No Gods for Drowning by Hailey Piper
430 pages, Paperback
September 2022, Polis books
First things first I have to apologize to Hailey Piper, a writer I respect tons. I had her on my podcast to talk about her fantastic cosmic horror novella The Worm and His Kings." I am sorry because I am probably not giving this excellent novel the full and undivided attention it deserves. The reality is that I have a book coming out next month and at the same time I am neck deep in the writing of my first Non-fiction book with one and a half chapters to go and it is hard for me to concentrate on anything else. I am going to give this book the proper attention. Normally I would have five quotes pulled out of the book that would highlight the genius at work, and I dogg-earned a few pages for that purpose. I just don’t have my normal bandwidth. Sorry about that.
No Gods for Drowning is a delightfully weird novel that is hard to compare to anything else. In Fact, the closest thing I could think of was the unproduced screenplay(not the TV series) for The Killing on Carnival Row, and even that is a pale comparison to the many deep layers at work here in this novel.
If I was pushed to pin down the genre I know I would end up ending words and end up with something like Dark urban fantasy mystery serial killer mythology disaster horror stuff. I put the book on hold at the library based entirely on the strength of Piper's novella and didn't know anything but the title.
While the first novel I read was modern cosmic horror I kinda assumed that was what we were getting here, based on the title. That was a bad assumption as the novel was incredibly different. Also, if I am being honest Dark Fantasy is not exactly my jam, and if this wasn't an author, I respected I likely would have checked out early. That being said there are authors I will follow for any genre preferred or not. This is only my second Hailey Piper book and I enjoyed this one in a non-preferred genre so that is a sign of the storytelling skills at work.
NGFD takes place in a fantasy city on a mapped-out archipelago, is this another planet? The earth in the far future? All I can do is shrug as Piper doesn't spoon-feed us that information and frankly, we don't need that information. At first, I assumed it was a medieval-like setting, and in part because of the gods the fact that one of the major characters is ritually sacrificing people to raise their gods. The novel is a bit disorientating when detectives show up in old cars and wear hats. At times it feels noir.
So people might be turned off by the confusion this causes but it is also what makes the novel feel original. I like the woozy dizzying feeling that the setting gives this novel. It is one of the strongest elements. The world-building is incredible and most of the details are ones that are blink and you might miss. in all the right ways I was smiling at how odd and one-of-a-kind this novel was.
I really, really enjoyed this novel. Sorry for the short review, This is a big thumbs up for me.
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