characters. Koja masterfully creates a certain dark mood and leaves you to wallow in it. Our characters are wannabe poets, sculptors, mask makers, and their various hangers-on from the local gallery where Nicolas and Nakota go to score free wine. The story itself has a particular art-house flavor, feeling very much like an edgy film student's art project, reveling in pretentiousness and the weird in equal measure with its indie 'Fight Club meets The Fly' aesthetic (and yes, I'm aware The Cipher predates Fight Club by a few years; just go with it, huh?). By the halfway mark, though, it all just feels much too bloated, overly long, and repetitious as each successive chapter becomes little more than a retelling of the same simple premises over and over and over. Whatever forward momentum and intrigue The Cipher possessed in its opening chapters -- and there is quite a lot of both, to be fair -- dissolves into formulaic rinse-and-repeat storytelling as Nicholas and Nakota, their obsessions over the Funhole placing them in opposition to one another, bicker and fight and grow increasingly deranged, and they continues their own experiments with the perfect black hole.
It's a real shame novellas weren't as en vogue in 1991 as they are today, because The Cipher could have made for one hell of a powerful novella, or even a long short story. There's a lot of richness to these characters, moods, and the core ideas here. As a full-length book, though, it's grows increasingly plodding. Koja is forced to not just recycle but beat the ever-loving shit out of the dead horse that are her singular ideas and scenarios surrounding the Funhole, over and over and over to hit a novel-length word count. This, too, is a shame, because there's a lot of excellent metaphors and examinations of depression, toxic relationships, and unrequited love that could have been better served by being distilled down to their essences rather than bludgeoning us over the head with the same premises chapter after chapter after chapter. What was once thoughtful and engaging in The Cipher ultimately turns boring and annoyingly repetitious, not just stalling the narrative but grinding it to a damn halt, until you're forced to wonder, exhausted with this book and its characters, just how much longer Koja's going to drag things out, when and if anything is ever going to finally happen, and when the hell is it all going to finally be over?
Originally published over 30 years ago, The Cipher was the debut title in the Dell/Abyss horror line and earned Kathe Koja a Bram Stoker Award for Best Debut Novel, as well as a Locus Award, and has been routinely mentioned on various lists as one of the best horror novels ever written. Out of print since the Dell/Abyss line collapsed in the late 90s, available only as an ebook, The Cipher finally returns in paperback thanks to Meerkat Press (publisher of Koja's recent short story collection, Velocity) this September.
The premise is as simple as it is odd - Nicholas, and his sometimes lover Nakota, discover a black hole in his apartment building's storage room. There's no rhyme or reason to its existence, and the whys and hows of its being remain unexplored. Over the course of the book's 260 pages, the two become increasingly obsessed with the void Nakota has named, strangely, the Funhole. Although neither are scientists (he's a video store clerk, she's a bartender), they conduct their own brand of experiments on the Funhole, lowering a jar of bugs inside, a detached hand from their morgue attendant buddy, and then a video camera in search for more information. The Funhole changes things, and, in turn, Nicholas and Nakota begin to change as well.
The Cipher is a dense, dark, grungy, complex read and it's definitely not for everybody. It certainly wasn't for me, I have to admit. The Cipher is a slog to read through, the race through its pages less a marathon sprint and more a challenge of plodding endurance and a single-minded determination simply to finish, just so you can say you competed. Koja's writing style is very stream-of-conscious, narrated via Nicholas's first-person-perspective. He drones on for incredibly long stretches of time in paragraph after paragraph of oddly constructed, jumbled, punctuation be damned, run-on sentences. His thoughts are a challenge to tackle, and Koja really makes you work at understanding his ideas and concepts, as he circuitously guides you through one weird moment after the next. A poet when he's drunk, we get glimmers of his literary stylings through his speeches and Koja turns some rather marvelous phrases, like "a good morning is still a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night."
Throughout The Cipher, there's a strong focus on art and artists. Koja, herself an artist who creates immersive performances, attempts to apply a similar aesthetic over the course of this work. For better or worse, when reading The Cipher, you exist within it, breathing the same dank, stale air as its characters. Koja masterfully creates a certain dark mood and leaves you to wallow in it. Our characters are wannabe poets, sculptors, mask makers, and their various hangers-on from the local gallery where Nicolas and Nakota go to score free wine. The story itself has a particular art-house flavor, feeling very much like an edgy film student's art project, reveling in pretentiousness and the weird in equal measure with its indie 'Fight Club meets The Fly' aesthetic (and yes, I'm aware The Cipher predates Fight Club by a few years; just go with it, huh?). By the halfway mark, though, it all just feels much too bloated, overly long, and repetitious as each successive chapter becomes little more than a retelling of the same simple premises over and over and over. Whatever forward momentum and intrigue The Cipher possessed in its opening chapters -- and there is quite a lot of both, to be fair -- dissolves into formulaic rinse-and-repeat storytelling as Nicholas and Nakota, their obsessions over the Funhole placing them in opposition to one another, bicker and fight and grow increasingly deranged, and they continues their own experiments with the perfect black hole.
It's a real shame novellas weren't as en vogue in 1991 as they are today, because The Cipher could have made for one hell of a powerful novella, or even a long short story. There's a lot of richness to these characters, moods, and the core ideas here. As a full-length book, though, it's grows increasingly plodding. Koja is forced to not just recycle but beat the ever-loving shit out of the dead horse that are her singular ideas and scenarios surrounding the Funhole, over and over and over to hit a novel-length word count. This, too, is a shame, because there's a lot of excellent metaphors and examinations of depression, toxic relationships, and unrequited love that could have been better served by being distilled down to their essences rather than bludgeoning us over the head with the same premises chapter after chapter after chapter. What was once thoughtful and engaging in The Cipher ultimately turns boring and annoyingly repetitious, not just stalling the narrative but grinding it to a damn halt, until you're forced to wonder, exhausted with this book and its characters, just how much longer Koja's going to drag things out, when and if anything is ever going to finally happen, and when the hell is it all going to finally be over?
February 7, 2015
But what did it all mean?
If you don't like reading books where that's the question you're left with after turning the final page, this might not be the thing for you.
This book is like a Rorschach splatter, and I'm not telling you what I think it all meant to me. I'd be embarrassed, I think, to expand on the matter with anyone other than a close friend.
It's dark. It's nasty. The only good people in this story are on the periphery.
If you like body horror. If you like art house films that shove the camera into the mess of humanity, then you'll likely enjoy the ever-loving shit out of this book.
Negatives? I think it would have worked better as a novella. And the OCR transition to eBook wasn't quality-checked as well as it could have been. There were some twisted fits of textual weirdness here and there throughout.
If you don't like reading books where that's the question you're left with after turning the final page, this might not be the thing for you.
This book is like a Rorschach splatter, and I'm not telling you what I think it all meant to me. I'd be embarrassed, I think, to expand on the matter with anyone other than a close friend.
It's dark. It's nasty. The only good people in this story are on the periphery.
If you like body horror. If you like art house films that shove the camera into the mess of humanity, then you'll likely enjoy the ever-loving shit out of this book.
Negatives? I think it would have worked better as a novella. And the OCR transition to eBook wasn't quality-checked as well as it could have been. There were some twisted fits of textual weirdness here and there throughout.
July 23, 2022
This is a good, thought-provoking horror novel. From a depressed study of a kind of sexual obsession (Freud would have gone to wash his cigar after reading it, just to be safe), it grows into a kind of surreal, existential story. (The characters are for the most part late-1980s high-brow grungy artistic types, so I can throw out words like "surreal" and "existential.") None of the characters in the book are particularly likeable or reliable. (I doubt that any likeable characters have ever even read the novel. (No, of course I didn't mean -you-.)) It's told in a sort of stream-of-consciousness manner, and it's never quite exactly explained as to what it means or where it came from or where it's going or what the title means. It's shocking in places, a bit sympathetic in others, but it held my interest throughout. I found a copy in a used bookstore, and sometimes you find the darnedest things in pre-read books. I've found notes and letters and money and pressed flowers and prescriptions and strange inscriptions and drawings and all manner of things, including, of course, a lot of bookmarks... The previous owner of this one got to page ninety before deciding this Funhole just wasn't for them. But I thought it was a good, thought-provoking horror novel.
November 6, 2018
Spot-on account of the kind of marginalized but safe art-life we all led in the early 1990's.
February 15, 2021
3.5 stars
There’s kind of this unofficial debate among readers concerning those who enjoy unlikable characters and those who need protagonists to be tolerable in order to invest in their story.
I like despicable, flawed people. I think protagonists should be as varied as the people we encounter in real life. I don’t need to like people in order to emotionally invest in their stories — sometimes, hating them is just as fun as loving them.
In Kathe Koja’s The Cipher, Nicholas and Nakota are pretty loathsome people. They happen upon a strange, black hole in Nicholas’s apartment building and become obsessed with experimenting with it. Obsession, as we all know, does not end well, and horrible things do happen; mostly because Nakota is self-destructive, impulsive, and a bit of an emotional “black hole” herself. Nicholas is co-dependent and passive. The mystery of their relationship was as fascinating to me as the affectionately named “Funhole.”
This is not my first time reading Koja’s work. I’ve read a few short stories in her collection Velocities, also released by Meerkat Press this year. Some of the stories, like “Baby,” really worked for me, and some of them didn’t. I find Koja’s style a bit jarring and disorienting at times. The narrative in The Cipher head-hops a bit from one character to another. Sometimes I thought I was reading exposition and then realized it was the inner dialog of Nicholas. Almost like a stream of consciousness but too intermittent to get used to it. Little stumbles like that pulled me out of the story on a few occasions.
That being said, Koja’s imagination and particular brand of body horror is on another level.
The dynamic between Nakota and Nicholas and their friend group reminded me of the movie Reality Bites — it really has that whole ’90s twenty/thirtysomething vibe — where everything is sarcastic or done ironically and everyone seems too self-absorbed and unsure of themselves to function.
These are the perfect people to get caught up with a horrible Funhole. There are some memorable, classic horror scenes that will stay with me forever. Cringy sex-stuff, gross-outs, and jaw-dropping moments. The Cipher is a good time.
There’s kind of this unofficial debate among readers concerning those who enjoy unlikable characters and those who need protagonists to be tolerable in order to invest in their story.
I like despicable, flawed people. I think protagonists should be as varied as the people we encounter in real life. I don’t need to like people in order to emotionally invest in their stories — sometimes, hating them is just as fun as loving them.
In Kathe Koja’s The Cipher, Nicholas and Nakota are pretty loathsome people. They happen upon a strange, black hole in Nicholas’s apartment building and become obsessed with experimenting with it. Obsession, as we all know, does not end well, and horrible things do happen; mostly because Nakota is self-destructive, impulsive, and a bit of an emotional “black hole” herself. Nicholas is co-dependent and passive. The mystery of their relationship was as fascinating to me as the affectionately named “Funhole.”
This is not my first time reading Koja’s work. I’ve read a few short stories in her collection Velocities, also released by Meerkat Press this year. Some of the stories, like “Baby,” really worked for me, and some of them didn’t. I find Koja’s style a bit jarring and disorienting at times. The narrative in The Cipher head-hops a bit from one character to another. Sometimes I thought I was reading exposition and then realized it was the inner dialog of Nicholas. Almost like a stream of consciousness but too intermittent to get used to it. Little stumbles like that pulled me out of the story on a few occasions.
That being said, Koja’s imagination and particular brand of body horror is on another level.
The dynamic between Nakota and Nicholas and their friend group reminded me of the movie Reality Bites — it really has that whole ’90s twenty/thirtysomething vibe — where everything is sarcastic or done ironically and everyone seems too self-absorbed and unsure of themselves to function.
These are the perfect people to get caught up with a horrible Funhole. There are some memorable, classic horror scenes that will stay with me forever. Cringy sex-stuff, gross-outs, and jaw-dropping moments. The Cipher is a good time.
December 16, 2014
The Basics
Nicholas and Nakota have found a hole in the storage room of Nicholas’s apartment building. It’s far from normal, holds some mysterious power, and compels them to play with fire again and again. Unluckily for Nicholas, Nakota is just the sort of person that could become entirely obsessed with the “Funhole”, as they’ve dubbed it. And he’s just the sort of guy who could become a pawn in a very complicated and existential game.
My Thoughts
Horror is rarely poetry. A lot of authors who try to be scary don’t see a need to do it beautifully, but Kathe Koja obviously does. Moreover they often don’t even reach scary, but Kathe Koja does that, too. This book is physical and metaphysical in its terror. It invites you in, sits you down, and proceeds to tear off layer after layer of safety until you feel as exposed as Nicholas does. And she keeps going until she determinedly finds something that will unnerve, and she will.
This book doesn’t have likeable characters really. Even the likeable ones are clearly flawed. The situation escalates in ways that reek of human nature, and even with this cosmic horror staring you in the face, it winds up feeling depressingly real, because it expresses a great deal about the worst in people. Everything from the mundane things thoughtless people do that are irritating and insulting, all the way up to mob mentality. None of this is a criticism, as these are some of the novel’s greatest strengths, shedding light on dark places and forcing you to look.
The poetry of Koja’s words is really astounding. I don’t think I’ve ever read prose quite like this. It’s half fever dream, half free verse poem. It reads like a nightmare, to the point that I struggled to write “The Basics”. That’s not to say it’s incomprehensible. It doesn’t suffer from that at all. Nor does it feel pretentious, like other works that aspire to such heights might. It is one of the best horror novels I’ve ever read, dancing hand-in-hand with Kafka and giving the finger to convention and banality. It’s making me use words that cost at least ten dollars, and shouldn’t that be recommendation enough?
Final Rating
5/5 Stars
Nicholas and Nakota have found a hole in the storage room of Nicholas’s apartment building. It’s far from normal, holds some mysterious power, and compels them to play with fire again and again. Unluckily for Nicholas, Nakota is just the sort of person that could become entirely obsessed with the “Funhole”, as they’ve dubbed it. And he’s just the sort of guy who could become a pawn in a very complicated and existential game.
My Thoughts
Horror is rarely poetry. A lot of authors who try to be scary don’t see a need to do it beautifully, but Kathe Koja obviously does. Moreover they often don’t even reach scary, but Kathe Koja does that, too. This book is physical and metaphysical in its terror. It invites you in, sits you down, and proceeds to tear off layer after layer of safety until you feel as exposed as Nicholas does. And she keeps going until she determinedly finds something that will unnerve, and she will.
This book doesn’t have likeable characters really. Even the likeable ones are clearly flawed. The situation escalates in ways that reek of human nature, and even with this cosmic horror staring you in the face, it winds up feeling depressingly real, because it expresses a great deal about the worst in people. Everything from the mundane things thoughtless people do that are irritating and insulting, all the way up to mob mentality. None of this is a criticism, as these are some of the novel’s greatest strengths, shedding light on dark places and forcing you to look.
The poetry of Koja’s words is really astounding. I don’t think I’ve ever read prose quite like this. It’s half fever dream, half free verse poem. It reads like a nightmare, to the point that I struggled to write “The Basics”. That’s not to say it’s incomprehensible. It doesn’t suffer from that at all. Nor does it feel pretentious, like other works that aspire to such heights might. It is one of the best horror novels I’ve ever read, dancing hand-in-hand with Kafka and giving the finger to convention and banality. It’s making me use words that cost at least ten dollars, and shouldn’t that be recommendation enough?
Final Rating
5/5 Stars
April 4, 2023
Jesus 😂 that was crazy. I don’t know what exactly happened, but it sure was upsetting!
Body horror, weird horror, nihilistic/existential horror: The Cipher has it all. It took me a second to get used to the almost jagged prose, but then I was hooked and read like 100 pages in one sitting. It dragged a lot in the middle, I think the addition of all the new characters was very unneeded and just jumbled things up, but then things picked back up at the end.
Yeah, what a wild read. I feel dirty.
Body horror, weird horror, nihilistic/existential horror: The Cipher has it all. It took me a second to get used to the almost jagged prose, but then I was hooked and read like 100 pages in one sitting. It dragged a lot in the middle, I think the addition of all the new characters was very unneeded and just jumbled things up, but then things picked back up at the end.
Yeah, what a wild read. I feel dirty.
November 22, 2018
I am so glad I finally read this! It completely blew me away and now I need to get my hands on Koja's other horror novels!
This is about Nicholas and Nakota who find a hole in a storage room in Nicholas's apartment building. When they lower things into the hole they come out transformed. Initial curiosity develops into full-blown obsession and the story becomes incredibly unsettling and psychologically horrific.
This is set in the 1990s and it feels very of its time but also still manages to feel really fresh and new. Koja's writing is so good that even reading about the everyday mundane was fascinating. Her writing is incredibly evocative and I could really feel the cold and grimy nature of the setting. The characters are all excellently written, they felt fleshed out and authentic and I loved reading about them. The story was compelling and haunting, and like the Funhole there were times I almost didn't want to keep reading but I couldn't help myself.
It seems that some of the reasons people didn't like The Cipher were because of the writing style, the unlikable characters and the ambiguous story. These were the reasons I absolutely loved it!
This is about Nicholas and Nakota who find a hole in a storage room in Nicholas's apartment building. When they lower things into the hole they come out transformed. Initial curiosity develops into full-blown obsession and the story becomes incredibly unsettling and psychologically horrific.
This is set in the 1990s and it feels very of its time but also still manages to feel really fresh and new. Koja's writing is so good that even reading about the everyday mundane was fascinating. Her writing is incredibly evocative and I could really feel the cold and grimy nature of the setting. The characters are all excellently written, they felt fleshed out and authentic and I loved reading about them. The story was compelling and haunting, and like the Funhole there were times I almost didn't want to keep reading but I couldn't help myself.
It seems that some of the reasons people didn't like The Cipher were because of the writing style, the unlikable characters and the ambiguous story. These were the reasons I absolutely loved it!
June 16, 2020
This year, THE CIPHER is getting reissued by Meerkat Press, which is how one of these classic horror titles I've heard about for ages but haven't been able to find finally made it into my hands. Somehow I was under the mistaken impression that I'd already read Koja but I hadn't and it was clear to me right away when I started reading that I hadn't encountered anything like this before.
To be talking about Horror and to say "I've never see anything like this before" is a big deal. And it's an extra surprise given the novel's original publication date of 1991 and how much it is referred to as a seminal work. But I guess some things are hard to replicate, and this book may just be one of them.
The premise is that Nicholas and his sort-of-girlfriend Nakota find a weird sort of black hole in a storage closet of his apartment building. It isn't clear where it goes or what it does, but it definitely goes somewhere and it definitely does something and none of it is of this world. They call it the Funhole.
This book is profoundly unsettling and dark. It has not a single moment of lightness in it. It took me days to read because it was hard for me to take it more than a little at a time, after a while I would get this feeling. It wasn't despair or fear, it was almost numbness, that feeling that can set in where you have already had the shock and now you just have to ride out the wave of it and there are moments where it seems like you will always feel this way and nothing will ever change. Which is certainly not the feeling you would expect to get. I realized after a while that this is basically a plotless book. Maybe some would disagree with me because yes there are things that happen. What occurs at the end is different than what occurs at the beginning. And yet, it is really just looping back around over and over again. Exploring the Funhole, being horrified by the Funhole, leaving the Funhole, and then inviting some new person to see, repeat. The pitch of it builds, but after about a third of the way through the book we move into a sort of purgatory.
This book is heavy heavy heavy on body horror. It really is the book equivalent of staring into a truly terrifying void. It is so good at what it does, so singular, but by the end I was desperate to be done with it. It had taken its own strange toll on me and I was happy to get back into the light of day. Which is probably about as big a compliment as you can give a book like this.
To be talking about Horror and to say "I've never see anything like this before" is a big deal. And it's an extra surprise given the novel's original publication date of 1991 and how much it is referred to as a seminal work. But I guess some things are hard to replicate, and this book may just be one of them.
The premise is that Nicholas and his sort-of-girlfriend Nakota find a weird sort of black hole in a storage closet of his apartment building. It isn't clear where it goes or what it does, but it definitely goes somewhere and it definitely does something and none of it is of this world. They call it the Funhole.
This book is profoundly unsettling and dark. It has not a single moment of lightness in it. It took me days to read because it was hard for me to take it more than a little at a time, after a while I would get this feeling. It wasn't despair or fear, it was almost numbness, that feeling that can set in where you have already had the shock and now you just have to ride out the wave of it and there are moments where it seems like you will always feel this way and nothing will ever change. Which is certainly not the feeling you would expect to get. I realized after a while that this is basically a plotless book. Maybe some would disagree with me because yes there are things that happen. What occurs at the end is different than what occurs at the beginning. And yet, it is really just looping back around over and over again. Exploring the Funhole, being horrified by the Funhole, leaving the Funhole, and then inviting some new person to see, repeat. The pitch of it builds, but after about a third of the way through the book we move into a sort of purgatory.
This book is heavy heavy heavy on body horror. It really is the book equivalent of staring into a truly terrifying void. It is so good at what it does, so singular, but by the end I was desperate to be done with it. It had taken its own strange toll on me and I was happy to get back into the light of day. Which is probably about as big a compliment as you can give a book like this.
December 30, 2014
Some wonderfully macabre ideas in a complex outsider novel. Some absorbing characterisation and a great depiction of a Bohemian scene. Not sure how I'd never heard of this novel until this year.
March 15, 2025
THE CIPHER [Roadswell Edition July 13, 2012] By Kathe Koja
My Review 4.0 Stars
This horror novel was voted as a Group Read selection for March by the Splatterpunk Horror Bookclub. A big thank you for bringing this 1991 trailblazing debut horror novel by talented Kathe Koja to my attention. This was the author’s debut novel and was first published as Dell Abyss paperback original in 1991. “The Cipher” won a Bram Stoker Award and a Locus Award upon its release. More interesting to me was its imperviousness to time, having been released nearly three and a half decades ago, and it is still “regularly mentioned as one of the top horror novels of the past few decades”. This would adequately explain why the title “The Cipher” and its author Kathe Koja “rang a bell” with me when club members were discussing it this month. This first book by Koja was also a Phillip K. Dick Award Finalist, but we extreme horror fans do not necessarily need to be that savvy about science fiction awards. I know I wasn’t. Koja’s “The Cipher” was also named one of the “Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm” (io9.com). But again this is not directly pertinent to extreme horror per se, but it makes an incredible statement about the contagious popularity of this unique novel when it was initially released into the network of readers all over the wide distribution area of the publisher.
Aficionados of horror literature likely know that Koja’s first novel “The Cipher” was born by her vivid imagination as “The Funhole”. It was to be the christening of the new Dell Abyss line and they rejected her original title. It was 1991 and why would that title be objectionable (rhetorical question). Koja’s characters referred to it as the “Funhole” lotsa times and much to my chagrin I called it the “Happy Hole” at times. But enough background already. It is perhaps an idiosyncrasy of mine, but in most cases I like to find out the backstory on the novels I read. I felt that need more acutely with “The Cipher” than I usually do.
The author has gone on record as explaining that the “fundamental question” that lies at the heart of her stories in general deals with the philosophy of transcendence. In effect Koja seeks to answer the questions of what do we do when we want to be more than we inherently are, and then how do we make the choice what we want to become? Perhaps more significantly, at that point how to we accomplish this goal? Finally, after we are “transformed” what choices do we have and how do we decide?
In short, “The Cipher” is a work that explores “transformative transcendence”, and in the case of this first novel, it explores the question using “the interaction with an actual presence such as the “Fun Hole”.
I read this book without knowing anything specific about it whatsoever. Oops! This is not precisely true. I did check the title and the author on h/horror lit because there was some speculation on the groups’ Discussion Forum whether it was a well-known horror novel. I “thought” I had read that it was a highly regarded novel, confirmed that this was correct. Then I just dived into the unknown waters of this piece of classic horror literature.
I also knew going in that “The Cipher” was written in a “stream of consciousness” extension of first-person narration which on my infrequent encounters with this approach I had found it challenging. Quite quickly I learned that it was like the pain I am told that accompanies delivering a baby into the world. It’s excruciating at the time but there comes a point that you forget the pain. It is not a component of that truism, but in fact there is a point that one not only forgets the pain but starts to enjoy the wonder. The joy of reading “The Cipher” was admittedly somewhat gradual. As I stated in our discussion online, the reader is exposed to an unfiltered barrage of the main character' s immediate impressions and emotions. It is a say goodbye to sentence structure and hello to chaotic jumping back and forth between present, past, and future. The innermost thoughts of Nicholas are like a spontaneous run-on sentence as we are hustling at ingesting and interpreting his chaotic processing of all the incoming stimuli arising from his experiences.
In this instance it is rendered still more off-putting because I daresay most of us are not wired like Nicholas. Simply put we are "in his head" and it is a base, distasteful, and alien place to spend time. This point actually speaks to a second obstacle I fortunately was able to overcome. There were no likeable protagonists in the book in that it was a pure salute to grunge. Koja chose to showcase the filthy fringe of society and some of his thoughts are so disgusting...more accurately appalling...that I am thankful that they are incoherent snippets. I will never view peanut butter and crackers the same way again.
In retrospect it is more than a little surprising, but once I entered the grungy ambience after a while I became either numb or acclimated to the seediness and the grime. Nicholas initially started out as a nihilistic unlikeable sloth of a character but after many complications occurred Nicholas begins ruminating incessantly and psychoanalyzing his core faults and motivations more than Kay Scarpetta in the later Patricia Cornwell novels. I actually began to sympathize with Nicholas.
The impressions of Nakota through the lens of the psyche of Nicholas translate into an emaciated unfeeling and pessimistic piece of human detritus. The author wrote the character of Nakota AKA Shrike AKA Jane in such a manner that she would be so despicable that her character would be universally despised. That said the intensity of the unknown Twilight Zone-like "black hole" is mesmerizing and the story of its impact on these two misfits is more fascinating with each successive misadventure. There was an entire barrage of new characters and an insidious awareness of the potential harm that many outsiders had walked into unknowingly. Nakota never disappoints with her sociopathic disregard for literally everyone around her, and certainly not excluding Nicholas who finds himself both addicted and positioned in the eye of the hurricane. My favorite part of the novel was from the beginning of the second quarter through the third quarter.
I viewed the final quarter of the book as even more extemporaneous emotions and thoughts bombarding the reader. Mostly the stimuli were from Nicholas after he had arranged to be locked in the storage room, but with the addition of the continuous nonstop activities of people assembling outside the locked door. Key groups included Malcomb and his stooges and Nakota with her recruits, but allegiances were in flux and Nicholas's only allies Randy and his girlfriend. Nakota was exhibiting her usual self-serving and destructive behaviors. The science fiction aspect of the novel was fully actualized in the final quarter of the novel, albeit it could certainly be argued that there were surrealistic feats being presented by the Fun Hole from the beginning that could not be explained by science. These feats have escalated to both terrifying and imaginative to include moving steel objects through the air plus much more which will not be elaborated upon for obvious reasons.
I decided that the character of Nakota was a self-serving sociopath (evident from the beginning) but her purpose and goal after discovery of the Fun Hole was to learn its secrets, harness its power, and then explore how best to benefit. Nicholas was more complex which was ironic because I pegged him as a worthless sloth initially. My opinion of him changed as the story progressed. His actions sometimes signaled a low wattage moral compass that needed new batteries as opposed to none at all. His obvious desire to shield literally everyone from The Fun Hole was partly due to his underlying lazy good Samaritan tendencies. But, relative to Dakota, I don 't think so. Partly I buy that he loved her despite her inability to reciprocate. But it was more complex than that because innately he recognized that she could make any situation worse (self-serving motive). The last quarter felt like an action movie playing inside my head and I wanted to occasionally slow or pause the speed at times and of course, couldn't. A shocking death toward the finale was effective. Finally, I wondered whether Nicholas's speculations at the very end of the novel was a plot twist. The final quote at the end suggested that might be the case.
It is obvious from these notes that describe my personal feelings about this surrealistic novel that I was essentially drawn to the psychology of the characters and their individual responses> This would include their attitudes and actions toward the “extras” in this basic story of Nicholas (and Nakota by association). My conclusions as stated are intriguing in light of the author’s known meaning and purpose of the novel. It is suggested that it was a tale of “transformative transcendence” from the beginning of the book. In retrospect we ponder the decisions made by the characters of Nicholas and Nakota.
For me the novel demonstrated a slow escalation, hit its stride in the middle, my favorite part, and then the last quarter maintained an almost manic pace. The extraordinary aspect of this novel is the genius of the entire storyline. What would a person do to confront a thing that could not be explained by science or logic? It is presented by Koja as a “change agent” to be deployed by Nicholas to facilitate his “transformative transcendence”. It is the incredible imagination of the author in creating these believable characters and her poetic prose which turns into credibly chilling on a dime. It is my belief that I did not “read” this novel as much as “experienced” it.
OUTSTANDING HORROR CLASSIC WHICH IS UNIQUE IN THE GENRE
My Review 4.0 Stars
This horror novel was voted as a Group Read selection for March by the Splatterpunk Horror Bookclub. A big thank you for bringing this 1991 trailblazing debut horror novel by talented Kathe Koja to my attention. This was the author’s debut novel and was first published as Dell Abyss paperback original in 1991. “The Cipher” won a Bram Stoker Award and a Locus Award upon its release. More interesting to me was its imperviousness to time, having been released nearly three and a half decades ago, and it is still “regularly mentioned as one of the top horror novels of the past few decades”. This would adequately explain why the title “The Cipher” and its author Kathe Koja “rang a bell” with me when club members were discussing it this month. This first book by Koja was also a Phillip K. Dick Award Finalist, but we extreme horror fans do not necessarily need to be that savvy about science fiction awards. I know I wasn’t. Koja’s “The Cipher” was also named one of the “Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm” (io9.com). But again this is not directly pertinent to extreme horror per se, but it makes an incredible statement about the contagious popularity of this unique novel when it was initially released into the network of readers all over the wide distribution area of the publisher.
Aficionados of horror literature likely know that Koja’s first novel “The Cipher” was born by her vivid imagination as “The Funhole”. It was to be the christening of the new Dell Abyss line and they rejected her original title. It was 1991 and why would that title be objectionable (rhetorical question). Koja’s characters referred to it as the “Funhole” lotsa times and much to my chagrin I called it the “Happy Hole” at times. But enough background already. It is perhaps an idiosyncrasy of mine, but in most cases I like to find out the backstory on the novels I read. I felt that need more acutely with “The Cipher” than I usually do.
The author has gone on record as explaining that the “fundamental question” that lies at the heart of her stories in general deals with the philosophy of transcendence. In effect Koja seeks to answer the questions of what do we do when we want to be more than we inherently are, and then how do we make the choice what we want to become? Perhaps more significantly, at that point how to we accomplish this goal? Finally, after we are “transformed” what choices do we have and how do we decide?
In short, “The Cipher” is a work that explores “transformative transcendence”, and in the case of this first novel, it explores the question using “the interaction with an actual presence such as the “Fun Hole”.
I read this book without knowing anything specific about it whatsoever. Oops! This is not precisely true. I did check the title and the author on h/horror lit because there was some speculation on the groups’ Discussion Forum whether it was a well-known horror novel. I “thought” I had read that it was a highly regarded novel, confirmed that this was correct. Then I just dived into the unknown waters of this piece of classic horror literature.
I also knew going in that “The Cipher” was written in a “stream of consciousness” extension of first-person narration which on my infrequent encounters with this approach I had found it challenging. Quite quickly I learned that it was like the pain I am told that accompanies delivering a baby into the world. It’s excruciating at the time but there comes a point that you forget the pain. It is not a component of that truism, but in fact there is a point that one not only forgets the pain but starts to enjoy the wonder. The joy of reading “The Cipher” was admittedly somewhat gradual. As I stated in our discussion online, the reader is exposed to an unfiltered barrage of the main character' s immediate impressions and emotions. It is a say goodbye to sentence structure and hello to chaotic jumping back and forth between present, past, and future. The innermost thoughts of Nicholas are like a spontaneous run-on sentence as we are hustling at ingesting and interpreting his chaotic processing of all the incoming stimuli arising from his experiences.
In this instance it is rendered still more off-putting because I daresay most of us are not wired like Nicholas. Simply put we are "in his head" and it is a base, distasteful, and alien place to spend time. This point actually speaks to a second obstacle I fortunately was able to overcome. There were no likeable protagonists in the book in that it was a pure salute to grunge. Koja chose to showcase the filthy fringe of society and some of his thoughts are so disgusting...more accurately appalling...that I am thankful that they are incoherent snippets. I will never view peanut butter and crackers the same way again.
In retrospect it is more than a little surprising, but once I entered the grungy ambience after a while I became either numb or acclimated to the seediness and the grime. Nicholas initially started out as a nihilistic unlikeable sloth of a character but after many complications occurred Nicholas begins ruminating incessantly and psychoanalyzing his core faults and motivations more than Kay Scarpetta in the later Patricia Cornwell novels. I actually began to sympathize with Nicholas.
The impressions of Nakota through the lens of the psyche of Nicholas translate into an emaciated unfeeling and pessimistic piece of human detritus. The author wrote the character of Nakota AKA Shrike AKA Jane in such a manner that she would be so despicable that her character would be universally despised. That said the intensity of the unknown Twilight Zone-like "black hole" is mesmerizing and the story of its impact on these two misfits is more fascinating with each successive misadventure. There was an entire barrage of new characters and an insidious awareness of the potential harm that many outsiders had walked into unknowingly. Nakota never disappoints with her sociopathic disregard for literally everyone around her, and certainly not excluding Nicholas who finds himself both addicted and positioned in the eye of the hurricane. My favorite part of the novel was from the beginning of the second quarter through the third quarter.
I viewed the final quarter of the book as even more extemporaneous emotions and thoughts bombarding the reader. Mostly the stimuli were from Nicholas after he had arranged to be locked in the storage room, but with the addition of the continuous nonstop activities of people assembling outside the locked door. Key groups included Malcomb and his stooges and Nakota with her recruits, but allegiances were in flux and Nicholas's only allies Randy and his girlfriend. Nakota was exhibiting her usual self-serving and destructive behaviors. The science fiction aspect of the novel was fully actualized in the final quarter of the novel, albeit it could certainly be argued that there were surrealistic feats being presented by the Fun Hole from the beginning that could not be explained by science. These feats have escalated to both terrifying and imaginative to include moving steel objects through the air plus much more which will not be elaborated upon for obvious reasons.
I decided that the character of Nakota was a self-serving sociopath (evident from the beginning) but her purpose and goal after discovery of the Fun Hole was to learn its secrets, harness its power, and then explore how best to benefit. Nicholas was more complex which was ironic because I pegged him as a worthless sloth initially. My opinion of him changed as the story progressed. His actions sometimes signaled a low wattage moral compass that needed new batteries as opposed to none at all. His obvious desire to shield literally everyone from The Fun Hole was partly due to his underlying lazy good Samaritan tendencies. But, relative to Dakota, I don 't think so. Partly I buy that he loved her despite her inability to reciprocate. But it was more complex than that because innately he recognized that she could make any situation worse (self-serving motive). The last quarter felt like an action movie playing inside my head and I wanted to occasionally slow or pause the speed at times and of course, couldn't. A shocking death toward the finale was effective. Finally, I wondered whether Nicholas's speculations at the very end of the novel was a plot twist. The final quote at the end suggested that might be the case.
It is obvious from these notes that describe my personal feelings about this surrealistic novel that I was essentially drawn to the psychology of the characters and their individual responses> This would include their attitudes and actions toward the “extras” in this basic story of Nicholas (and Nakota by association). My conclusions as stated are intriguing in light of the author’s known meaning and purpose of the novel. It is suggested that it was a tale of “transformative transcendence” from the beginning of the book. In retrospect we ponder the decisions made by the characters of Nicholas and Nakota.
For me the novel demonstrated a slow escalation, hit its stride in the middle, my favorite part, and then the last quarter maintained an almost manic pace. The extraordinary aspect of this novel is the genius of the entire storyline. What would a person do to confront a thing that could not be explained by science or logic? It is presented by Koja as a “change agent” to be deployed by Nicholas to facilitate his “transformative transcendence”. It is the incredible imagination of the author in creating these believable characters and her poetic prose which turns into credibly chilling on a dime. It is my belief that I did not “read” this novel as much as “experienced” it.
OUTSTANDING HORROR CLASSIC WHICH IS UNIQUE IN THE GENRE
July 29, 2021
Spectacular and scary. The voice was great, and the slow mounting problem was a special one. I will remember this book in my nightmares.
I listened to this one and the narrator was fantastic. He really leaned into the gritty voice and the horrible repeated words: blood. BLOOD.
I listened to this one and the narrator was fantastic. He really leaned into the gritty voice and the horrible repeated words: blood. BLOOD.
August 14, 2022
Caveats first:
This is a book for anyone who seriously loves a great body-horror novel mixed with some serious mental health issues and a supernatural Cthulhu-ish aspect that goes way beyond claustrophobic and off the deep end of cultish nutteries.
If you don't like anything I just said here, then skip this. It's not for you.
BUT, if you're a sick and twisted nutter and you love tight prose going hand-in-hand with a supernatural stylism that starts us out with a pitch-perfect hum of depression and self-harm obsession, then you're going to LOVE this.
Basically, you have to understand the darkness of the human spirit first in order to appreciate just how deep down the hole this can get.
As for the supernatural bit... I was utterly delighted. The minimalism of it and the darkly delicious attraction of the sweet delights of hell, quite reminiscent of Barker's Hellraiser, had me chortling with glee by the end.
This is a book for anyone who seriously loves a great body-horror novel mixed with some serious mental health issues and a supernatural Cthulhu-ish aspect that goes way beyond claustrophobic and off the deep end of cultish nutteries.
If you don't like anything I just said here, then skip this. It's not for you.
BUT, if you're a sick and twisted nutter and you love tight prose going hand-in-hand with a supernatural stylism that starts us out with a pitch-perfect hum of depression and self-harm obsession, then you're going to LOVE this.
Basically, you have to understand the darkness of the human spirit first in order to appreciate just how deep down the hole this can get.
As for the supernatural bit... I was utterly delighted. The minimalism of it and the darkly delicious attraction of the sweet delights of hell, quite reminiscent of Barker's Hellraiser, had me chortling with glee by the end.
June 12, 2021
I have read a lot of books, but never anything like this. First published in 1991, Koja created a stunning tableau with TC, one that is as fresh today as when it was written. Writing a review of this work poses some serious challenges, not regarding spoilers, but trying to capture the varied emotions it evoked-- dread, anxiety, tension, revulsion-- is a real challenge.
Koja's prose in TC is truly a work of art, more poetry than prose, and all kinds of grammatical conventions are basically tossed out the window. At times it feels like a stream of consciousness erupting from the narrator/main protagonist Nicholas and in a way, that is what it is. It definitely takes a little to get used to for sure.
Nicholas is something of a poet; he has had a few things published (no money) and he writes when he is drunk, often destroying it the following day. He has a shitty apartment in a shitty town where it always seems to be either raining or snowing. Working at a video rental place to pay the bills, he occasionally hangs out with his feral lover Nakota, herself something of an art poser, who works at a shitty bar. Somehow, Nicholas found, in an unused storage room in his building a hole to another dimension (we are never sure or find out exactly what it is); he and Nakota call it the 'funhole'. The beginning of the book has them (but mainly Nakota) running some experiments. They toss things into the hole. Nakota brings a jar of bugs and sets it next to the hole and the bugs are transformed horribly-- two heads, roaches with spider legs, etc. Nakota creates a sling with fishing line and lower a mouse into the hole-- it explodes, showering them with bizarre, transformed, fossilized remains. Nakota one day brings over a human hand and lowers it via the fishing line into the hole where it seems to come alive and try to crawl up the line. You get the picture-- strange and disturbing!
Nakota convinces Nicholas to swipe a camcorder from work (his store rents them) and they lower that into the hole; the resultant film is bizarre and keeps changing each time they watch it. Finally, after a brutal round of sex by the hole, Nicholas accidentally plunges his hand into the hole and now it seems he has a mini funhole growing in the palm of his hand. TC is like 10 miles of bad road that just does not stop!
In the afterword, Maryse Meijer notes: "The Funhole is not a villain, not a creature, not even a thing, per se, but it is terrifying: perfectly round, absolutely dark, in infinitely deep, anything that goes inside it-- or merely near it-- is changed... It's capable of offering pain and a breed of pleasure beyond the limits of reason; but to receive its gifts one must surrender to the unknown, a journey that doesn't just offer transformation, but demands it. We know, more of less, what the Funhole does, but not why it does it: the Funhole does not ascribe meaning to itself..."
Today, this might be classified as bizarro fiction rather than horror, but the depth of emotions it calls forth while reading it definitely make me place it in the horror genre. Super creepy to be sure! 4.5 stars!!
Koja's prose in TC is truly a work of art, more poetry than prose, and all kinds of grammatical conventions are basically tossed out the window. At times it feels like a stream of consciousness erupting from the narrator/main protagonist Nicholas and in a way, that is what it is. It definitely takes a little to get used to for sure.
Nicholas is something of a poet; he has had a few things published (no money) and he writes when he is drunk, often destroying it the following day. He has a shitty apartment in a shitty town where it always seems to be either raining or snowing. Working at a video rental place to pay the bills, he occasionally hangs out with his feral lover Nakota, herself something of an art poser, who works at a shitty bar. Somehow, Nicholas found, in an unused storage room in his building a hole to another dimension (we are never sure or find out exactly what it is); he and Nakota call it the 'funhole'. The beginning of the book has them (but mainly Nakota) running some experiments. They toss things into the hole. Nakota brings a jar of bugs and sets it next to the hole and the bugs are transformed horribly-- two heads, roaches with spider legs, etc. Nakota creates a sling with fishing line and lower a mouse into the hole-- it explodes, showering them with bizarre, transformed, fossilized remains. Nakota one day brings over a human hand and lowers it via the fishing line into the hole where it seems to come alive and try to crawl up the line. You get the picture-- strange and disturbing!
Nakota convinces Nicholas to swipe a camcorder from work (his store rents them) and they lower that into the hole; the resultant film is bizarre and keeps changing each time they watch it. Finally, after a brutal round of sex by the hole, Nicholas accidentally plunges his hand into the hole and now it seems he has a mini funhole growing in the palm of his hand. TC is like 10 miles of bad road that just does not stop!
In the afterword, Maryse Meijer notes: "The Funhole is not a villain, not a creature, not even a thing, per se, but it is terrifying: perfectly round, absolutely dark, in infinitely deep, anything that goes inside it-- or merely near it-- is changed... It's capable of offering pain and a breed of pleasure beyond the limits of reason; but to receive its gifts one must surrender to the unknown, a journey that doesn't just offer transformation, but demands it. We know, more of less, what the Funhole does, but not why it does it: the Funhole does not ascribe meaning to itself..."
Today, this might be classified as bizarro fiction rather than horror, but the depth of emotions it calls forth while reading it definitely make me place it in the horror genre. Super creepy to be sure! 4.5 stars!!
July 24, 2012
I found this a little bit difficult to read, though I made fairly fast progress with it anyway. I think it's because the punctuation is a bit odd, almost like a stream of consciousness in places. I found the initial idea and characterisations great; grotesque, thoroughly unlikeable people yet complex and believable.
However, I felt the story never really went anywhere. By the end I was left disappointed and wanting so much more.
However, I felt the story never really went anywhere. By the end I was left disappointed and wanting so much more.
November 20, 2021
What do you say about this book? It’s not necessarily enjoyable, it’s filled with despicable people and grotesque imagery yet I didn’t want to stop reading. It pulled me in right from the start and I had to see exactly what the Funhole was all about. The obsession of it all kept me turning the pages, and made me feel grimy and dirty. I liked this book a lot.
November 11, 2021
Like a dizzy and grimy trudge through a seedy back alley while Lovecraft DJs at a nightclub.
June 7, 2018
”It really couldn’t get any weirder, now could it? Weirder or any worse, no. Just more of the same, world without end. Funhole forever. Skin and bone, dissolving. Matter over mind.”
1991’s The Cipher, Kathe Koja’s debut release, is infamous amongst vintage horror readers for being hard to find in physical form for cheap. I scored a copy for just under forty bucks (a steal, really, for what was the debut production in the Abyss Paperback line). Was paying that much money worth the story I got?
Yes. Oh, yes.
I don’t know if I’ve ever read a horror novel more of its time than this one. Even if I did not know before reading that it had been written in the early nineties, I would be able to guess by the time I was done reading. Filled with the grungy aesthetics of the era, this is a strange novel of the inexplicable is about two characters, Nicholas and Nakota, that discover a strange hole in the storage room of Nicholas’s apartment building. The hole seems to go to nowhere, and things come back from it . . . changed.
Written in poetic and hallucinogenic prose, this is the dirty, raw unraveling of the human psyche. Koja’s characters are distinctly unlikable, letting their base desires drive them without much hesitation or regret. This is a wholly unsettling, and unique, read.
Abyss was one of the last gasps of the great Horror Boom, and it started off with this filthy wretch of tale of friends and foes obsessively inflicting pain on themselves and each other. This is not the horror of Stephen King or Peter Straub or VC Andrews or Thomas Tryon; Koja’s debut novel is totally unlike anything that came before it. My highest recommendation. To any reader that can handle it, anyway.
1991’s The Cipher, Kathe Koja’s debut release, is infamous amongst vintage horror readers for being hard to find in physical form for cheap. I scored a copy for just under forty bucks (a steal, really, for what was the debut production in the Abyss Paperback line). Was paying that much money worth the story I got?
Yes. Oh, yes.
I don’t know if I’ve ever read a horror novel more of its time than this one. Even if I did not know before reading that it had been written in the early nineties, I would be able to guess by the time I was done reading. Filled with the grungy aesthetics of the era, this is a strange novel of the inexplicable is about two characters, Nicholas and Nakota, that discover a strange hole in the storage room of Nicholas’s apartment building. The hole seems to go to nowhere, and things come back from it . . . changed.
Written in poetic and hallucinogenic prose, this is the dirty, raw unraveling of the human psyche. Koja’s characters are distinctly unlikable, letting their base desires drive them without much hesitation or regret. This is a wholly unsettling, and unique, read.
Abyss was one of the last gasps of the great Horror Boom, and it started off with this filthy wretch of tale of friends and foes obsessively inflicting pain on themselves and each other. This is not the horror of Stephen King or Peter Straub or VC Andrews or Thomas Tryon; Koja’s debut novel is totally unlike anything that came before it. My highest recommendation. To any reader that can handle it, anyway.
March 11, 2012
Truly one of my favorite horror novels of all time. I was fortunate enough to buy it around the time it came out, when I was hungry for horror fiction far removed from the bestseller likes of King, Saul, Koontz, etc. And with THE CIPHER I got it! Koja's clipped, unpolished, impressionistic prose evokes avant-garde icons like William S. Burroughs or J.G. Ballard, and sets a jittery, jagged tone of bleakness and rot. I sort of identified with the insular characters and their existential plight (what can I say, I was a kid) and the horror of the funhole itself. THE CIPHER is original and fearless in a way paperback horror often isn't. The early '90s was an exciting time for the genre, and this was the perfect title to kick of the adventurous, ambitious Abyss line from Dell Books. I've read it 3 times over the intervening 20 (!) years and dug it more each time. Track down a copy if you're looking for weird, challenging, unique horror that owes nothing to the boring bestsellers of its day!
(you can read my longer review here: http://bit.ly/w6r2cB)
(you can read my longer review here: http://bit.ly/w6r2cB)
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March 3, 2021I dont know how to feel...
April 11, 2012
Just about everyone has known at least one guy who always hooked up with crazy girlfriends. In that same vein, who hasn't known girls whose boyfriends were invariably losers. Nicholas and Nakota, the central characters in The Cipher, are made for each other. Both are college-educated underachievers. Nicholas works in a video store and only writes poetry when he is drunk, which is often. Nakota, also known as Shrike and whose real name is something like Diane, is manipulative and just downright mean. She tends bar at Club 22, an establishment for full-time alcoholics, and hangs out with what sound like remarkably untalented artists. Nicholas has to admit he probably loves her. She may love him. Their general fucked-upness is what they have in common. That, and The Funhole.
On the second floor of Nicholas's dingy apartment building there is a storage room containing a hole that seems to open into another dimension -- or something. The Cipher accepts the Funhole on its own terms, because Nicholas and Nakota do as well. Nicholas narrates the novel, and so the possibility that all this is some manifestation of their febrile grip on reality will cross the reader's mind. Who finds a hole to another dimension in a storage closet and doesn't think it might be of some serious scientific interest and not just their personal plaything? They are like kids, grown up, drunk kids who live in squalid circumstances, but kids who think the hole in the backyard might go to China.
Bad things happen to what goes into the hole. Their is some unpleasantness with a pickle jar full of insects and later a mouse. A human hand borrowed from a med student crawls back up the rope they've hung it from. A camcorder -- this was written in 1991 -- brings back a deeply disturbing video that can never be described in detail because no two people see the same thing twice. Then Nicholas's own right arm happens to go full length into the hole. It is scary but kind of nice down there, and he soon has a little hole of his own on his palm.
All this sounds ridiculous and it is, but Koja makes it work. Her success is the creation of Nicholas as a narrator who is both mesmerized observer of the transformations around him and, and he grows to admit, their catalyst. Others are brought into the "secret." Nakota rounds up forces to antagonize and work against NIcholas. She is jealous of his relationship with the Funhole. I wanted to strangle just about every character in the book, but since that's a feeling I shared with Nicholas it kept the proceedings bearable.
The Cipher is a peculiar nightmare of a book. It creates its own claustrophobic world so convincingly that it comes as a shock when you learn that some characters have to leave for work or visit their mothers. It all comes down to Nicholas an the Funhole, an aperture both inviting and repulsive. One day it may smell like freshly baked bread, The next day it smells like a corpse.
On the second floor of Nicholas's dingy apartment building there is a storage room containing a hole that seems to open into another dimension -- or something. The Cipher accepts the Funhole on its own terms, because Nicholas and Nakota do as well. Nicholas narrates the novel, and so the possibility that all this is some manifestation of their febrile grip on reality will cross the reader's mind. Who finds a hole to another dimension in a storage closet and doesn't think it might be of some serious scientific interest and not just their personal plaything? They are like kids, grown up, drunk kids who live in squalid circumstances, but kids who think the hole in the backyard might go to China.
Bad things happen to what goes into the hole. Their is some unpleasantness with a pickle jar full of insects and later a mouse. A human hand borrowed from a med student crawls back up the rope they've hung it from. A camcorder -- this was written in 1991 -- brings back a deeply disturbing video that can never be described in detail because no two people see the same thing twice. Then Nicholas's own right arm happens to go full length into the hole. It is scary but kind of nice down there, and he soon has a little hole of his own on his palm.
All this sounds ridiculous and it is, but Koja makes it work. Her success is the creation of Nicholas as a narrator who is both mesmerized observer of the transformations around him and, and he grows to admit, their catalyst. Others are brought into the "secret." Nakota rounds up forces to antagonize and work against NIcholas. She is jealous of his relationship with the Funhole. I wanted to strangle just about every character in the book, but since that's a feeling I shared with Nicholas it kept the proceedings bearable.
The Cipher is a peculiar nightmare of a book. It creates its own claustrophobic world so convincingly that it comes as a shock when you learn that some characters have to leave for work or visit their mothers. It all comes down to Nicholas an the Funhole, an aperture both inviting and repulsive. One day it may smell like freshly baked bread, The next day it smells like a corpse.
April 11, 2018
Por fin uno de los libros más importantes del terror de los noventa en una buena traducción al castellano. No muy alejada del universo barkeriano, Koja narra una historia de amor condenado en la que los personajes (y la novela con ellos) se estancan y arremolinan alrededor de un agujero negro que invoca al mismo tiempo el deseo y la repulsión, el cambio y la destrucción.
Eso sí, mis cinco estrellas no significan que vaya a gustarle a todo el mundo. Todo lo contrario.
Eso sí, mis cinco estrellas no significan que vaya a gustarle a todo el mundo. Todo lo contrario.
June 23, 2024
Alguno libros no necesitan reseñas. Tan solo requieren una dosis de paciencia para poder mostrarse, para aparecer en el momento adecuado de tu vida. Cruzan el umbral hasta adentrarse en una experiencia que tiene que vivir en sus propias carnes el lector, alejada a cualquier recomendación que puedas encontrar en las redes. De hecho, la dificultad que tiene hablar de una obra tan complicada como es la de Cero, de Kathe Koja es que es un libro que atrapa al lector como si de una infección se tratara. Te contamina, te hace pasar más de un mal rato durante su lectura y te deja secuelas que no tienen por qué ser agradables. Enfrentarse a esas situaciones requieren paciencia, autocontrol para poder seguir adelante y, sobre todo, requiere de profundas reflexiones acerca del proceso que supone leer una historia que no está hecha para saciar el apetito de aquel que busque en Cero una pura historia de horror. Que lo es.
Y es que lo que surge de la imaginación de Kathe Koja es el vacío. Camuflado desde un inicio con premisas sencillas, fascinantes y llenas de ilusión que te engañan al creer que te adentras en una obra convencional del agrado de los amantes del género. Esa ilusión poco a poco transfigura hacia una suciedad distinta. Esa que te agrede hasta causar rechazo. Un vacío que te contempla impávido desde su negrura esperando que te también te integres en su abismo. Con el transcurso de los capítulos las premisas iniciales quedan despedazadas en endebles fragmentos cuyo significado solo genera contrariedad y unas pizcas de animadversión.
El argumento de Cero entusiasma. Parte de la base de una pareja que descubre en un cuarto abandonado un agujero negro que no tiene ningún tipo de explicación. Esa nada les genera curiosidad, quieren comprenderla, saber lo que esconde en su interior y les obsesiona hasta el punto que no dejan de idear maneras de comprender lo que significa ese descubrimiento en sus vidas. Pero desde el momento en que interactúan con el agujero, y ven como transforma todo aquello que se acerca a su vacío, todo cambia a su alrededor.
Y también lo hace la prosa de la escritora hasta generar esa suerte de flujo de pensamiento que parte desde la mente de Nicolas, nuestro protagonista, hasta influir en todo lo que va descubriendo el lector desde el primer capítulo en adelante. Aquí habría que hacer un inciso acerca de la pesadilla que tiene que suponer el trabajo de traducción de una obra tan fascinante como es Cero y que llega a buen puerto de la mano de Pilar Ramirez Tello. La manera de narrar de Koja transforma los tropos convencionales de cualquier novela de terror a una borrasca de ideas que convierten la lectura de la propia novela en una pesadilla no fiable, llena de percepciones contaminadas por el amor, la frustración, el dolor y, sobre todo, el miedo. Un terror que deshace sus principios, que florecen en un primer capítulo aterrador lleno de ideas espeluznantes, hasta convertirse en pedazos de la soledad y el vacío profundo de que aterran al lector escondiéndose en las sombras de la intimidad.
Porque lo que encontramos en Cero no deja de ser una alegoría de la vida, de las relaciones humanas, de lo terrible que es sentir como por dentro de uno surge un hueco que nos devora hasta destruir todo lo que creemos real. El experimento que traslada Koja a su novela está lleno de cortes que sangran a cada página, cuyo olor consigue herir a todos los que se han tenido que asomar alguna vez al agujero. Esa incomprensión, ese deseo de rehacer las piezas de un puzzle derruido, esa desilusión por tratar de comprender un punto de vista que se nutre de lo absurdo. Cero aterra por su universalidad. Por que todos alguna vez hemos vislumbrado el abismo que se fragua al distanciarse de aquello que tenía seguro entre sus manos y que se ha ido vertiendo en las arenas ce Carcossa. Por muchas vendas que traten de paliar los efectos de la distancia, del tedio, de la nostalgia.
Una novela que encierra desesperación, violencia y aullidos, cargada de enigmas que, probablemente, estén alejados de cualquiera de las impresiones que yo pueda concebir tras la lectura. Una novela sucia, complicada, desesperante, exigente, llena de cerveza y de vómitos, de reproches y de frustración, una muestra afilada de como desangrar a los personajes hasta odiarles. Una historia que no gustará a todo el mundo porque, cuando se da cuenta, le ha generado un vacío que también terminará por obsesionarle.
Y es que la obsesión se esconde en la mente de quienes la experimentan hasta transformar la realidad en algo mucho más terrorífico. Algo que fluye desde el miedo y que nos arrastra sin piedad.
Y es que lo que surge de la imaginación de Kathe Koja es el vacío. Camuflado desde un inicio con premisas sencillas, fascinantes y llenas de ilusión que te engañan al creer que te adentras en una obra convencional del agrado de los amantes del género. Esa ilusión poco a poco transfigura hacia una suciedad distinta. Esa que te agrede hasta causar rechazo. Un vacío que te contempla impávido desde su negrura esperando que te también te integres en su abismo. Con el transcurso de los capítulos las premisas iniciales quedan despedazadas en endebles fragmentos cuyo significado solo genera contrariedad y unas pizcas de animadversión.
El argumento de Cero entusiasma. Parte de la base de una pareja que descubre en un cuarto abandonado un agujero negro que no tiene ningún tipo de explicación. Esa nada les genera curiosidad, quieren comprenderla, saber lo que esconde en su interior y les obsesiona hasta el punto que no dejan de idear maneras de comprender lo que significa ese descubrimiento en sus vidas. Pero desde el momento en que interactúan con el agujero, y ven como transforma todo aquello que se acerca a su vacío, todo cambia a su alrededor.
Y también lo hace la prosa de la escritora hasta generar esa suerte de flujo de pensamiento que parte desde la mente de Nicolas, nuestro protagonista, hasta influir en todo lo que va descubriendo el lector desde el primer capítulo en adelante. Aquí habría que hacer un inciso acerca de la pesadilla que tiene que suponer el trabajo de traducción de una obra tan fascinante como es Cero y que llega a buen puerto de la mano de Pilar Ramirez Tello. La manera de narrar de Koja transforma los tropos convencionales de cualquier novela de terror a una borrasca de ideas que convierten la lectura de la propia novela en una pesadilla no fiable, llena de percepciones contaminadas por el amor, la frustración, el dolor y, sobre todo, el miedo. Un terror que deshace sus principios, que florecen en un primer capítulo aterrador lleno de ideas espeluznantes, hasta convertirse en pedazos de la soledad y el vacío profundo de que aterran al lector escondiéndose en las sombras de la intimidad.
Porque lo que encontramos en Cero no deja de ser una alegoría de la vida, de las relaciones humanas, de lo terrible que es sentir como por dentro de uno surge un hueco que nos devora hasta destruir todo lo que creemos real. El experimento que traslada Koja a su novela está lleno de cortes que sangran a cada página, cuyo olor consigue herir a todos los que se han tenido que asomar alguna vez al agujero. Esa incomprensión, ese deseo de rehacer las piezas de un puzzle derruido, esa desilusión por tratar de comprender un punto de vista que se nutre de lo absurdo. Cero aterra por su universalidad. Por que todos alguna vez hemos vislumbrado el abismo que se fragua al distanciarse de aquello que tenía seguro entre sus manos y que se ha ido vertiendo en las arenas ce Carcossa. Por muchas vendas que traten de paliar los efectos de la distancia, del tedio, de la nostalgia.
Una novela que encierra desesperación, violencia y aullidos, cargada de enigmas que, probablemente, estén alejados de cualquiera de las impresiones que yo pueda concebir tras la lectura. Una novela sucia, complicada, desesperante, exigente, llena de cerveza y de vómitos, de reproches y de frustración, una muestra afilada de como desangrar a los personajes hasta odiarles. Una historia que no gustará a todo el mundo porque, cuando se da cuenta, le ha generado un vacío que también terminará por obsesionarle.
Y es que la obsesión se esconde en la mente de quienes la experimentan hasta transformar la realidad en algo mucho más terrorífico. Algo que fluye desde el miedo y que nos arrastra sin piedad.
March 31, 2013
First person POV has always been a tough sell for me. I have been pleasantly surprised numerous times; sadly, this was not one of them. I felt that the narration had a choppy feel to it. There were only two characters I liked, Nicholas and Randy, neither of whom I felt I really "knew" by the end of the story. The rest of the characters felt inconsequential. The story itself was somewhat intriguing, but I just didn't feel that it went as far as it could have. Overall, this one just wasn't for me.
December 3, 2023
No, definitivamente esta novela no ha sido para mí, y que conste y os prevengo que tampoco lo será para muchos de vosotros.
Con un comienzo magnífico, nos va llevado a un desarrollo repetitivo, aburrido y con un final, pues venga vale.
Esto es un retrato de una obsesión, creo que lo de menos es el agujero que sus protagonistas encuentran en el almacén del edificio. Es un retrato de la degradación en las relaciones románticas.
Los personajes me han parecido tremendamente odiosos.
Ojo, es una lectura compleja, tanto en narrativa como en desarrollo.
En fin, no ha sido lo que esperaba.
Con un comienzo magnífico, nos va llevado a un desarrollo repetitivo, aburrido y con un final, pues venga vale.
Esto es un retrato de una obsesión, creo que lo de menos es el agujero que sus protagonistas encuentran en el almacén del edificio. Es un retrato de la degradación en las relaciones románticas.
Los personajes me han parecido tremendamente odiosos.
Ojo, es una lectura compleja, tanto en narrativa como en desarrollo.
En fin, no ha sido lo que esperaba.
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