A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

In a climate change apocalypse near future, an expedition sets out for the Arctic in search of polar bears, which are believed to be extinct but might not be. They find the frozen body of a polar bear cub on the ice, way south of where bears have ever been sighted, and bring it aboard the ship. Weird, creepy events immediately ensue. Is the cub actually alive? Is the ship haunted? Are there weird creatures outside trying to get in?

This sounds good, right? Nothing like Arctic spookiness! I was so excited to see what Catriona Ward would do with that!

It's nothing like her usual style and I suspect that she had very little to do with it. In fact, this audiodrama has the remarkable distinction of making me ragequit TWICE. I ragequit at the first big twist, then decided I wanted to find out what was going to happen and also I was listening while cleaning my kitchen and was nowhere near done with that, then ragequit for good at the second big twist.

The performances are okay at first, but get more and more melodramatic as they go along. The sound effects are very loud and intrusive. This led to a number of unintentionally hilarious scenes that were basically this:

Actor: "He-hello? Helloooo? Is anyone--AGH NO!!!"

Sound effects: GRRRRR! CRUNCH! SNRRRRR! SKREEEEEE!!!

Actor: "AGH! ACK! AHHHH!"

Sound effects: BRRRRRR! CRUNCH! SQUISH! ZZZZZT!

Actor: "AIEEEEE! AUGGGGGHHHH! ARRRRRRGH!"

And so forth.

The frustrating part was that it started out as a very promising Arctic horror-thriller. Then we hit Plot Twist of RAGEQUIT number one.

There are six people on the ship. They have brought aboard a frozen polar bear cub they found, which several of them have dreamed came to life. The captain is becoming convinced his dead husband is on the ship. And the computer, which monitors their vital signs, is detecting SEVEN heartbeats!

What is the most annoying and anticlimactic possible explanation for that?

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If this had been a physical book I'd have thrown it across the room. As it was, I ragequit with half an hour left to go and my kitchen only half-tidied.

The Nox

Rob, a suburban mom with two young daughters, has problems. Oh boy does she have problems. Her husband Irving is abusive, her younger daughter Annie is fragile, and her older daughter Callie is showing signs of being a budding serial killer. When Callie tries to poison Annie, Rob takes Callie on a visit to her childhood home, which was a sort of scientific commune, where she hopes to do... something... to fix her.

The novel has four distinct narratives. One: Rob, in the present. Two: Rob, telling Callie about her own childhood (unsurprisingly weird and horrifying). Three: Callie, in the present. Four: Rob's unpublished novel, which is modeled on old-fashioned boarding school books but the characters have the names of her family and other people in her life, and the events are melodramatic horror.

I love this sort of thing if it's well-done and all ties together, and this is and does. Callie's sections are especially striking. Callie sees ghosts and talks partly in spoken emojis ("Red Face" for angry, "Champagne Glass" for party, etc). She is always accompanied by a ghost puppy that she may or may not have killed herself, and by a girl she calls Pale Callie - "pale" being her word for "dead."

In the present, Rob and Callie are locked in a psychological war, with Rob telling the story of her own life to try to explain things to Callie and also trying to understand Callie, and Callie suspicious of her mother's weird behavior and thinking Rob is planning to kill her. Rob is definitely doing some odd things, like digging a suspiciously grave-like hole in the backyard and throwing meat over a fence.

In the past, Rob and her fraternal twin Jack (both girls) are raised in a sort of family commune in the desert by parents who doing experimental behavior modifications on dogs that have become vicious due to abuse, to make them nonviolent again, via brain surgery and a genetic therapy they call "the click." Rob and Jack are extremely isolated and home-schooled, and don't interact with anyone other than their parents, a man living with them who's kind of a surrogate uncle, and a passel of grad students who make brief stays to help with the experiments. They're not allowed to read non-improving books, and so get obsessed with a boarding school book they find and read in secret.

This is an extremely dark, extremely well-written and well-constructed, and extremely bonkers book. It's hard to classify but contains elements of horror, science fiction, fantasy, Gothic, thriller, and family melodrama. The author calls it Grand Guignol, which should give you an idea of the tone and content. For the most part, it's very well-done and compelling; I gulped it down in a single evening and will seek out more of Ward's books. The central relationships, between Rob and Callie and between Rob and Jack, are heartbreaking in a good way.

But I am not kidding about dark. Let me provide some content warnings.

Content warnings: Serial killer-style small animal murder (off-page). Cruel experiments to modify behavior in dogs (on-page, a major part of the book). Bait worm maggots. Dead cows. Dead dogs. Ghost dogs. [rot13 for spoiler: TUBFG SRGHF]. Getting mauled by dogs. Child abuse. Dead children. Children in danger. Dangerous children. Miscarriage. Drug abuse. Mental illness. Domestic violence. Infidelity. Unfortunate implications about child abuse, mental illness, and fate.

This is another book where most of the discussion has to go under a cut as it has a lot of twists and revelations, most of which made sense, one of which is GREAT, and one of which is TERRIBLE.

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Cue every single comment being "I definitely won't read this book!"