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Revelator (Daryl Gregory)
Stella Wallace met her family's god when she was nine years old. Later, she couldn't figure out why she didn't run when she saw it. It wasn't fear that pinned her to the spot, staring up at it, or even shock. It was something else. Awe, maybe. Wonder so deep it was almost adoration.
Isn't that just a perfect beginning? I decided to try the sample for this one on Kindle and ended up reading the whole thing in about three days. The rest of the book is just as good--evocative and atmospheric without being overwritten, creepy and dark without being depressing. The story is character-driven but very well-plotted, and it's one of only a couple books with alternating "before" and "after" chapters where I'm interested in both the "before" and the "after."
In 1930s Tennessee, Stella is dropped off at her grandmother's mountain cabin and stays there for the next five years, communing with the family god, the Ghostdaddy, and getting more and more tangled in the family cult, led by her Uncle Hendrick. Like her grandmother and mother before her, she acts as the cult's revelator, and Uncle Hendrick records her revelations in The Book of Stella, which she isn't allowed to read. Finally, one particular revelation drives Stella to escape, but after ten years, she gets news of her grandmother's death and her cousin, Sunny, who's set to become the next revelator.
The way the cult's beliefs seem to have grown out of the family's original Primitive Baptist theology rang true for me. (I'm not Baptist, but I was raised Reformed Protestant, which is Primitive Baptist-adjacent, at least when it comes to Calvinism and predestination.) Uncle Hendrick has a quality of religious passion but absolute arrogance/cluelessness, bordering on cruelty, that's pitch-perfect to some of the men I remember from back then. It's not so much that they hate women, but that they believe it's their God-given right to rule over women. In some ways that's almost worse.
Stella is also a wonderful character--in the "after" chapters she's grown up to become a bootlegger!--and her relationship with the Ghostdaddy became an unexpected highlight of the book. For me, the best monsters are scary not because they're evil but because they're alien; they're on a mission of their own, and human rules and morals don't apply. Being loved by that kind of monster is a special class of scary, and Stella and the rest of the women in her family are loved. Even more, they're adored.
Also, this one might have the world's best cover.
Isn't that just a perfect beginning? I decided to try the sample for this one on Kindle and ended up reading the whole thing in about three days. The rest of the book is just as good--evocative and atmospheric without being overwritten, creepy and dark without being depressing. The story is character-driven but very well-plotted, and it's one of only a couple books with alternating "before" and "after" chapters where I'm interested in both the "before" and the "after."
In 1930s Tennessee, Stella is dropped off at her grandmother's mountain cabin and stays there for the next five years, communing with the family god, the Ghostdaddy, and getting more and more tangled in the family cult, led by her Uncle Hendrick. Like her grandmother and mother before her, she acts as the cult's revelator, and Uncle Hendrick records her revelations in The Book of Stella, which she isn't allowed to read. Finally, one particular revelation drives Stella to escape, but after ten years, she gets news of her grandmother's death and her cousin, Sunny, who's set to become the next revelator.
The way the cult's beliefs seem to have grown out of the family's original Primitive Baptist theology rang true for me. (I'm not Baptist, but I was raised Reformed Protestant, which is Primitive Baptist-adjacent, at least when it comes to Calvinism and predestination.) Uncle Hendrick has a quality of religious passion but absolute arrogance/cluelessness, bordering on cruelty, that's pitch-perfect to some of the men I remember from back then. It's not so much that they hate women, but that they believe it's their God-given right to rule over women. In some ways that's almost worse.
Stella is also a wonderful character--in the "after" chapters she's grown up to become a bootlegger!--and her relationship with the Ghostdaddy became an unexpected highlight of the book. For me, the best monsters are scary not because they're evil but because they're alien; they're on a mission of their own, and human rules and morals don't apply. Being loved by that kind of monster is a special class of scary, and Stella and the rest of the women in her family are loved. Even more, they're adored.
Also, this one might have the world's best cover.
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I was surprised by how much of a real character Ghostdadddy turned out to be, and by how invested I was in the Ghostdaddy & Stella relationship. I'm requesting them for Yuletide.
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Oooh, please do! This book deserves fic.
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