There are two halves of Charlie Duchamp’s brain. One is in a jar stranded on Jupiter’s jungle moon, Io, who just wants to go home to the woman he loves. The other half is still locked in his body, hanging from a wall in Barrowfield Home on Earth’s own moon, host to the eggs of the Moon Spider and filled with a murderous rage.
On Io, deep in the flooded remains of a crashed Cathedral ship, lives a giant centipede called the Bishop, who has taken control of the drowned astronaut-clergy inside. Both Charlies converge here, stalking each other in the haunted ruins, while more Moon Spiders prepare to be born.
CRYPT OF THE MOON SPIDER was one of my biggest surprises of 2024. Not because I have any doubt about Nathan Ballingrud’s talent as a writer, because I think he’s as good as it gets.
More because I have a somewhat wobbly relationship with weird fiction. But even though the book did get deeply strange, it had such a solid emotional core & the story was never difficult for me to follow. I loved it, wholeheartedly.
CATHEDRAL OF THE DROWNED is the second book of THE LUNAR GOTHIC TRILOGY, and it’s even weirder, grosser, and just generally more out there than the first. This is shaping up to be a remarkable trilogy, a story that’s unpredictable, brutal, heartbreaking, and bizarre.
The story shifts its focus more to Charlie Duchamp/Grub and Goodnight Maggie (god what a great character name!), with Veronica um…significantly changed, and looming large.
Only now Charlie is kinda split in half. Cull’s twisted science has left half of Charlie’s brain in a jar stranded on Jupiter, and the other half in his own body on the moon, being filled with eggs by the Moon Spider. So it becomes easier to think of it almost like two distinct characters, Charlie and Grub.
It’s fucked up, is what it is.
It’s so impressive how Ballingrud blends such disparate genres/story elements on the fly here…one moment you’re inexplicably in a submerged cathedral on Jupiter crawling with horrors, the next in the midst of a gang war in 1920’s Brooklyn.
There’s just no rules in these books & it feels so fun as a result. What do you mean there’s poorly-run & super creepy mental health hospital surrounded by a forest on the moon? There just is.
Also you can breathe on the moon. You just can.
Sometimes, because I’m not a writer, I feel pretty helpless to describe what it is about any particular author’s/book’s writing that feels so special. But there’s just something about the way Nathan Ballingrud turns a phrase that will really make you stop & appreciate his skill. This is a deeply imaginative writer, and a really gifted storyteller. I’m such a fan at this point.
THE LUNAR GOTHIC TRILOGY is a fully bonkers sci-fi/horror/pulp fiction mashup with weird spiders and centipedes, but it’s also a story deeply rooted in basic human issues: love, loneliness, belonging. There’s some serious magic in these books and I’m so curious to see how Ballingrud wraps up the trilogy with KINGDOM OF THE CONQUEROR WORM!
Huge thanks to Nightfire for sending this one my way!
Grimdark Dad 