A very dark read and yet you have these moments where you really feel for the main character. He’s not a nice guy but consider the situation under which he grew up and how terribly he was treated. Then, just at the time when you’re feeling compassion, the author kicks in something to remind you how bad a person he really is. And when you’re starting to feel a high ick factor from being in his head, you suddenly read something that enhances your sympathy.
Exceptionally well done all the way through, including with the plot. The end was very different than what I expected, and a masterful performance. I will be looking for more novels by this author. A fantastic read!
5 stars!
Feel like more dark fiction with a unique plot? Try He Drinks Poison.

Really enjoyed this one. It’s a rare find; I don’t care for hard science fiction but the classics I have always enjoyed. So having this author pointed out to me was fantastic.
The story is compelling. Lots of ideas about insiders/outsiders according to cultural and social norms and conventions…very timely for today’s world.
5 stars!

I read this novel in one great big semi-hallucinatory gulp. What a ride!
I can’t encapsulate the story better than the description has, so I won’t try. Instead I’ll focus on what was so interesting about this work.
This follows a man who not only seeks an escape route but who finds it. The drudgery of the workaday world, the annoyances of coworkers, and the feeling that there must be something more are going to be familiar to a lot of people in many different professions. It really doesn’t matter if the character is an engineer or a fast-food worker…the point is that he’s wondering if this is all there is to life.
Then answer, as he discovers, is no. Through spiritual quests and moments of complete awareness, his consciousness launches into that eternal now that provides so much enlightenment. At many points in the novel, I had to wonder if this really was a novel. The scenes he describes while he’s visiting that celestial dimension are so vivid that I felt surely they must be based on the author’s real experiences.
This is not a simple read, despite the fact that I jammed through it in a day. It will challenge readers who aren’t prepared to follow the character into that other realm of light and enlightenment. I call the experience semi-hallucinatory for a reason…and that is clearly one of the reasons to read this book. If you’ve quested before or are interested in what it’s like to have these powerful experiences, read this book. The author takes you there…and yet at the end, he deposits you safely back in your seat.
5 stars!
Interested in fiction that delves into the metaphysical? Try Message Stick, winner of two national awards, and He Drinks Poison, short-listed for several national prizes.

This work wasn’t as compelling as the first book of his that I read. Too much dialog that was really lectures on the state of the world at the time. It would have been better if that information had been conveyed by the inner thoughts of some of the characters. However, I made a lot of exceptions as I went along for the standards and expectations applied to works written during this particular time period and so didn’t find those elements off-putting.
Another thing I wasn’t happy with was the attempts at humor. They were simply too dated to be pleasurable. However, again, I made allowances for that and moved on to the next narrative portion when those cropped up.
Overall, an enjoyable read. Not a particularly satisfying ending but well handled in terms of the society in which the author lived and the time period in which this was written. I would recommend this both as a cultural study and a solid story.
4 stars!

Know before you read this that I am a big Gaiman fan but was disappointed with this work.
This was clearly not up to Gaiman’s usual ability. The first 100 pages were filled with so much that should have been trimmed, it was frustrating. After that, the story picked up well enough. I still wasn’t impressed with how he handled the otherworld elements but it was a nice enough read to fill the time.
2.9 stars.

I read this after reading other works by the same author. I was impressed by his other novels moreso than this one.
I will say, however, that this is a very old book. It is usual to feel like you’re reading things you’ve read before when reaching back in time for classics, and I believe that was a lot of what made me enjoy this book less. Likely at the time it was groundbreaking but now it feels shopworn.
Overall, a good read in terms of looking back at where our dystopian and sci-fi ideas were born. Worth the time.
3 stars.

I picked up this book after seeing a New York Times review that was positive. I’m working on a project where a worldwide pandemic (of a very different sort) sweeps the country, and so am interested in how other authors handle the same situation.
Generally I saw flaws in the work that I noted in her earlier Swamplandia! Generally she isn’t going deeply enough with the language or her style. The most critical flaw was that she switches between two very different styles in the same book, as she did in Swamplandia! At times she’s reaching for higher level narrative writing, then she returns fully to a commercial tone. It’s jarring for readers, and it put me off quite a bit.
This is a better book overall than Swamplandia! though. I also found her treatment of the topic interesting; it’s really just a way to look at one woman’s grief over the death of a sister. The novella form might have been well suited for this but it doesn’t feel like it. There feels like a lack of detail in both the epidemic and the woman’s development.
So, a fun enough read but not one I’d want to repeat.
2 stars.