The Cipher
Ratings16
Average rating3.4
15
Ratings16
Average rating3.4
When a black hole materializes in the storage room down the hall from his apartment, poet and video store clerk Nicholas allows his curiosity to lead him into the depths of terror
Reviews with the most likes.
She'll never love you
being useful is enough
but won't fill the hole.
Body horror at its best
Are we just the sum of our physicality? Are we more? And is that physical barrier between what is me and the rest of the world breachable? Should it be?
Definitely a good read. But it felt guilty of a lot of the pretentiousness it tried to occasionally put down. Equal parts creepy, horrifying, and funny, but a little too existential for my tastes. A cosmic, body horror that felt a little like a therapy session.
“It's so easy to be nothing. It requires very little thought or afterthought, you can always find people to drink with you, hang out with you, everybody needs a little nothing in their life, right?”
― Kathe Koja, The Cipher
This is Weird Fiction with body horror. The story revolves around some repulsive hipster artists/poets who are drawn to the weird and the ugly. Ex-lovers Nicholas and Nakota discover a supernatural black hole, a “funhole.” Angry, aggressive Nakota is obsessed with the phenomenon. But it all seems to revolve around Nicholas, who is passive, apologetic, and submissive. As he voluntarily spends more time around it, he mutates. The pair draw followers, other failed artists who become fascinated with the hole and see it as some kind of “movement.”
This tale takes a long time to build and does not really satisfy. We spend a lot of time with the characters obsessing over the hole (and a video taken inside the hole) but not really doing anything. The cheap, sad, squalor increases as the story goes on. These frustrated characters make no attempt to be productive or find some type of fulfillment. We see the story from Nicholas' point of view, and though it is hard to like him as such, he does make humorous observations and is sympathetic in his way.
I'm assuming the funhole is supposed to have some deeper meaning, not just be a “monster” in this horror book. Possibly, the hole symbolizes some emptiness in Nicholas and in everyone? Or maybe his destructive, one-sided attachment to Nakota? Or possibly the frustration of all these characters who are searching for some greater meaning in their art but not finding anything. A Picture of Dorian Gray for the Gen-Xer set? These were interesting ideas to think about, and I'm glad to have read the book but something is missing for me, some connection or excitement I would expect from a horror story.
