A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

In this alternate America, demon possession is a rare but known occurrence, though it's debated whether it's possession by actual demons or some form of mental illness. Occasionally, people are possessed for brief periods by archetypal personalities who use their bodies to do specific actions, then vanish, leaving the people with a gap in their memory. For instance, the Artist uses people's bodies to draw pictures – always the same picture, of a farm with a silo. The Captain borrows soldiers to do heroic acts. The Truth is a vigilante who kills liars.

Del was possessed once when he was a young boy by the Hellion, a Dennis the Menace-esque mischievous boy archetype, and once again when he was a teenager. Supposedly he was cured. In fact, the Hellion never left, but was only trapped. Del can feel it rattling the bars of his mind, trying to get out.

In a desperate attempt to get rid of his demon, Del visits various people and organizations that he thinks might help, from a scientific demon convention where he meets Valis, an intellectual demon who possessed Philip K Dick to save his life, to the world's worst hotel with a roadside attraction featuring Shug, a Creature From the Black Lagoon-esque demon.

The demon-related worldbuilding is fascinating and we get a lot of it. In a Daryl Gregory trademark, many of the mysteries have satisfying answers, but those answers tend to raise new questions. I didn't like this book as much as Revelator, but I liked it more than The Devil's Alphabet. I'd put it at a similar level as Afterparty and We Are All Completely Fine. It's very nicely put together and the premise is great, but it doesn't have quite the richness of supporting characters that some of his other books do. Del's road trip companion, a nun, feels more like a cool idea for a character then an actual character.

While the climax is great and I generally liked the way things were resolved, there is an odd missed beat at the ending. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be left ambiguous (if so I have no idea why) or whether I missed something.

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This was Gregory's first book. It's a very good start.

In a near-future Toronto, five people in a pharmaceutical startup, including the married couple Lyda and Mikaela, invent a drug meant to treat schizophrenia. Instead, small doses give you the feeling of being in touch with a loving God. Large doses give you a permanent hallucination of some kind of divine being and the emotional conviction that it's real, even if you logically understand that it's just a hallucination. A very bad night at the startup leaves one founder jailed for murder, one a recluse, Mikaela dead, and her wife Lyda in a mental hospital with a hallucinatory guardian angel.

Years later, the story begins. Lyda, still in the hospital, learns that a new drug that makes you experience God has hit the streets. Horrified at the thought that the drug that killed her wife and ruined her life is getting released into the world, she extracts herself from the hospital and goes on a quest to find its source and stop it.

Lyda is accompanied by a friend she met at the hospital and rescued from a guy who thought he was a hyena (it's a long story) and a sometime lover she also met at the hospital, a former CIA agent who used a drug that helps you see patterns in large masses of information, which made her permanently paranoid. And of course Doctor Gloria, her very own imaginary angel, is always with her. And so begins a madcap quest involving smart drugs, a hit man with a ranch of miniature bison in his living room, criminals and drug dealers of assorted cultures and class levels, ex-gangster priests, and a whole lot of Gods.

This is the sort of book I normally don't like. It's extremely gonzo, and it hits three of my least favorite book tropes: God, psychedelic drugs, and drugs that make you experience God. (These aren't squicks, they're just elements that are very commonly written in a boring and/or facile manner.) However, I loved Gregory's Revelator and really liked We Are All Completely Fine, so I checked it out and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

Gregory's wife is a therapist, and you can tell. Despite the weird events, wacky tone, and near-future setting, there's a baseline of realism about things like how mental hospitals function, what it's like to have a mental illness or be addicted to drugs, and how psychiatric medication works. Even the original intent of the drug and how it ended up makes sense.

Lyda is angry, prickly, and fires off hostile wisecracks to avoid painful emotional entanglements; she's not conventionally likable, but I liked her a lot. Doctor Gloria is a great character, and the question of whether the God drug might be causing or enabling something real ended up being a lot more complex and interesting than I expected. There's also a character who appears late, a girl with imaginary friends who I absolutely loved. The characters all have their own lives and motivations, even the minor ones and the hallucinatory ones, which makes the world feel very lived-in

Content notes: Non-graphic death of miniature bison (BOO, I loved the teeny living room bison), non-graphic allusions to child abuse, violence, torture, SO MANY DRUGS, atheist rants, religious rants, and a multiracial/multi-sexual orientation cast in which basically everyone is a criminal or drug dealer or addict or mentally ill or some combination of the above.

Revelator is brilliant historical folk horror/dark fantasy on two time tracks. In 1933, nine-year-old Stella goes to live with her grandmother Motty and join the generations of Birch women: girls and women who commune with the God in the Mountain, aka Ghostdaddy. In 1948, Stella is a bootlegger who wants nothing to do with the God in the Mountain or the weird cult around it, but gets drawn back in when she hears that a new girl, Sunny, has gone to live with Motty... and Ghostdaddy.

Only women can enter the cave where Ghostdaddy lives and come out alive, but the women have men in their lives - some supportive without really understanding, and some who are in the cult of men who write down and interpret the women's revelations from the God in the Mountain. The cult is essential to the plot and a sharp commentary on how women in religion can be venerated without holding any real power, their words used and twisted and profited off by men.

The bootlegging aspects of the story are convincing and sometimes hilarious. (Stella has trouble finding decent help.) There's a solid cast of compelling, often morally gray, sometimes very likable, always vivid set of characters. But mostly, I loved Stella, the previous and subsequent Birch women, and the God in the Mountain.

The book has a fantastic narrative voice, a very atmospheric setting and culture, and one of the best monsters I've ever encountered.

Content notes: contains complicated, world-specific, well-handled issues of child abuse, cults, and consent. Violence. Period-typical racism and sexism (from characters, not the author). Deaths of pigs, deer, and mice.

The book is extremely well-plotted, with layers of revelations that widen the world and increase your understanding of the characters and their motivations. And that is all I can say about that or anything else without spoilers.

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The audiobook version has an excellent narrator.