Fun! I haven't read a graphic novel in a long while, but I LOVE Carmen and have been meaning to get around to this one. Very Junji Ito, very Twin Peaks. The plot was kind of rushed toward the end, but I forgive a lot when my favorite vibes and themes come up. I'm talking feminism, queerness, BIPOC, uncanny horror realness!!
I was hoping this book scratched an itch I've been having lately, which is "I wish I have never read Stephen King so I could read his books all over again for the first time." So I picked up something horror and weird by an author I have heard of but haven't tried yet. I see Kingfisher's name everywhere! When I started this book I was SO PLEASED that I found something that was promising to be awesome. The premise and introduction hit super close to home: a young woman cataloging an oddities museum. I did that exact job, down to having a furred trout mount on the wall. Eerie similarities abound. Hell yes. Then we get this super weird SCP-back-rooms-no-clip haunted alternate dimension and I'm eating it up. Then.... I realize I hate the narrator. I hate the humor. I hate the beats. Then we don't really leave the alternate dimension and when we finally do, the end falls flat on its face. It's stupid, honestly. Sorry! The idea might have worked, but the execution was severely lacking for me. Unbelievable beats, the fudged-in "bad knee" bit that felt like a secondary thought like "I need my character to not be so adroit in this last big scene so let me sprinkle in some knee pain for several chapters leading up to it." I felt like I could see through the writing too much. And I was "told" all the scary bits - I did not feel afraid, the narrator jus told me it was scary holy shit oh holy hell scary! Mostly for me it was the style/voice. I wanted to love it, I did start to love it, and felt betrayed. Probably won't try another Kingfisher novel. Would be two stars, but I'll give it three because I really did enjoy the ideas.
This was super fun, kooky in a Douglas Adams way, but coming from that deeply painful philosophical place of Dick's, the place that talks about purpose, cause and effect, meaning/meaninglessness. Toward the end the brightness of detail eroded into slapstick plot-driven pulp. Can't fault Dick for that, his bread and butter... It's been awhile since I read PKD and I was happy to be back in his mind, at times goofy and hilarious and at times building super cool mythologies, very Lovecraftian, this cthonic deity and ancient "Fog-Things" and buried cathedrals lost to time. There was a bit in there about the "black" verison of self, a Doppelganger atemporally haunting everyone in this story world. Very Twin Peaks. There was even a Cathedral and a Black Cathedral (thinking of the White and Black Lodges), the doubling/Doppelganger maybe a direct inspiration for Lynch, especially in the third season.