Book Review: Lunagrad by Andrew Joron

 

Lunagrad by Andrew Joron

364 pages, Paperback
Expected publication: November 15, 2026 by Anti-Oedipus Press

 

Some books are so good or original that it is hard to believe it even as you read them. Lunagrad is one of those novels that walks a tightrope between science fiction and experimental literature. I found myself pulling many quotes because there were so many pages that I dog-eared. 

Set on a very wintry planet called Hurth, colonized by the Soviet Union far into some alternate future, the founders of this desperate colony barely remember how they got onto this planet. More on that later. More on the surreal end of weird SF, this novel fits into different SF subgenres at different times. 

Colony World novel. Yes. Alternate  History, sorta. Planetary Romance, in a way, but Hurth would not be a fun place to live. Cyberpunk living city…oh yes. All that and more. With lots of excellent prose…  

“Mek Sat locked in his thought cabinet, discontent with the content of his thoughts. He was thinking of five perfect solids. He imagined them hovering as pure ideas; they were weightless above an endless plane, perhaps the snow-swept plains of his ancestors. Yet he detested the simplicity of the cube he could understand it only as a perversely modified spear, overloud in its appearance, a composition for trumpet and drum. In the tetrahedron, now, he detected the trade of rays-.”

The alternate history stuff is merely suggested; the founding of the colony was over lost generations, but we know this was a Soviet program.

“Lunagrad itself may be just such a model. A toy of God Roscosmos.”

That certainly is interesting enough of a story on its own. The operation of this city, which is conscious and thinking, is one thing. But the “workers” of this post Soviet society also create interesting moments in the narrative. 

“Comrades of Umma! Is a machine writing the story of Lunagrad?

The boiler man putting on his cap again: “My boy, you know the official doctrine. The God Roscosmos - the God common to all tribes - first constructed the world, and finally the city as a world within a world, for the benefit of all humanity.”

“Not everyone shares your city mysticism.” Natalia looked back at Vepp, lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “Yes, the city is shaping us. Yes, the yellow-eyed ones can let's not say read can inspect the scroll script without harm. But they merely fly above the surface of the script! They cannot penetrate its depths. A reader is like,” she searched for the proper term, “a defective product. Lula, the city is malfunctioning!”

I love this idea of the city shaping the people. As readers, we understand this as technology, but the residents debate whether it is mysticism. IS the city malfunctioning or adapting to the harsh conditions and the slow changes of the workers of Lunagrad.

The novel has elements of Soviet culture; I loved the idea that the sculptures were built for important people, likely Roscosmos founders lost to time.

“The artisans of Lunagrad would sometimes create sculptures in the shape of human figures, often larger than life, to commemorate important people. These statues would eventually melt down, the way Lunagrad's buildings did; probably they were never very popular anyways, appearing to many people not to be idealizations but travesties of the people they were intended to honor. But while they lasted the statues played into the social life of the city, petitioning the regard of passersby.”

 I really loved it, but if there is any weakness, I feel the length of the novel was more than the concept needed. Don’t get me wrong, I loved most of the excellent prose, but I felt we could have gotten to the point quicker.

Of course, that is a minor thing. I thought this was an excellent experimental cross-genre speculative fiction, exactly the type of novel the Big 5 publishers would not know what to do with. Publishers like AOP, Stalking Horse, or Pink Beam Press help keep weirder SF in print. Lunagrad gets my highest recommendation; fans of SF in a high-end literature mode should not miss this one.

 

 

Book Review: Phantom Limb by Brian Evenson

 

Phantom Limb by Brian Evenson

200 pages, Paperback
Expected publication: October 27, 2026 by Coffee House Press

 

Two Brian Evenson books in a row. Last Days was my introduction to Brian Evenson, who is one of the most reviewed/interviewed authors across my various blogs, columns, and podcasts.  That first experience 17 years ago began when I attended a reading event in Portland at Powell’s, although I had never heard of Brian before that day. I went home with a copy of The Last Days. At the time, we lived near a high school stadium and track; I used to walk laps of the track reading. I have a distinct memory of reading some of the most disturbing moments of Last Days on those summer walks on the track. One of my strongest sense memories with a novel.

What did I say back then? “The story is of a former undercover cop, Kline, who in his last mission had his hand cut off by a “man with a cleaver.” He lives on, but he is lonely and depressed. All that changes when he gets a phone call asking him to go undercover again. The job: investigate the murder of a cult leader; the cult is made up of Christians who take Matthew so literally that they cut off their hands to get closer to God.  

Once inside the cult, we learn that they have taken multiple amputations and have set a hierarchy based on who has the most body parts sacrificed. The world in the Brotherhood of Mutilation is both disgusting and darkly comedic. By the second half, when we meet their rival breakaway group, it gets even more amusing. That is not to say that the book is slapstick; it's a brutal horror bizarro detective story. Evenson's dialogue in this book is perfectly choppy noir with lots of short, snappy comical exchanges. The suspense is handled with a minimalist flair, and the moments of gruesome reveals are plentiful. This is a strange and wonderful piece of horror literature that should not be missed.”

What I didn’t know at the time was that type of dialogue was specific to this noir novel. I assumed that the first time that Brian Evenson, like Elmore Leonard, was always writing this kind of dialogue. As I read the sequel, however, I had almost two decades of reading Evenson to understand better what he was doing. Last Days and Phantom Limb are very noir, but that is not a natural style for Evenson. Chandler and Hammett wrote in that voice naturally; it was their voice. Evenson is a writer of many styles and voices; he does great at it, but this is a very intentional vibe.  “Last time I saw you, you were carrying one head too many. Then you decided maybe you’d leave your spare head under my hospital bed.”

He leaned closer. “You know what it’s like knowing there’s a severed head under your bed?”

“Probably unpleasant,” said Kline.

“That’s it?” said Frank. “No, sorry about the head, Frank?”

“I already apologized for the arm,” said Kline.

“Last conversation we had,” said Frank, “you, me, and the head, you said you wanted to turn yourself in.”

“Change of heart,” said Kline.

That tells me that these two novels, described as literary horror by most, are the blackest of the black comedies, and I am not sure if Evenson considers them to be noir parody, but I do. Don’t get me wrong, they are horror novels for sure. I mean, these books make you cringe and laugh at the same time, and I think satire can be overlooked because it gets so gruesome at moments.

The Phantom Limb is a direct sequel, starting shortly after the first book's events. Kline is in prison, although the full extent of what he did is not known. He killed many in the Brotherhood and burned down their property. He doesn’t regret his actions but prison is not fun.  This is depicted in a scene I just thought was excellently written. “Six months later, he was serving a five-year term. With good behavior, apparently he might be out in three. When he was processed, he was braced to have someone mess with him over his missing arm, but they left him alone. Apparently he was too beat-up, too scarred, to smell of anything but trouble.

The cell they assigned him had a lock that squealed when you turned the key in it and slid it open. He felt it every single time, gouging its way deeper and deeper into his brain.”

He is doing his time when a man shows up who knows who he is.

“You tell them,” said Kline. “Tell them that there’s no Kline here. Only Werner.”

“They already know who you really are,” Orst said.

“Werner,” Kline repeated. “And even if I were this Kline, judging by the looks of you I’d never come back to their goddamn fold.”

“You really want me to tell them that?”

Someone comes for Kline and regrets it. I love this description of solitary confinement. “Orst didn’t rat him out, but he still got two days in solitary. He was, after all, covered in blood. On the second day, in the darkness, just as he was getting used to the people he had killed circling around him, was almost ready to start having meaningful conversations with them, a guard released him, took him back to his cell.”

Kline is of course, dragged back into it. He is hired by the very people he tried to destroy who get him released and he is suddenly back in the strangest of all holy wars between the Brotherhood of Mutilation and the Pauls. That is when the gruesome deaths start up again.

This leads to a great line of noir dialogue.

“The thing I can’t figure out is why every time it’s either them or you it always ends up being them.”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

The religious cult that believes you are closer to god by cutting off body parts seems crazy to us, but Kline has gotten stronger and survived so much after losing part of his arm. Is he tempted?

“The question is not whose hand was it, but whose hand can it be?”

“Whose hand can it be?”

Grida smiled with half her face, spread what remained of her arms. “Whoever desires it,” she said. “Perhaps, great doubter, even you.”

I won’t say why, but Phantom Limb and Glitch Evenson’s fantastic novella from Pink Beam has couple of things in common, including a stunning last page. This novel is fantastic. An amazing sequel to the first insane horror-noir body-horror detective classic. Since that was a fix-up of two novellas, can we call this the Brotherhood of Mutilation trilogy?  Must-reads.

 

Book Review + Podcast coverage: Glitch by Brian Evenson

 

Glitch by Brian Evenson 

86 pages, Paperback

Published August 20th, 2026 by Pink Beam Press (For PKD fest!)

 

Check out my conversation with Brian about Glitch! 

 

 

 

I am on the record about Brian Evenson all over the place. He is one of my favorite living authors, whom I consider to be the very best author of short stories. While Brian gets respect from snooty academics and purveyors of “high class” literature, he is actually one of us. Meaning he is equally respected in science fiction and horror circles.

I was beyond excited when he became one of our guests of honor for the PKD fest, and even more pleasantly surprised when he agreed to write a novella for release at the fest through Pink Beam Press. It might not seem like a surprise now that several big names in genre fiction have added their work to the upcoming Pink Beam slate, but at the time, Pink Beam Press hadn't even started, and Keith Giles and I were still talking about releasing our novellas for the 4th Philip K. Dick Festival. 

Any new book by Brian Evenson is a celebration, but a PKD-influenced novella that pushes the boundaries of reality even more so. My favorite Tor novella, The Warren (the subject of one of the earliest Dickheads interviews), and if you want to get under the hood, I just recorded an interview about Glitch. 

I am going to explain why it rules. I think you should trust me and read it, maybe come back so we can all learn from it.  Written using first, second, and third person at different times, Evenson never cheats; each tense is used for calculated reasons within the narrative.  (This is the point where we are under the hood and yes…spoilers)

Part of the story takes place in a digital cosmos, what we in PKD circles call a “Finite Subjective Reality.” Some of the creepiest moments are when our point-of-view character, who is a digital backup, meets another person who has no face.

“ You're up now,” The absent face said, or something said anyway. I lashed out and struck the absent face and my hand slid right in, as if there was nothing there. Even though my arm was sunk to the elbow, my hand did not appear out of the back of his head.”

 The scene when his hand disappears into the absent face freaked me out. This kind of surreal moment sets the tone for the spongy reality I expect out of the new genre we are trying to push here. Pink Beam fiction, where the author and reader are invited to meet outside reality.

Evenson is a master of finding details that he can go back to more than once to make the reader uncomfortable.  The absent face is one thing, but our digital character is  constantly washing his 

“He was, in a very obstinately human way, still trying to continue washing his hands even as I spun him around. From the back he had seemed normal, human. But from the front it was another story altogether. Where his face should have been, there was nothing but a shimmering hole.”

The idea that time doesn’t mean anything to these alien minds is one of the smartest ways that Evenson finds the creep factor in the AI universe. Glitch as a novella creates discomfort by exploring how a mind created in a body but exiting in a digital realm is a nightmare.

“This lasted forever. For what, anyway, felt to me like forever. It was excruciating and while it was happening I went more than a little insane. For the extent of that eternity, I was paralyzed and not altogether myself—another experience that you have never had and that will forever separate us.”

At this point in the story, regardless of the point of view of the character being digital, I was invested in his feelings. When the narrative briefly enters the “REAL” world, the idea that this memory backup would be started from scratch was a stunner. I didn’t expect to feel dread on behalf of this digital being, but I did.

Digital beings don’t exist in time as we know it. Mere seconds to us could be centuries to these beings who remember every moment they are computing.  Digital Anders is supposed to be nothing more than backed-up memories, but he lives much longer from his point of view; he is as real, more real. He is the Anders that should exist in his mind.

“The first time he grabbed me, back when he hadn’t had a face, I could not break free. Now I was centuries older now, more experienced. I now understood the way this world was constituted to a degree I had not before. And so, I simply tore the man’s arms.”

I think the absent face represents the non-beings that populate this false reality. The symbolism and ideas per page are off the charts; there are more ideas per page in Glitch than in some SF novels three times the length. It builds perfectly to the reversal. I was thinking it was a possibility. 

“You have just been uploaded, that much is true. But while you were being uploaded here, to this impoverished excuse of a world, I was downloading myself along the same route, systematically replacing each sector of your brain as soon as it was uploaded with an equivalent part of my own brain. I have overwritten myself onto your actual brain. In brief, I will be the one occupying the Anders body moving forward. Having been through all I’ve been through, I am certain I will appreciate it more than you ever did. I deserve it more than you. And so I am going to take it. And you will be stuck here.

Forever.”

A powerful ending, similar to the ending of Evenson’s new novel, Phantom Limb it hits with a punch in the last moment. 

I believe in all the Pink Beam novellas, but this is one of the most amazing things I have read this year so far. I personally think you should collect all the Pink Beam novellas but this is one not to miss.