Bad Brains

by Kathe Koja

Still reeling from his divorce, would-be painter Austen takes a fall in a 7-Eleven parking lot that leaves him with brain damage and strange visions, a madness that sends him on a cross-country odyssey of debauchery and pain.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Science Fiction, Novels, Splatterpunk, American, Literature

367 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 2, 1992

About the author

Kathe 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.

Reviews

[Alex (The Bookubus) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another phenomenal read from Kathe Koja. Bad Brains tells the story of Austen. He used to be an artist but that has fallen by the wayside and he now works a crappy day job to pay the bills. He still holds a torch for his ex-wife. He's a bit of a loner and one of his only lifelines is gallery owner Peter.

One evening he stumbles and falls, the accident putting him in hospital. Austen begins to suffer from seizures and visions. The medications don't seem to help. Once released from hospital the seizures continue and he is haunted by the visions. Always the same thing. Silver. Austen starts to paint again as he tries to find a cure.

This was an incredible book. Koja's writing is unique and poetic. I was making notes of amazing sentences and passages on practically every other page. The story is mesmerising and I was compelled to join Austen on his journey. Sure, there are some slower, quieter sections of the book but I felt they gave necessary breathing room to the intensity of the rest of the story. It's unsettling and disturbing yet absolutely fascinating. There are some similar themes and elements to The Cipher but Bad Brains definitely felt like its own entity rather than retreading familiar ground.

The opening paragraph will probably determine whether this will be your cup of tea or not:
"Gargoyle benedictive, above his breakfasting head: oils, luscious as blood and framed in red, a reclining sphinxlike form in all the shades of black. Ram's head atop the dreaming body, poisoned eyes."

[Cody | CodysBookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

How is it Kathe Koja can take something as simple as an artist slipping and busting his head (or a strange couple of friends finding an even stranger hole in their apartment building . . . .) and turn it into an entertaining — and edgy — grand statement? She makes it seem so easy. The paranoia drips off the pages of this tale of love lost . . . and an artist driven mad by the visions in his head . . .

Her works were cutting-edge back in the ‘90s; now, perhaps, they are even more so . . . the grunge era aesthetics only bolster the fundamental power of Bad Brains.

A book I’m not quite worthy of reviewing, this 1992 horror paperback is, perhaps, my favorite read of the year thus far . . . . and certainly should be on all readers’ radars. (This is especially fine reading for fans of The Cipher.)

[Will Errickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

While BAD BRAINS isn't quite the world-beater her debut novel THE CIPHER was, it's still a great grimy Nineties read. Koja's prose style is all edge and poetic deconstruction, stripped bare and decorated in discomfort, the weird poetry of the crumbling and the crazy. This is no epic novel of horrors human and hell-spawned, but a novel of inner horror, which I find captivating; I like her anguished artist characters who suffer for their (lack of creating) art, who twist and turn helplessly through a worn-out world, insides spilling out as they search for answers to a madness that seems more than chemicals misfiring. The nightmare ratchets up in the book's final pages, and a strange haunt lingered about me for days after finishing it... proof that Koja, for all her stylistic eccentricities and lack of providing a real plot, effectively creates dread, suspense, fear and, okay, bewilderment. Highly recommended!

[M Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very impressive writing, in the same kaleidoscopic stream-of-consciousness style as Cipher, though I may have liked that one a little better. Still, it's rare to see a novelist sustain this kind of darkly poetic language over such length.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

One evening, while in a bad mood, Austen Bandy has a run in with an irritating liquor store clerk and does a dumb thing on the way out the door. His mocking little bow to the woman sends him tripping off the curb. Weeks, maybe months later, he remains in hospital suffering from frontal lobe seizures. When the drugs finally get the seizures under control, he encounters for the first time the spreading silver mass that slides off the edges of mirrors or lurks in the corners of rooms, always ready to engulf his world. But Austen has had enough of hospitals and doctors and so he keeps quiet about this little issue. His scans are coming in clear, no more seizures, he is ready to go home.

Austen is not ready to go home. He is a failing artist still obsessed with his ex-wife. He apparently has no friends. The medical bills have impoverished him. And that thing in the corner or in the drains or along the frosted side of a beer can may be just an hallucination but it is a very dangerous one. Austen does not want to be labeled crazy, and so he makes lots of bad decisions, mainly the decision to just deal with this on his on.

Koja's claustrophobic prose can be either lyrical or as disturbing as Austen's hallucinations and the behavior they produce. In a story where the action will become increasingly deranged, the physical settings have to remain concrete and believable. Koja moves the reader from crummy apartments to cheap motels, public restrooms and the home of a brujo somewhere in the northern midwest and keeps each locale specific and real. The novel is a fever dream that for Austen and those he brings into his world can cause serious damage. Is this a horror novel, or just what kind of horror novel can have a color as its monster? Well in one scene the silver sheen opens Austen's skull and reveals of nest of eyeballs in his brain. So I would say, yes this is a horror novel and the monster means business. Readers with a low tolerance for vomiting should be warned away from this book.

[Todd Charlton · Rating 1 out of 5]

What the fuck was that?
I finished it. That was hard hard work. No pleasurable reading there!
I kept reading because people rave about this book, this author. When was something going to happen? Surely something will happen?
Our protagonist, Austen Bandy? I think, falls over and has a brain injury. Then he sees many doctors who tell him nothing is wrong. He sees a silver thing, sometimes it's small, sometimes it is the entire room. George Orwell once said if you can use a small word instead of a big one as a writer, use the small word. There's none of that here, the language is as flowery as the Botanical Gardens and twice as pretty, merging into a sea of colourless colour.
He meets some guy in a bar. They travel America in search of someone to help him, to understand. He blacks out and trashes a motel room, has drunken sex, pines over his ex-wife, all the time stopping at countless McDonald's restaurants to clean his arm pits.
Still waiting for something to happen.
Apparently the silver is the work, oh yeah I forgot to mention he's a halfarsed artist.
I think he dies in the end, it's such gibberish I'm not sure.
Hated this pretentious twaddle! What a fucking waste of my motherfucking time!

[Sam Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely terrifying and so good. Kathe rocked my world!

[Joey Shapiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do I feel guilty for giving so many books five stars in a short amount of time?? Sure. Do I stand by all these ratings???? you bet I do, baby!!!!

This book was a serious slow burn that I wasn’t sure about at first but it kept building and building on me until I was absolutely HOOKED and read the last 70 pages in a caffeinated frenzy. I had heard a lot about Kathe Koja as one of the best horror writers of the 90s and it was truuuue, some of her writing is so gorgeous and impressionistic it borders on poetry, even/especially as the story starts to turn more into a hazy messy violent nightmare. Wish someone would make a movie of it bc it would lend itself so well to that!!! Huge, huge fan.

[Melora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although, overall, I preferred Koja's "The Cipher," this book was still a worthwhile read if you're a Koja fan. It was a slow build to a pretty amazing finale, and I did feel that the wait was well worth it. The characters are somewhat more likable in this book than in "The Cipher," but still very much drawn in shades of grey.

If, like me, you've never heard of the term "duende," do yourself a favor and read the definition, at least when you're finished reading the book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duende_%...
Understanding this term will help any reader to appreciate the author's direction in this novel, as well as interpret the ending a bit more.

After recommending "The Cipher" to my book club, I realize that Koja is not for everyone, and is perhaps a bit too dark and intense for most. But if you're a fan of her style, or if you're an artist, this book is a must-read. There were some slow parts in the middle of the book, parts where I wondered where the author was going with all this and when she might actually make her point. But when you get to the very end, you may (like me) wonder if you should start over again and reread the whole novel, and feel that the second read may be worth your time.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kathe Koja is one of the most talented stylists I've ever read & I'll absolutely fight anyone on this

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen King endorsed the entire Dell Abyss Horror line. Here is his blurb:

"Thank you for introducing me to the remarkable line of novels currently being issued under Dell's Abyss imprint. I have given a great many blurbs over the last twelve years or so, but this one marks two firsts: first unsolicited blurb (I called you) and the first time I have blurbed a whole line of books. In terms of quality, production, and plain old story-telling reliability (that's the bottom line, isn't it), Dell's new line is amazingly satisfying...a rare and wonderful bargain for readers. I hope to be looking into the Abyss for a long time to come."

[Internet · Rating 4 out of 5]

At least as good as The Cipher, and very similar. Both books are concerned with an isolated male protagonist on the verge of some major transformation. Both books are very atmospheric and full of dense, impressionistic prose with an odd mash-up of grotesque and beautiful imagery. Both books are also more concerned with the social and psychological dysfunction of the grungy 90s characters than the plot, which is repetitive and meandering. I wish Koja was more interested in the plot, because she had such incredibly provocative material to work with - what exactly is in the 'funhole' in The Cipher, and what is the mystery illness in Bad Brains? Still, they are both memorable reads, and very unique (outside of Koja's catalogue, that is!).

The Cipher and Bad Brains were both published as part of the Dell Abyss line, and they're presented as pulp horror paperbacks, but they're not really that. They are, I guess, psychological weird fiction. They're not concerned with the standard menagerie of ghosts and ghoulies, but the odd mirroring and blending between the interior and the exterior - between the world inside your head and the world beyond. In each case, the isolated protagonist is a kind of mystic at the edge of the world who unwittingly, inevitably works to achieve a very intimate form of communion with a menacing, radically other being. Instead of prayer or meditation, he uses art and abject behaviour - alcohol abuse, indiscriminate violence, meaningless sex - to hollow himself out and prepare for the coming transformation.

[Briar Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't appreciate this novel as much as I think it deserves the first time I read it, probably because at the time I had recently finished THE CIPHER, with which BAD BRAINS undeniably shares themes, tone, and a general kind of plot arc. These similarities made me feel like BAD BRAINS was a less effective retread of territory Koja had already explored thoroughly and well. However, on my second read through, several years later, I found myself more open to the things BAD BRAINS is doing differently, and doing extremely well in its own right: the road trip structure of the novel's second half, the painful realism of a chronically ill person's fruitless search for answers, the exploration of duende. It's great stuff, and if the Austen/Emily relationship seems underbaked compared to Nicholas/Nakota in THE CIPHER, that's surely intentional: the latter is a deeply and mutually dysfunctional, even abusive, codependency, while the former is an unwell and lonely man fixating on a dead connection with his seemingly pretty ordinary and well-adjusted ex-wife. There's not much relationship left to speak of! And Austen's love for Emily, it becomes clear, really is more about the idea of a muse and kindred spirit and lifetime companion than it is about who Emily is as a person. It's fitting, therefore, that Emily spends most of the novel off-page and doesn't get much character development.
Koja's use of language here is stunning, her usual grimy beat-poetic prose becoming more fragmented, flowing, and abstract by turns as Austen's mind deteriorates. I also loved the friendship between Austen and Russell, that weird almost-homoerotic daddy-issues frisson, bro-bonding interspersed with moments of violence and moments of unguarded tenderness. And again, the uncomfortable realism of friendship between a person who is very, very sick and very, very hard to be around and a person who is more or less healthy and normal: the healthy person's fear of and for his friend, his eventual resentment for the caretaker role he shoulders, his perverse desire to bear witness to another man's deterioration. (Of course, there's also the sick person's resentment of his friend's health, resentment at the inevitable failures of empathy and understanding, and frequent lashing out.)
Like most Koja, this is a heavy story full of complex, believably nasty, painfully sympathetic characters and a less concrete kind of supernatural horror than some readers may be used to. I wouldn't recommend reading it right after THE CIPHER (or SKIN or STRANGE ANGELS, for that matter), but I do strongly recommend it to fans of Koja's other work, and as a relatively accessible entrypoint to her catalogue for dark fiction fans who like male bonding road trips, stories about the relationship between illness, self-destruction, and art, and medical horror.

[Juushika · Rating 3 out of 5]

After an accident, a lapsed artist finds himself plagued by seizures and increasingly alarming hallucinations. Koja's early work has a distinct vibe, abrupt & fragmented sentences, dirty settings & dirtbag characters. It's an acquired taste but weirdly hypnotic. And a good thing, too, because this has a slow start. It's to some extent necessary, as grappling with a chronic condition is as important, early on, as the burgeoning speculative element; but it's a lot of time spent meandering aimlessly with unlikeable characters. The climax is comparatively hectic, and leans hard into tortured artist tropes--another Koja staple, but better handled elsewhere (namely Skin) where the artists are more motivated & the tropes are therefore more at home. So this is probably my least favorite of this era of Koja, and I'd recommend The Cipher or Skin in its place; but I still liked it fine--mostly by dint of: wanted more Koja, sure did read more Koja.

[Zan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book somehow fully composed of simply sensation and force, this grimy boiling mess of personal pain, depression, ennui, and existential dread. It's impressive how simple the story begins, and how natural each pitiful step feels until like the main character you're in far too deep and there's only one way out of this thing - through. A look into the horror of hospitals. Of not knowing the answer. Of bathrooms. of God. of transcendence and unknowingness.

Word of warning to that though, there's a heavy aspect of this book that's just absolutely bizarrely confusing - it's literally about something incomprehensible - through science, emotion, faith.... and there's a beautiful slipping quality to Koja's writing that binds all this together perfectly - a story about a man with brain trauma who forgets time, forgets things he does, blanks out, and Koja omits moments. sentences. Words - a chapter or two in and you won't notice, instead it spills out mercury smooth and just as deadly.

Fucking great, but a little hard to recommend - I suggest you give it a shot of course, but we're dealing with abstracted writing about confusing concepts dealing with a lousy fucking asshole guy who's not great to women and spends most of the book vomiting on the floor in the bathroom, like... it's brilliant, don't get me wrong, but you're in for it if you pick this up

[Fantasy boy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s a shame that Bad Brains has its potential to be a good but it fail to be.

The narrator is an artist and he went insane as he had seen the vision of the thing, silver and it drove him to crazy. The most boring part is in the middle of the story that I want to skip the part to read the most. This is not a typical horror story that want you to be scared instead it has it metaphors and myths to the story.

4.5 out of 10.

[Todd Wittenmyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became familiar with Kathe Koja's writing style after picking up a copy of The Cipher. With Bad Brains I became even more of an admirer of that edgy, jugular-piercing, carotid-ripping, descriptively precise prose that she weaves into the tapestry of her stories. 4.5 stars on this one! Loved it! Cheers everyone!

[Zach Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Technically, this is an incredible book. Amazing prose, possibly one of the best first person representations of (toxic?) male grieving I've seen, and lots of interesting things to mentally chew on, particularly towards the end of the book.

Definitely meanders a lot though, and Austen is not a pleasant character to be inside the head of.

[Harry Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second Kathe Koja book I’ve read, with the first being the phenomenal The Cipher. She has such a creative take on the horror genre and it is very sensory/grim/interesting at the same time. Quite a bleak plot but very well done all up to the very weird and intense ending.

Artist gone/going mad, intimate relationships and contact with the other. Very well done.

[Finn C. Edvardsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intensely claustrophobic and intimate book with sharp, energetic writing. The sentences flow together in a maelstrom, like the feeling of a feverish dream, drifting in and out of consciousness; not sure what exactly happened. It's absolutely grimy but avoids going for cheap shock-value.

I will most definitively be checking out more from this author.

[Emily K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scummy body horror, lots of goop, heartache and dread. I know this was deeeep 90's freakshow alt-sploitation era, but some moments, like the brujo (something about this felt a little contrived, a little too woo for woo sake) and the strippers (they wouldn't just fuck two random customers, c'mon) took me out of the real human horror of obsession and madness in this book from time to time. But not enough to stop me from really eating this fucker up. While I was reading it I kept thinking about how this is what Brand New Cherry Flavor wanted to be, but failed so miserably in its attempt. I also kept thinking about how well Kathe Koja taps into the scummy loser dude mindset, the 120 Minutes mindset.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really like Koja's writing style. When I was younger, I didn't think much of it, but on re-reading it, I find I can appreciate it a lot more. When so much of the older fiction I read is more tell than show, it's nice to read a style where the narrative is almost entirely show. In the Abyss line, Koja and Kelley Wilde both refused to follow any standards, and their books are much more enjoyable for it.

That being said, Bad Brains is a pretty dull book. It starts off well, but it slowly becomes a story of the main character moving from place to place. The main character isn't that likable, which I expected, but he's somehow both less or a loser and more of a loser than the main character in The Cipher. The story is about Austen, an artist who falls and suffers a brain injury that causes him to see a shimmery silver color encroach on his vision. This has happened to him after his wife has left him, and after he has fallen into a depression that halts his artwork. Since this is a Koja novel, Austen is a bit of an outcast, but he starts off as someone more respectable than Nicholas, from The Cipher. Slowly, though, he falls further and further out of step, so while he starts off having accomplished more in his life, he winds up being more insufferable than Nicholas. Maybe it's because he did make something of himself before his wife left him and he fell into the downward spiral of his infection.

Bad Brains reads well, and makes as strong of an impact as The Cipher did, but the story just isn't that interesting. Her style was enough to keep me reading, but I wanted the story to be as good as her narrative. I'm hoping her later works will capture that same blending of prose and story like I found in The Cipher. This could be a case of the Sophomore Novel Syndrome.

[Laith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was highly recommended to me and I have to say that I loved it. It kind of came as a surprise despite the high praise because I don't read a lot of horror; outside of the classics I've found a lot of horror books to be pulpy and one-dimensional, often they're so focused on the blood-and-guts that they ignore important narrative elements and come out formulaic. That is not the case for Bad Brains and I am going to gush about this book. I don't want people to think I am an easy grader either, my October TBR just happened to be stacked with killer books and this was the pièce de résistance. If I am guilty of anything it's loving books with unreliable narrators and maybe I am criminally attracted to anything with a beat or post-beat influence (maybe that's all a fancy English education is good for).

Bad Brains is about Austen, an artist in the middle of a depressed slump. His art won't sell and his wife has left him. Instead of painting, he's working at a T-shirt shop and drinking himself into a stupor. One day his friend who curates an art gallery invites him to a party and tells him to grab some beers. On his way out of a 7-11, as he apes at the cashier, he takes a serious fall and wakes up in the hospital. Austen suffers from extreme chain seizures during his extended stay at the hospital and begins to see a horrible liquid silver monster thing on the edges of his vision. He is eventually released from the hospital with a clean bill of health, there is nothing physically wrong with him but he is still suffering from hallucinations and seizures. He seeks out help from a number of doctors but is too scared to tell them about the silver for fear of being labeled crazy. Turned away by all, he seeks out his mother who lives states away. While visiting meets a man named Russel who claims to know what's wrong with him as his father also had epileptic visions; the two of them seek out the answer as they travel across the country.

The silver thing, itself a whorl, did not seem to care or notice; but that was because it was a creature of dream, an insubstantiality. Occasionally, in his less epileptic moments, Austen wondered if he should be frightened by it, frightened at least by the sheer number of its visitations; only his brain understood the secret omnipresence of that scaly mercury dance, and his brain was no true witness anymore. Which was maybe the most frightening thing of all.

Clench. That's what it's like to read Bad Brains; you are physically clenched for the entirety of this book as you try to piece together what is going on. From the moment that Austen wakes up in the hospital you as the reader are right there with him, experiencing viscerally his struggle with his situation. I'm not doing it justice just by describing it, but watching Austen as he is consumed in an abyss of despair and fear of his condition, reading the descriptions of his pain and his longing for his ex-wife as he lays bound and alone in a hospital bed are some of the most moving things I've ever read in fiction, let alone in horror. This book is unique in its use of horror elements to progress the story, it delivers these powerfully moving, empathetic, and visceral passages that couldn't really exist outside of the genre. It's tempting to say that this book is good in spite of its genre, but that's not true, it uses its horror elements as unique tools to tell a story that couldn't really be told otherwise.

I am standing here seeing this, I am seeing it and took off the top of its skull where the brain is and inside, the most delicate writhe, each lobe filigreed, threaded and girdled with silvery death in all its masques and manifestations, in all its irrevocable forms: the elegant pulse of an aneurysm, an extravagant clutch of tumors concealed like an oyster’s pearl, clots like molded caviar and each molecule burning, shining silver light on the bone chips ragged and blood like the swirled center of a dubious treat; and nestled in the rich middle like eggs in a nest, eyes. Exquisite and long and barely there.

I think that this book has some of the best prose that I have ever read, I am in no way understating it when I call Koja a master of the craft. There is a unique and intoxicating blend of lyricism and gritty realism that pervades this whole book. This is a stark and grimy read. Much of this book takes place in parking lots, gas station bathrooms, and seedy motels; we spend our time floating across this dark and desolate world locked behind Austen's eyes, seeing this disjointed world as he sees it. Koja perfectly describes an intensely claustrophobic, visceral, and emotionally charged journey across the urban wastes. Her descriptions are desolate and empathetic, beautiful in their grotesquery and dissymmetry. This book pushes the boundaries of conventional narrative structure and the prose is a powerful force, drawing readers into the gritty and tumultuous world she has created.

I can safely shelve this as a favorite, and I already picked up a copy of her first book The Cipher. I wish more horror was like this, where the "horror" is used in some way to progress a larger narrative. Part of what made it work has to be how relatable the entire scenario is, we could all just as easily take a fall and see devils in the shadows. Maybe it's the unique appeal of internal horror, the "it's coming from inside the house" type of dread that really made this click for me. Another thought I kept having was how nice it would have been if this were given an illustrated edition, A big part of this book is Austen's art and I would love to see a rendition of the amazing visual descriptions that litter this thing. All in all, I am glad that dipping my toe back into the genre turned out so spectacular.

TL;DR: Imagine getting sick and being told that the way you are is the way you're going to be forever. That's the most horrible thing of all.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

FAWK!
Koja does mental illness combined with supernatural elements so WELL. She has such a way with words, that it envelops you within its raw element of frantic terror. Her world is a completely different realm from all the other horror authors I have ever experienced. Her words are like liquid fire that curl inside your brain and live there, forever on the verge of creeping back into your life and tormenting you with memories of complete terror. The human brain is such a delicate thing, one must take good care of your brain meats.
Everyone who is a fan of horror and or mental illness should pick up this book and dive right in. Prepare for a quick decent into a downspiral of horror, pain and confusion. Not for the light hearted.
I read Skin, The Cypher, Strange Angels and Bad Brains was my last book of hers before she ventured into the young adult genre. I am so happy I took the time to read her novels, there is no other author like her out there. I wish, with all my heart, that she would revisit this twisted part of her brain again!!!!!

[Konstantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dell Abyss 15/43

fuck, I knew this was gonna be a good time but it’s rivaling The Cipher in quality for me.

A fair warning though, I do think people who felt The Cipher to be a little janky with the prose will hate Bad Brains since the prose and narrative becomes increasingly more frantic and uneven, though that’s certainly a positive for me.

i think this one resonates a bit more due to the central theme of the horror revolving around the protagonists art, the filthy and grungy road trip, all the grotesqueness amplified. Koja’s style improves for me on this one, lots of great and poetic lines that tend to flow more smoothly than her first novel. once it grabs ahold of you it becomes a total claustrophobic facemelter, absolutely wild.

[Arin · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the premise to this was intriguing, my interest was drowned in all of the excess words. I realize the book is about a brain damaged guy, but the constant rambling thoughts and switching from one reality to a non-reality all of which circled around what seemed non-key points in the story... I skimmed most of the middle of the book and then read the ending, which I didn't think was worth the time skimming the middle two hundred pages.

[Zeus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Cipher. This was slower paced, not as focused, and Austen's weird reluctance to see a psychiatrist really frustrated me. That said, the hallucinatory sequences were excellent - - there seemed to be more of them than Cipher--I never knew where the story was going, and nobody, nobody writes chaos like Kathe Koja.

[Brandon S · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal meditation on creativity and human connectivity. If we allow everything else we know to suffer in order to create, we can easily lose ourselves in the realization of whst that made us lose. We can spend the rest of our days trying to rekindle our relationships and our ability to be creative simultaneously. This taps into my deepest fears.

[Dustin Reade · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly don't know what to think about this one. It was weird and took me a long time to finish. The writing style worked, but also didn't work, for me. It was a slow read that was at time incomprehensible. It was interesting. It is/isn't a horror novel.

I think I really liked it.

[Signor Mambrino]

I wanted to like this one as much as I liked The Cipher, but I can't pretend it was as good. Well written for sure, but I didn't find it super exciting.
Do yourself a favour and don't read the blurb on the back of the book before finishing it.