Synopsis:
From Nebula Award winner Sam J. Miller comes The Blade Between – a frightening and uncanny ghost story about a rapidly changing city in upstate New York and the mysterious forces that threaten it.
Ronan Szepessy promised himself he’d never return to Hudson. The sleepy upstate town was no place for a restless gay photographer. But his father is ill and New York City’s distractions have become too much for him. He hopes that a quick visit will help him recharge.
Ronan reconnects with two friends from high school: Dom, his first love, and Dom’s wife, Attalah. The three former misfits mourn what their town has become—overrun by gentrifiers and corporate interests. With friends and neighbors getting evicted en masse and a mayoral election coming up, Ronan and Attalah craft a plan to rattle the newcomers and expose their true motives. But in doing so, they unleash something far more mysterious and uncontainable.
Hudson has a rich, proud history and, it turns out, the real estate developers aren’t the only forces threatening its well-being: the spirits undergirding this once-thriving industrial town are enraged. Ronan’s hijinks have overlapped with a bubbling up of hate and violence among friends and neighbors, and everything is spiraling out of control. Ronan must summon the very best of himself to shed his own demons and save the city he once loathed.
Edition:
E-ARC
Disclaimer:
I received a copy of The Blade Between from the publisher via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
Trigger Warnings:
Hover for Trigger WarningsMy Thoughts:
The Blade Between is a very unique and fascinating book. There are so many intertwined themes here that you’d think they’d tangle to the point of being impossible to pin down. But they aren’t. Each theme is given its due time and everything resolves in a way that feels both poignant and satisfying.
Explored are gentrification, eviction, homophobia, racism. commercialized animal murder, classism, technological warfare, small town culture, hate, vengeance, and exploitation. Each one of these thematic elements is flayed open, pushed and prodded, and examined in glorious detail. Hudson is a small industrial town with gargantuan troubles.
Hudson has been many cities, but it has always been this one. The one with soil steeped in blood, with a harbor full of bones.
Based on what I’ve read about him, it seems that Miller might be a tad whale-obsessed, and I think that worked in his favor here. The idea of whale ghosts seems outwardly insane, but it ended up working so well. Sort of like how the whales going to space thing in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home probably should have been ridiculous but somehow worked (it did. hush).
The idea that hate manifests as a blade wedged between the ribs is going to live with me for the rest of my life. What a beautifully uncomfortable and appropriate metaphor that is.
I think that for those many of us who have been forced to sit back and watch ourselves and our neighbors get priced out of our homes, neighborhoods, and even entire cities, The Blade Between is going to hit HARD. I know that aspect of it certainly did for me.
The Blade Between is a story mired in trauma. All of the main players are people who have lived and breathed hardships their whole lives. And to see the town that harbored those difficulties taken over wholesale by moneyed hipsters is too much for them to bear.
About the Author:
Sam J. Miller is the last in a long line of butchers, and the Nebula-Award-winning author of THE ART OF STARVING, one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. His second novel, BLACKFISH CITY was a “Must Read” according to Entertainment Weekly and O: The Oprah Magazine, and one of the best books of 2018 according to the Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and more. He got gay-married in a guerrilla wedding in the shadow of a tyrannosaurus skeleton. He lives in New York City.
Rating:
The Blade Between By Sam J. Miller Ecco Published: December 1, 2020 ISBN: 9780062969828 Hardcover, E-book, Audio 384 Pages Author's Website
