John Hornor Jacobs

It's creepy, cosmic horror, southern gothic, cynical detective story. I absolutely loved it. A great plot with very cool characters. It begins when a brute of a detective tries to track down an R&B artist in a racially charged post-WW II south. It's a great setting.

Until...

That ending. Just ... no. It blew all of the atmosphere and creepiness out of the water and ruined the book.

The villains were straight outta Saturday Morning Cartoon casting. I really hate that. Their motives and personalities are one dimensional. There's nothing about what happened to them to make them so evil or turn them so horribly wrong. They just give overlong speeches about what they will do to humanity once they get them in their evil clutches.

The villainous mother makes a speech about how the world will change when the Elder Gods rise and my first thought during her screed was, "Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!"

Seriously. No one should think that while reading cosmic horror.

Then the author "subverted expectations" with a rape and a death, then reversed it with a semi-literal "hand of god". By the time that was over, I was cringing so hard my face hurt. And everyone lived kinda sorta happy ever after the rapes and deaths. Seriously. WTF.

Then there were the speeches about the death of religion. OMG, staahhhhhp.

If not for the terrible ending, Southern Gods would have been a solid five with a 'top pick'. Such a waste.

… (plus d'informations)

not sorry to have read this but not wowed either. I listened because Ian Lynch recommended it on his podcast on the strength of the second story, the ethnomusicology one. I enjoyed that story a lot more than the first, though I don't rate either all that highly -- they're both overwritten and neither does a *great* job integrating the horror elements with the themes of the rest of the story, especially in the first story the cursed manuscript stuff feels to me like it's been bolted onto the torture / state repression / midcentury US imperialism stuff without much real reason for the two to be joined… (plus d'informations)