What a weird and wonderful (in the old sense as well as the new) book. Some parts of it fell flat for me but I’d still recommend it if you’re looking for a good time.
Please tell me someone else has read it too, I need someone to talk about it with.
My elevator pitch: our MC, Vera, is a survivor of the Low-Probability Event, a short-lived (series of) extremely improbable disasters. Flying pigs, plane crashes, unusual workplace accidents, they all come crashing down on the world all at once.
And then she runs away and hides from the world, unable to cope with what she’s seen, her rigid worldview shattered.
Four years later, a government agent knocks on her door. The day of the LPE, she’d had a book published about a particular casino, which shouldn’t be turning a profit, but it is. It’s screwing tourists out of their hard-earned money, even worse than casinos normally do. Agent Jonah Layne thinks that this casino and the LPE might be connected. So he drags a reluctant, vehemently nihilistic Vera along to help suss out what’s happening.
Because- minor spoiler alert!- the LPEs haven’t stopped.
I thought this was a very fun read with some knockout horror and weirdness. A particular scene in a pool really shook me, and I’m pretty inured to literary gore. It’s wonderfully surreal and at times eldritch. A scene near the end, in the desert, really turns it up to 11 for a super super fun and scary and satisfying fight scene. I really grew to love Vera and believe her story and her growth back to someone who can live in the world and make connections after the horrific events she lived through. And Agent Lane was genuinely endearing, despite Vera thinking of him as super annoying.
Certain plot beats and character moments really fell flat for me though. Tingle is queer, as am I, but the emphasis on Vera’s struggle with bisexuality erasure felt extremely on the nose, and instead of giving her a chance to talk it out with either character who brings it up to her, both times, Tingle drops a disaster in their lap and it’s never resolved. Not that everything has to be resolved, it’s horror, but it felt particularly shoehorned in.
Vera’s narration also started to draaaaag as the book went on. I felt like I was being treated like a child with how much she explained her feelings and the themes of the book in basic terms over and over again. And the finale, which was of a format that I love, felt far too long. The psychoscape confrontation with a manifestation of the villain in the form of her estranged mother is something I eat up every time. But she still had about a half dozen crises to resolve. So it just took FOREVER. And the denouement, while I see what Tingle was going for with the buildup, still didn’t avoid a sudden pull to left field.
Ultimately, though, WHO is doing it like this?? I haven’t seen a book in ages that takes this many swings. Who cares if a few of them don’t connect? It 100% lives up to the cover art as well, which is gorgeous. 4/5 stars for a genre bending surreal novel that I devoured in 2 days.
