Good Dogs by Brian Asman

 

Good Dogs by Brian Asman

302 pages, Paperback

Published October, 2024 by Blackstone Publishing, Inc.

 

Podcast interview coming...

San Diego HWA Represent!!!!

 

It is hard for me to think of this as being the first novel for Brian Asman. I suppose you could say this is the first proper novel, published with an established publisher, but Asman has been publishing for a few years, but those have been novellas published in a DIY punk style have even produced a viral book release.  I mean with a title like “Man, Fuck this House.” Asman already has a signature release. The novellas range from funny to weird and the last Our Black Hearts Beat as One could be argued is a short novel, or would have been considered a novel in the past.  Truth is I think of it as a novel. Neat novel.

 

All that stuff aside I think of Brian as someone more of a vet than a normal debut author. He has done an amazing job marketing himself and his books long before this “debut” novel. Good Dogs is a modern novel that fits into the traditional werewolf genre, it has some humor Asman has built a rep for but it is a more straightforward horror novel than I was expecting. Maybe that has something to do with the elevator pitch which sounds funny on the surface. Sure there are funny moments but most serious novels still have a laugh or two.

 

Before I get into the story and the really good elements, let's just say that Good Dogs is about found family, identity, and the things that make us who we are. It has a high-concept horror story but mixed in a charming character study. Brian Asman is a one-of-a-kind blend of punk upbringing, MFA training, and a lifetime of genre books and movie consumption that makes a novel that is one of a kind. The best thing about this novel is that it is the unique product of a one-of-a-kind author.

 

There is a full cast of characters but the bulk of the story is focused on Delia a middle-aged werewolf living in San Diego. She has become an unofficial den mother to a found family of lycanthropes. They have a system for dealing with ‘the change’ the period of the full moon when they lose control and become wolves. They believe they are doing it safely until the sun comes up after a night of change and a severed leg is sitting in their yard.

 

“Question after question buzz through Delia's head. Where did the leg come from? Who did that leg come from? Where is the rest of them?

Did I do that?”

 

Hirsh from their crew has a solution, he has been thinking about this and bought Talbot a ghost town closer to central California up in the mountains. The idea spend the full moon up there wolfing out. The problem is once they get there they are the ones in danger. 

 

Before I break it down, here are my non-spoiler feelings-- that this is a special book and a great example of Brian Asman bringing a unique voice to horror. I think it is his best work and I think monster and slasher fans will enjoy this. A must-read for modern horror fans looking for a unique voice. Also I think San Diego horror readers should read local. 

 

Spoilers...

 

I know Brian pitches this as a slasher but the deep spoiler is that this slasher has supernatural reasons for existing and hunting wolves. I mean there are supernatural slashers for sure, but I wondered after I read the cool twist if this is more of two monsters facing off.  It also made me think of The Howling - the excellent movie and not the thin barely novel, that really is terrible. The movie has an excellent Serial killer played by future Star Trek Actor Robert Picardo. The film is about a news anchor played by Dee Wallace who, following a brutal encounter with a serial killer has the bad luck of going to a resort inhabited by werewolves.  Good Dogs feels like Brian watched that film and said, almost a cool story I can take a seed and grow a very different plant from it. That is how I Am Legend started, when Matheson watched Dracula and said to himself "if one is scary..."

 

There are cool moments and werewolf details throughout...

 

“Delia sniffed the air, turning in a wide circle. The mountains looked familiar, maybe she'd seen them from the road, but they weren't much use in orienting herself. The Vegas end of her night- self’s urine lingered in the air, however just enough of the wolf stayed with her during the days of the change that she had nose enough to follow the scent. Doing so was odd, like a musician fumbling through a song they'd heard once but couldn't quite recall, but it was her only option.”

 

Some of my favorite moments were when Delia and the crew were just experiencing the change. Asman creates some fun unique twists on werewolf lore.

 

There is also plenty of excellent prose that helps build the creepy vibe. “The sound was in the dream and the shadow was real. Or the shadow was real and the sound was in the dream, or both belonged in the sleeping world or The Walking one or sprung into being in both simultaneously as unrelated echoes. Either way, Amelia woke in a panic, every nerve on edge, heart beating out of her chest, even though for once her dreams hadn't been about bonds clenched tight around her wrist while the curtains over her bedroom windows caught flame. She sat up straight looking around for what troubled her.”

 

So when the final reveal happens we learn that the slasher is a supernatural creature named Mama Bear. The reveal grew on me over time as I sat with it. I love some of the details about Mama Bear.

 

“If she had a mind capable of nuance, she might have noticed that the whole 4 only the slightest scent of the creatures Esther had encountered the night before, and she smelt a good deal more of man but the nuance was lost on Mamma bear, as it likely would have been lost on Esther, had she been present,

What she sought was here, perhaps miles away from McKauver claim in the town of Talbot itself, a filthy readout chosen for his proximity to a mountain stream and its distance from civilization.

Mama bear dropped to all fours and crawled into the hole.”

 

Mama Bear is a force of nature slasher, driven by a chemical-level need to hunt wolves as revenge, this story is set up with excellent flashbacks that I suspect some readers will complain about. They are wrong, they add a richness and lore that expands the scope of the novel. Slasher hunting Werewolves is an elevator pitch but Mama Bear deepens the novel in ways that are surprising and welcome for this reader.

 

Good Dogs is a great debut or sophomore. I think it is fun and a fun entry to the growing catalog of San Diego horror writers' novels. This is a deeper and more exciting horror novel than I was expecting and I was looking forward to it. Well done my man.

Book Review: The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

 

 The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published January, 1974 by Popular Library

Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel (1974), 

Nebula Award Nominee for Novel (1973), 

Locus Award Nominee for Best SF Novel (1974)

I knew this was a weird science fiction classic, and that it was considered one of the best time travel novels ever written. Somewhere along the way someone suggested to me that it was best read in one sitting. So, I saved this short novel for a train trip to LA. Where Gerrold is from, where the novel starts. I read it all in one sitting on my way to the very educational Speculative Fiction Through Media conference in LA.

Let's get this right out of the way. I complain all the time about first-person narrative. I generally don’t like it because authors often cheat. The novel that is supposed to be told by the narrator starts to read like a novel, has descriptions and flourishes that are unnatural or goes outside the POV and it takes me out of the book. Reminds me there is an author making bad choices. It is the same reason I don’t like found footage movies that always cheat, like cameras accidently left rolling in rooms where a personal conversation is being held.  Most first-person novels would be better if they were in third person. Just my opinion. Most authors can’t help themselves and cheat and write in ways that take me out of the natural narration. (Note: there is an argument that the whole book is actually second person, but alas)

I do enjoy when a novel is in first person for the right reasons that make story sense. TMWFH is a narrative told in first person, and it has to be. I have always used Delores Calirborne as an example of this style done right. It is told in the form of an interrogation interview, and Stephen King never cheats, it is written just as that character would have spoke. I would also add Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around the House and now this novel that fits as first person that never cheats.

TMWFH never ever cheats, and while I would say some aspects of the end are not in the least bit surprising, seeing it coming doesn’t take away from the power. There are plenty of mind-bending twists along the way. If you can read this on a long flight or a long train trip as I did you will be rewarded with a better experience. I think this is a masterpiece so if you trust me, well here is your spoiler warning as I want to break down this novel.

Reading all at once makes it more of a singular experience and because of the twists of the story it works even better that way flowing as a time travel cosmic space-time fever dream. The story of college student Daniel Eakins who has never wanted for anything because his rich Uncle Jim always gave him money. When his Uncle dies he tells him he is worth millions of dollars when Jim is gone there is no money just a box with a belt. 

The belt you see is a time machine, a time belt.  Once Daniel has the time belt he begins looping through time. “I staggered and straightened. I had forgotten about that. The instructions had warned that there would be a slight shock every time I jumped. It had something to do with forcing the air out of the space you were materializing in. It wasn't bad though I just hadn't been expecting it. It was like scuffing your shoes on a rug and then touching metal, that kind of shock, but all over your whole body at once.”

 

First, he just goes one day into the future, makes a few bets and hangs out with himself. As the time travel escalates so does the novel. “This done, the new one, the one who had given me the newspaper - where had he come from? The future obviously, but which future? His world was one that no longer existed - no, never would exist. We were leaving the races without taking the track for a million and a half dollars.”

In many ways this novel is a thought experiment seen through the eyes of a character who not only travels through time but this story is an early experimentation with the ideas of many worlds theories.  “Every change you make is cumulative; It goes on top of every other change you've made, and every change you add later will go on top of that. You can go back in time and talk yourself out of winning a million and a half dollars, but the resultant world is not the one where you didn't win a million and a half dollars; it's a world where you talked yourself out of it. See the difference?”

It gets weird, Daniel eventually is creating many universes with his travels and ends up at poker games made up of multiple versions of himself,  and hanging by the pool at retreats in a giant mansion he owns populated by a dozens of various versions of himself at different ages and experiences. Early in his time travel experience Daniel feels isolated as the only person who can understand his experience, that is why the many versions of himself flock together and eventually that need for companionship takes the novel into its weirdest moments, yes it gets weirder.

Daniel enters into a sexual relationship with the only person who understands him, a person he wants to share pleasure with. Is love or lust but certain versions of Daniel start to feel love and attraction for other versions of himself. That is the point where the novel makes you blink and think to yourself. Are we really doing this David Gerrold?

He does after thousands of trips to various universes to find Diane, she is him, but born a woman, she also has a timebelt, her universe is not that different, eventually we learn that Daniel and Diane have to travel with the time belt and try multiple time to make sure she is born and sent into a past where she can find him. This novel is cycles upon cycles as any story freed from the straight line we experience of time.  Daniel wanting to manipulate the time stream to change the child from being girl to boy leads to some scary moments.

Daniel also sees history; a 2003 edition got meta by changing part of this scene to include the fall of the world trade center towers despite still starting in 1975.

“I've been to the year 2001. I've been to the moon. I've walked its surface in a flimsy spacesuit and held its dust in my hands. I've seen the earth rise above the Lunar Apennines.

I visited Tranquility Base in flashing back to the past I watched the eagle land I saw Neil Armstrong come ashore. And more I've been to Mars. I've been to the great hotels that orbit Jupiter, and I've seen the rings of Saturn.

 I've time skimmed from the far past to the far future.

I have seen creation.

And I have seen entropy period from great bang to great saying the existence of the earth is less than a blank; The death of the sun by Nova almost unnoticeable.

I've seen the future of mankind”

While some of these grand statements about history are cool they are not the point. It just an expression of how long and how much Daniel has been traveling, it is flavor for the story. One of my favorite moments of this type…

“Today president Robert F Kennedy announced that in response to recent discoveries, the United states is initiating a high priority research program to investigate the possibilities of travel through time.”

So in order to protect my one man monopoly, I had to go back and unkill SirHan SirHan.”

I have no idea if Philip K. Dick read this novel, it seems up his alley. Another scene that involved these fantastic time trips reminded me of a novel Philip K. Dick outlined in 1980 but never ended up writing.  “Once I created a world where Jesus Christ never existed. He went out into the desert to fast and he never came back. The 20th century I returned to was different.

Alien.

The languages were different, the clothing styles, the maps, everything. The cities were smaller; The buildings were shorter and the streets were narrower there were fewer cars and they seemed ugly and inefficient.

I could have been on another planet. The culture was incomprehensible.”

An average time travel story would be about these trips, but it is not the experiment David Gerrold is interested in. 

The experiment is 99% of the novel is populated by Daniel, every character except the financial advisor early in the book is one of the versions of Daniel, and even when alternate versions go by Diane or Don, they all spring from the original Daniel. Now astute SF readers might think the origin of this story sounds similar to the Heinlein classic story “All Ye Zombies” made even more famous by the movie Predestination starring Ethan Hawke. Sure they are spins on predestination and paradoxes, both are great but I have to go with Gerrold doing the superior take. It might be similar to the horror scene debating The Stand vs. Swan Song.

It is not shocking, anyone paying close attention to the details will suspect from early on that Daniel’s Uncle Jim is his already self, that he infact is his own father, and his mother is an alternate version of himself. They he had returned to the 1950s to raise himself and make sure he gets the Timebelt.

“I am the baseline.”

I am the Danny from which all other Denny's will spring.

I am a circle, complete unto itself. I have brought life into this world, and that life is me.

And from this circle will spring an infinite number of tangents. All other dannies who have ever been and will ever be.”

The Man Who Folded Himself is a masterpiece of time travel fiction, I am not sure if Gerrold who is Sci-fi realist would consider this surreal, bizarro or abstract. It is a masterpiece, an interlocking tale of multiple universes. It is a must read novel. It lost the 1974 Hugo award to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama a book I don’t think deserves the big prize. I think giving the Hugo award to an experimental time loop novel with one character who is every single person in a novel and is both his father and mother might be too much for the voters at the time. I think it is masterpiece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: American Rapture by CJ Leede

 

 American Rapture by CJ Leede 

 384 pages, Hardcover
Published October, 2024 by Tor Nightfire

Full Podcast interview coming in November...

I have an unfair relationship with CJ Leede’s first novel Mave Fly. It was a massive success, and I saw plenty of excitement about it. Before I read it, I was selling books at the San Diego Book Festival and my fellow tabling authors were Chad Stroup (Secrets of the Weird) and Brian Asman (Good Dogs). They talked about Mave Fly for a solid twenty minutes singing its praises. They hyped it so much, and I respect their opinions that I think the novel could not possibly meet the hype. I might have been unfair to that book, I thought it was good but didn’t love it as much as my friends. You should probably trust them.

That said, American Rapture is right up my alley, in the weird apocalypse subgenre.  Any person following my reviews should know that is my absolute favorite. This novel appears to be a 300-page response to the inherent sexual repression issues that Catholics grow up with. As such the lust pandemic here is more social science fiction than this concept might suggest. You might think you are getting an exploitive violent fest, and there are intense moments for sure.  This is a hard read, brutal at times with as many trigger warnings as the most hardcore of horror novels.

To an outsider who is not Catholic and has not had direct interaction with the religion - the church has always seemed to have issues. The repression that children feel is one aspect, the sex abuse of the priests is another. This novel appears to be an angry reaction to that Catholic upbringing. I love novels that feel like the author has a rage inside they need to get out.

Sophie is our POV character, as always with first-person perspective I have to point out that it is not my favorite tool for narrative construction. That said, I quickly forgot about it as I got involved with the events of this weird apocalyptic tale. There are several characters like the young police officer Maro, a young friend named Ben, and very importantly the dog Barghest. Both Maro and Barghest take on the role of Sophie’s protector, but without spoiling the characters unspool in the story with interesting complications.

 This take on a subgenre with a lust plague makes American Rapture a slightly more frightening version of the 28 Days Later rage virus that includes a sexual component. An interesting component of the political subtext in this novel is the constant threat of sexual violence and fear creates for the reader that seemed to be a statement the feeling being in a hypersexualized rape culture. This is a message of great value for the men reading this story who have never experienced this and need something like this to contextualize what rape culture is.

The novel is about the sexual repression that many Catholics feel exploding into the wider culture.  This to me is a powerful hinge of the novel, but also a reason for those serious trigger warnings I already mentioned.

Forget about those heavy issues for a moment. The characters in this novel are also a strong aspect of the overall piece. Sophie as our narrator comes of age in the events of the novel. She starts off sheltered, hidden from experiences, deeply concerned for her brother Nick who has recently come out as gay. The brother is mostly off-screen, but his presence is felt throughout.  Maro is still a young man, but old enough to make his relationship with Sophie uncomfortable for readers. Very interesting. Sophie and the reader essentially have to suspect everyone as the whole thing spreads across the country…

“I am out the front door I don't feel my legs. They don't feel anything. My head is spinning, and nausea threatens to overwhelm me. They are possessed, they have to be it wasn't them possession would be preferable, anything would be to … that.”

“It doesn't kill everyone, does it?"

I feel desperation in my voice. He must hear it too, see it on my face. It gives me the most terrible look of all. Pity.

“I'm sorry, kid. I don't know About your family, or … it's…” he clears his throat and takes a deep breath “What we know is if they get to the comma you know, sexual stage ellipse they die. People aren't surviving. It's why there's a quarantine, I mean do you know how much it takes for the government to step in like they're doing? And this fast? This is massive.”

The chapter 'infection' is about her parents being infected and attacking her and it is a disturbing chapter, especially in the context of the Catholic nature of the main character. This moment of horror and tension only works because of the character work throughout.  That said CJ Leede did great with the action details…

“Try to push up onto 1 elbow, but it too slides out from under me. The same substance I slipped in. I've fallen in something wet and sticky. Globs of it. On one of my legs, under my arm, seeping into wet my side through my shirt. The room smells heavily of chlorine and a little of human waste. Bile rises in my throat, and I will myself to breathe. Probably soap. It's just soap. I press myself up with one hand and feel the substance there as well vicious, that tangy acidic smell.”

I got the feeling this was a work long in process. But there are smart twists inspired by the events we all went through in the pandemic.

“St. Michael’s crusaders,” Helen says.

Headache subsiding, the world still spins by. We’ve been driving for only five or ten minutes, the smoke just starting to lesson;

“The Reverend Ansel people?” Ben asks

“Yeah.”

“What are they doing? Why do they look like that?”

“It’s like I said before. They’re burning all the vax centers down. Don’t want anyone impeding God’s work to rid the world of sinners.”

American Rapture is a fantastic sophomore effort, one that I personally enjoyed a lot more than Leede’s debut. You’ll hear that this novel is not as transgressive as Mave Fly, but that is not true. It is more subtext, but this novel is a smart live wire of political speculative horror. I am all about it.

Book Review: Skinship by James Reich

 

Skinship by James Reich

192 pages, Paperback

Published by Anti-Oedipus Press

 Expected publication December 15, 2024

 

Some books and authors challenge me to write about without using hyperbole. James Reich is an author who I respect both personally and professionally. As a reader I have yet to read a novel by JR that didn’t impress me, honestly, they have blown me away. I worry that I will come off sounding like his mother telling you how fantastic he is.  I mean every word and it is not spoken lightly. 

James Reich is an author who defies most standard genre conventions. While he doesn’t have the literary reputation of Brian Evenson or Margaret Atwood, James Reich is writing some of the best Science Fiction in the underground indie movement. Skinship is a classic generation ship well written enough to hook those snobs who think they are above genre if they give it a chance. 

 I am beyond excited that James Reich has entered into the realm of writing a Generation Ship novel, a staple subgenre of the canon. From Heinlein’s Universe in the 40s to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora in this century there are many classic examples. It is still a modern staple even getting mainstream saccharine movies like Passengers. In recent novels, the approaches have been diverse. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora (which I consider to be a masterpiece) takes the hard science approach and River Solomon’s Unkindness of Ghosts is a surreal metaphorical fantasy. Skinship is about halfway between those two modern styles in that it borders on surrealism but doesn’t go fully into metaphor. The length of the novel and ideas seem to fit thematically with one of my other favorite 21^st-century generation ship novels The Freezeframe Revolution by Peter Watts.

Reich doing this is nothing new to me. In 2019 Reich wrote a similar work of genius with the underrated “The Song My Enemies Sing.” challenged the entire genre of Science Fiction and the many modern realistic depictions of Mars by setting his novel on the red plant preserved in the amber of the science fictional imagination. Creating a novel both modern and retro. In 2017 the short but powerful novel Soft Invasions mixed meta-old timey Hollywood with counterfactual Japanese bombing air raids of California, UFO abductions, and the battle of the Midway. In 140 short pages of elegantly surreal prose James Reich gets wibbley wobbly with space-time and reality and creates a one-of-a-kind reading experience. It is perfect for anyone looking for something that gets on the level of weird.

Now Skinship packs an epic journey into 188 pages, the atmosphere of the novel feels a bit like the 70s Silent Running if it had been re-written and directed by a young well funded David Cronenberg. The point of view character is Applewhite the First Navigator, who is several generations into being engineered to replace his clones and pilot the ship. The Skinship left the dying long ago and the novel opens as they have reached a crossroads. Two planets are in reach and the factions are in conflict. If that is enough to sell you on this book which is still in the pre-order phase you can avoid spoilers in the rest of this review and come back if you want to go in totally cold.

Let's get into this book…

The book opens with subtle but powerful world-building for both the ship and the dying Earth that highlights the strength of Reich’s prose.

“Now, the tommy studied the skinship hanging above it. This was the last vessel that would leave the hyperstation that cast its shadow on the dead planet. Entangled and the conspiracy of machinery that attended it, an Aurora of blue light shifted along the skin ship's massive tubular hull, suffusing the dermis with a strange energy. Calmly, the tommy observed the swarms of robots with their welders and sealants. The vessel was already miles long, a leviathan suspended in space. Whether the skinship’s dominant form was organic or mechanical, but Tommy could not have said.”

The skinship is technological sure, and it is also biological throughout the novel the nature of the is revealed and hinted at. The ship is a genetically living ark, giving the ship itself a gooey body horror feeling. The ship is often a character in the generation ship tale, but often through AI pilots but there is a subtle subtext here of the ship being soft and as fragile as skin. The novel hints at this on the first page, but it doesn’t knock you over the head.

As for the earth while the tommy is still at the dockland they look from the ship to earth and the contrast is beautifully expressed.

“On earth, great dunes of ash shrugged towards stiff oceans, glaciers of acid foregathered, glittering as they wiped the cities from the surface of the world. London dissolved. Berlin perished. Sydney earned. Abjua drowned. Poison washed over the tundra. It wove through red forests, sinister and final. The oceans were possessed by slicks of noxious algae clinging to the gyres of plastic, forming artificial islands of trash. Staring down through the mesh of the gantry between its feet the tommy watched the sublime and red relentless white curved of accretion and erosion, a deathly brine overcoming the final thin green tint of the land. Some of the dying must have been watching the sky and the hulk of dockland, black against the sun, or illuminated in the night.”

The interior of the ship lives in a zone of classical SF imagination with autotrams and the like. The ship got bigger as the journey continued with civilization and a style.

“The printers had fashioned the interior, and now it was a series of nostalgic districts, vertebrae along the spine where the railways of the autotrams ran. There was a concourse beneath the navigation bridge that was like an airport tournament terminal with boutiques and restaurants. There were more like this throughout the ship.”

 

Life on the Skinship is populated by a growing culture as you would expect. We see this through the eyes of many interesting characters. The Archivist, and the First Navigator play traditional roles, but they are effectively written.  Applewhite the first navigator is like a classic PKD character born without a traditional relationship to reality or understanding for his creation. Sure Applewhite is the First Navigator, he pilots the ship like many Applewhites printed before him. As he is born into the job There is a conspiracy to kill and replace him.

“You understand,” he had said, crouching beside her, “that all of this will come to nothing if Applewhite remains First Navigator? You heard the rumors that he's hysteric, a neurotic, I'm sure.”

They believe they are saving the ship and want to take it to a planet named Snapdragon, while Applewhite maintains the original plan to go to the planet Wormwood. part of the deal when the three skinships left the passenagers were promised to be reconstituted on a new world, saved like biological data in the skinship. The conflict of course threatens all of it.

“The Skinships did not abduct. They were sanctuaries, made by humanity and its automatons, for humanity. Now she surrendered to the violence of space, like plain dead in a river current, drifting heavy with pollen and dreams under a bright sun, the heat on her face the sky blue and clean..”

The role the generation ship novel plays in the genre is to create micro-cultures that are divorced from the clear destruction we are heading toward. There is almost never a happy ending or a perfect new planet we call home. James Reich is focused on the traumatic damage this dying world left on the people clinging to an island of biology in the vast lifelessness of space. This is highlighted in the 20^th-century design of the interior of the ship.

“The skinship had its roots, as it were, or its cellular origins in the greatest and hardest of all centuries. If -- as the dermis moved out from the dockland, extending into space towards the destination -- it had taken the 20th century with it, it had done so because Monamy had accepted that the 20th century had been the last century not overwhelmed with helplessness and mediocrity. This he shared with the printers. Ohh, yes, he recalled it had been terrible, but it had been the last century of beauty, the last where there had been hope of avoiding environmental collapse, in the last century of art and nature.”

I found this powerful. If this were a film I would say they designed the interior this way to save money on designing an alien environment.  But Reich has the unlimited budget of his imagination and still he turned the 20^th century design into a powerfully expressed message. I don’t know if that is the mission statement of the novel, but it could serve as one. The printers detached from any natural ecology represent an artificial future.

“Smiling contentedly, Katazome envisioned Snapdragon as a planet overgrown with white plastic, the inhabitants of the skin ship drowning, reaching from the wax-like figurines from Dante, trapped in the apocalypse of artifice.”

Skinship is the best new novel, I read this year. It is a deep ecological novel that combines genuine body horror with beautifully written prose. A story that mines the trauma everyone with open eyes should feel when facing a warming dying ecosystem. It deserves a place in the great canon of Generation novels. Pre-order Skinship now.