Book Review: The Blade Between by Sam J. Miller

 

The Blade Between by Sam J. Miller  

Hardcover, 384 pages 

Published December 2020 by Ecco

Podcast interview recording soon. I will post it here.

I was looking forward to this book since it was being written. One of the cool things about interviewing authors for the various podcasts I do is getting to know them a little better. A few years back I interviewed Sam J. Miller in one of the early interviews I did for our Philip K Dick podcast when I selected Miller’s amazing Cli-fi novel Blackfish City as a Dick-like suggestion on our show. In that interview, he hinted that he was deep into work on a novel about his hometown and whale ghosts.

He didn’t know but I was working on a novel about the ghosts of my small town at the same time. This is a sub-genre of novel that I adore, and since I was in the same headspace it really had my attention.  The most famous example of this sub-genre is Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. In many ways, The Blade Between evokes the same small-town ghosts and horror as Something Wicked but with the modern diversity and progress inherit of an author who is a gay man and a social justice activist.

Yeah, the Blade Between hits some sweet spots for me. I talked with a friend of mine recently who read the same book. He said that he understood that it was a well-written book but the story didn’t do much for him. As I finished and loved the book, I thought a little bit about why we had such a different experience. I realized that he was from a big city, but more importantly, he was still in his home town that he had only briefly left.

Much of the strength of this novel takes place in the weird mental space where a person returns to their home town after a few years to find an alien place. It is a unique feeling, you know how to navigate the streets, but the buildings have changed. Beloved shops and restaurants have changed hands. Townies who never left look aged and different. All the ghosts of your childhood both positive and negative resurface in your mind, something you would never think about in the new city you call home. I am not sure this book will work as well for life long townies.

The Blade Between is a great novel about that common haunting but what was so charming for me was Sam Miller’s unique experience with his hometown translated through his imagination. Fictional versions of people that could have lived in Hudson New York and tortured spirits inspired by the blood of whales from the real-life industry that the upstate river town was built around in real-life. I love how Miller uses the history and setting of Hudson to evoke that home-town haunting feeling I KNOW from returning to Bloomington Indiana, my hometown with different but relatable issues.

Our main point of view character is Ronan a successful photographer, who has been living in the city that might be connected by train but might as well be a million miles apart from the town that raised him. He is going through drama in the city and after taking the train out he finds a different Hudson. While he grew up struggled with homophobia, Hudson is becoming almost a gay getaway. Even the candidate running for Mayor is openly gay. The problem with the rich man running for office is that he is buying up the town trying to remake it.

The parallels at the heart of this novel are really well set up. The hipster city folks taking over and wanting to destroy the town as it was are like living monsters. At the same time the ghosts of the town’s tragic history are woven into the story, and after decades of haunting the town now wants to protect it. Well sorta. At the end of the first act, there is clarity to the purpose of this novel.

 “The City was built on their blood, Katch said “It’s in the foundations of the buildings. The sap of the trees. The oxygen that mosses excrete.”

The battle lines are drawn. Ronan joins the activist resistance, whole at the same time dealing with hauntings of coming home. The boy he always crushed on who likes to experiment with him is now a cop and is married to one of his oldest friends. He also is dealing with his dying father whose wishes he is not sure how to value or make happen.  The freedom the town offers him as an adult he never felt growing up. The tension between comfort and misery is on almost every page.

Part of the activist storyline provides some of the novel’s most effective moments of horror that are what I consider minor spoilers. The novel is at its best when it is personal and heartfelt. The horrors of the hipster invasion of the hometown balanced with the ghosts both positive and negative are the beating heart of this story.

“They made this town theirs. And their magic is powerful. Their wards have held for almost two centuries.”
 
Those are the macro themes but Miller also nails some micro themes as well. This aspect comes from the various aspects of Sam Miller that make this novel a one of a kind thing that could only be the product of this one singular writer. It is concerned with issues like eviction and housing issues, corporate invasions, historical racism, LGBT+ discrimination, class warfare, and most interesting to this long time married old dude how modern technology and social media is used and sometimes weaponize in the Queer community.  Also, the idea of Grindr online fantasies becoming solid and real threats provides one of the best horror suspense beats of 2020.

“I found my old phone. Opened it up, logged into my own Grindr account. And then I clicked on Browse Nearby.

Sure enough, the nearest man to me was Tom Minniq >25 less than Twenty-feet away.”

I don’t say that lightly as 2020 is a year of fantastic horror novels. I also admit as a straight old married dude I wouldn’t have understood how great this moment was if without a co-worker who had explained to me how youngins date these days. Ha-ha.  Glad he did because this moment was incredible.

I am sorry I didn’t get to read The Blade Between in 2020 but it stands up there with all the great horror novels of this last year, Your Mexican Gothic, or The Only Indian. Diverse and powerful horror had a great year and this book is on the list for sure.