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Twenty years ago, Kris Pulaski was the lead guitarist of Dürt Würk, a metal band teetering on the brink of breakout. Today she's a beaten-down clerk at Best Western whose guitar is stashed in her closet like a hidden corpse. After a night none of the band members can fully remember, all of their lives went to hell - except for that of Terry Hunt, the lead singer who is now the superstar front man for a sell-out band called Koffin.
After a series of bad-to-worse events during the lead-up to Koffin's farewell tour, Kris realizes that something very strange and bad happened on that night. What exactly was in the contract that broke up the band? Why did Terry bury Troglodyte, the album Kris wrote, and why is he so determined that it stay buried? So she picks up her guitar, puts on her bones (a black leather jacket painted with a spinal column and ribs), and sets out to find out exactly what's going on...
Kris is a fantastic character, a middle-aged woman who loves heavy metal, loved to play the guitar, and is one of the most determined characters I've ever encountered in fiction. The more she gets knocked down, the more she gets back up again. This, she says, is the spirit of heavy metal. I don't like metal, but Kris makes it come alive and feel like something worth fighting for - random umlauts and all.
Troglodyte and its associated mythology, in which Black Iron Mountain is the hole in the center of the world with its soul-crushing machinery and Troglodyte is the chained hero who glimpses something better, is central to the book and crucial to Kris. We get enough of its lyrics and descriptions of the music that it's very convincing as a real album and one which believably would make an impression on people who are into metal. (There's a hilarious running thread in which radio hosts argue over whether the album is actually any good or not.)
There are some weird plotholes and dangling threads, and the climax of the middle is better than the climax at the end. But it's a deeply satisfying, gripping book with a great ending, and Kris Pulaski is an absolutely fantastic character. Carol Monda reads the book with the exact right voice for a middle-aged woman who's seen some shit and is sick of taking it.
Warning for sexual assault, forced institutionalization, suicide, bugs, bats, and gore. And probably other things I've forgotten.
After a series of bad-to-worse events during the lead-up to Koffin's farewell tour, Kris realizes that something very strange and bad happened on that night. What exactly was in the contract that broke up the band? Why did Terry bury Troglodyte, the album Kris wrote, and why is he so determined that it stay buried? So she picks up her guitar, puts on her bones (a black leather jacket painted with a spinal column and ribs), and sets out to find out exactly what's going on...
Kris is a fantastic character, a middle-aged woman who loves heavy metal, loved to play the guitar, and is one of the most determined characters I've ever encountered in fiction. The more she gets knocked down, the more she gets back up again. This, she says, is the spirit of heavy metal. I don't like metal, but Kris makes it come alive and feel like something worth fighting for - random umlauts and all.
Troglodyte and its associated mythology, in which Black Iron Mountain is the hole in the center of the world with its soul-crushing machinery and Troglodyte is the chained hero who glimpses something better, is central to the book and crucial to Kris. We get enough of its lyrics and descriptions of the music that it's very convincing as a real album and one which believably would make an impression on people who are into metal. (There's a hilarious running thread in which radio hosts argue over whether the album is actually any good or not.)
There are some weird plotholes and dangling threads, and the climax of the middle is better than the climax at the end. But it's a deeply satisfying, gripping book with a great ending, and Kris Pulaski is an absolutely fantastic character. Carol Monda reads the book with the exact right voice for a middle-aged woman who's seen some shit and is sick of taking it.
Warning for sexual assault, forced institutionalization, suicide, bugs, bats, and gore. And probably other things I've forgotten.
