I'm
not quite sure what to make of this book. Cosmic horror as a genre
intrigues me because I think the fear of the unknown (and what lurks
beneath) is so deeply entrenched in all human beings that, if done
right, such a work can evoke emotions stronger than any psychological or
gore-based horror novel ever could. That is why I’m so confused about
and disappointed in this book, because at its most basic it had
everything to tell an absolutely terrifying story, but instead it chose
to meander and not say or do anything meaningful with the groundwork it
laid for itself.
All of this is pretty confusing without
mentioning some specifics, so I will try to do so without really
spoiling anything. The two main characters are exiles from a fictional
South American country that has been torn apart by rebellion and the
subsequent rise to power of a military dictatorship. At first I didn’t
understand the author’s decision to invent a such country when there are
so many where such a thing actually happened in real life, but over the
course of the book I came to appreciate the additional layer of
otherworldliness this choice has added to the story. Our protagonist,
Isabel, befriends Rafael, a mysterious poet from her home country, who
eventually leaves his comfortable life in Spain to go home and search
for his lost family, which leaves Isabel in charge of his apartment.
There she discovers a written account of his friend’s former life, and
the strange and more than a little distrubing path that led to his
exile. This is where the horror elements really start to come into play,
not only through the vivid descriptions of torture he has endured at
the hands of his captors, but also through the interwoven story of his
attempts to translate an old manuscript. For some reason his captors are
really interested in this piece of work, in fact they even suggest that
him taking it on was what drew them to him in the first place.
Naturally, Isabel finds the manuscript and begins to work on her own
translation, which is when she is forced to realize that Rafael is not
safe back home and she decides to go and find him.
Sounds pretty
amazing, right? Spooky, mysterious, bone-chilling even, thanks to
Rafael’s memoir (you’ll see what I mean when you read it), this is the
groundwork I was referring to earlier. Everything is in place for a
spectacular conclusion where we finally get our answers for all the
important questions, such as: Who are these people? What do they want
with the manuscript? What IS the manuscript? What cosmic powers are at
play here? Well, we never find out any of that. The ending of this book
is a confusing mess, at least for me. I realize that so far I will be
the only one giving it less than four stars, and I could praise
the writing style and the character of Rafael (not Isabel, who was
pretty bland in my opinion) as reasons why I liked the book overall –
and I did, in a way, because it had beautiful imagery and kept me
interested until the very end. But it had the potential to be so much
more, and while I’m generally not opposed to open endings (sometimes I
even like the whole „decide for yourself what happened after” approach),
there was not even remotely enough material here for me to come up with
anything that makes sense.
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