That’s when we start missing the action and instead focus on a character that can’t make up his mind on what to do. It’s all great stuff until Nicholas decides to lock himself up in the room with the Funhole. Obviously, these conflicting opinions cause a rift between an already shaky/angry relationship. Nicholas is worried that the hole is dangerous and Nakota believes this hole is the key to something amazing and different. He and his girlfriend Nakota become obsessed with the hole, though for different reasons. I get why this is the case, we are focused on Nicholas, who’s apartment building happens to have the Funhole and early on gets a matching hole in his hand. This is a bit frustrating, considering the first half of the book puts us right in the middle of the action. There’s a lot going on but even more happens off the page and only gets relayed to us through a storage room door. It’s a bit hard to describe this one because of what does and doesn’t happen. Kathy Koja comes out of the gate swinging with this weird, angry, grungy story that is a bit more style than substance. This unclean feeling will stick with you as you witness a wannabe poet, his crazy girlfriend, and their respective groupies grow more and more obsessed with The Funhole, a mysterious black hole in a storage closet. Not totally in the way you might be thinking…though that is true too…but more in the way that everything in The Cipher is covered in a layer of grime and slime. I just wish Nicholas would have done laundry once in a while. I'm always up for a good horror story and this one does deliver. We follow the moral decay of both Nicholas and Nakota as they become more and more enthralled with the Funhole. The premise is good and the fact that I felt grimy after each reading session speaks to the author's descriptive ability. The two main characters being the worst.Īside from that, the book did suck me in. All of the characters, with the exception of two minor characters, are unlikable. We are treated to Nicholas' bodily functions, his less than hygienic lifestyle and his often wandering thoughts. I find them distracting and often confusing.
I don't generally like first-person narratives. Just what is the Funhole? That's what Nicholas and Nakota and their soon-to-be troop of followers attempt to find out. They dub it the Funhole and their fascination with it and how it takes over their lives leads us along. Told from alcoholic Nicholas' stream of conscious, the story tells of how he and sometime lover, most times frenemy, Nakota find a supernatural hole in a storage closet. I feel the need of a shower after reading the book which says a lot for how descriptive it is. Their flat is filthy, they don't do laundry and one character constantly drips fluids from an open sore on his hand all over the bedding. These are the most unhygienic characters I've ever encountered. From horrifying hypertext to classic cult vampire novels, here are ten works of fiction that keep us unsettled, uncomfortable, and very, very scared.I feel dirty. They creep their way into your subconscious, make you forget the difference between what you read and what you imagined, and what you imagined and what is real. Still, there’s something to be said for the imagination required of fiction – it’s not so different from the imagination that makes you think you’re being followed, watched, or stalked by an oozing sharp-toothed creature without a face living in the basement of your house. Horror fiction is a genre oft-overlooked for its relative subtlety in the face of film no matter how gory your goriest protagonist sounds, he’s going to seem more horrifying on screen. Check back on our Dark Arts section for a journey to hell and back. Among other things, we've walked the path of darkness via the Hollywood Walk of Death and talked to Don Mancini, the creator of Chucky. In the lead-up to Halloween, Dazed Digital is running a Dark Arts season inspired by our November Dark Arts issue.
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