The Library at Mount Char in Beyond Reality

May 20, 2016 mark monday rated it really liked it

Shelves: secret-histories, super-private-journal

super fucking fun adventures with some super fucking powered librarians. it all gets very fucking dark; after all, it features the end of the fucking world. (kinda.) what's not to fucking like?

but why all the fucks, mark? this is an all-ages site! come on, man. restrain yourself. for teh children.

okay! this devious, bizarre, pitch-black, evilly sardonic, take-no-prisoners adventure novel is written by Scott Hawkins. it is his first piece of published fiction but it reads like he's been publishi super fucking fun adventures with some super fucking powered librarians. it all gets very fucking dark; after all, it features the end of the fucking world. (kinda.) what's not to fucking like?

but why all the fucks, mark? this is an all-ages site! come on, man. restrain yourself. for teh children.

okay! this devious, bizarre, pitch-black, evilly sardonic, take-no-prisoners adventure novel is written by Scott Hawkins. it is his first piece of published fiction but it reads like he's been publishing novels for years. I could not pull myself away from this book and I read my eyes out til the crack of dawn. crack cocaine for people like me who have no interest in crack cocaine but still want that exciting high. unlike many, my version of crack includes a novel whose first three-quarters are dense with action but whose last quarter is basically a series of melancholy and contemplative conversations between three characters about change, death, ptsd, empathy, and the natural and unnatural cycles of life. plus lots and lots of GOD. gimme!

so here's a fucking story that I've probably already used in another fucking review:

as a lad, I grew up in a household that was just not into the traditional concept of God, or into God at all. my dad was sort of an atheist and my mom was sort of an existentialist (which amounted to basically the same thing, to me at least). like most kids, I rebelled against my parents' rule. I did this by finding God. haha, that really came out of left field for my parents! this included accepting Christ as my personal savior, going to bible study, and a few summers spent at a religious camp. at the end of one such summer, the pastor had a practice of gathering us all together to answer any questions we might have. I had a classic one: "If God truly loves us, why does He allow bad things to happen to us?"

his reply was equally classic: "Imagine a quilt. If you turn it over, all you can see are a mess of colors that make no sense and go nowhere. But the top side is God's side. And there you can see a beautiful pattern. That's God's plan. We don't see its beauty, but it is there, guiding us."

I loved that answer! It made perfect sense to me. I came home excited to challenge my heretical dad and his outlandish lack of faith. I told him my big question and then I smugly recounted the pastor's golden answer.

an approximation of my infernal father's reply: "Well, genius, if God is so good, then why does he only show the shit side to us? Why doesn't he show us that other side and why does he hoard it all to himself? What kind of fucking God does that?"

So I think it's safe to say that Hawkins shares my dad's perspective on God. ...more

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Oct 15, 2018 Christine H rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

This is very different. If pressed, I'd say this is best described as dark fantasy, but it's really hard to sum up. This is a class of fantasy where our mundane, recognizable world gets peeled back in places to reveal something strikingly strange. Reading this, I was reminded strongly of:

The Drawing of the Three
The Bone Clocks
American Elsewhere
and even a smidge of
John Dies at the End

This story was wonderful - suspenseful and poignant, a nesting doll of excellent character studies, and a tale t ...more

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