Synopsis:
The Strange: 1931, New Galveston , Mars: Fourteen-year-old Anabelle Crisp sets off through the wastelands of the Strange to find Silas Mundt’s gang who have stolen her mother’s voice, destroyed her father, and left her solely with a need for vengeance.
Since Anabelle’s mother left for Earth to care for her own ailing mother, her days in New Galveston have been spent at school and her nights at her laconic father’s diner with Watson, the family Kitchen Engine and dishwasher as her only companion. When the Silence came, and communication and shipments from Earth to its colonies on Mars stopped, life seemed stuck in foreboding stasis until the night Silas Mundt and his gang attacked.
At once evoking the dreams of an America explored in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and the harder realities of frontier life in Charles Portis True Grit , Ballingrud’s novel is haunting in its evocation of Anabelle’s quest for revenge amidst a spent and angry world accompanied by a domestic Engine, a drunken space pilot, and the toughest woman on Mars.
Nathan Ballingrud’s stories have been adapted into the film Wounds and the Hulu series Monsterland , The Strange is his first novel.
Edition:
E-ARC provided by Net Galley
My Thoughts:
Do you love True Grit (the remake, obviously. I’m not an animal) but wouldn’t be mad if it had some Ghosts of Mars flair? Hard same.
The Strange is about to be your best friend, my dude. It has all the things. A girl on a quest for vengeance. It has crotchety adults. Ghosts. IT HAS MARS.
I’m sure by now that Ballingrud is sick half to death of TG comparisons, but…also maybe not? Because there are definite shades of it here. Anabelle is basically a dead ringer for Mattie Ross. And her story isn’t too terribly different either. But what is different is the seemingly bizarre, but in reality totally perfect mix-ins of Mars and ghosts. And lessons on the way we humans treat the lands that sustain us. And the natives of that land. You know – ‘Murrica. Fuck yeah.
“Everywhere we go, we lay waste. We take and take and take, and leave nothing behind us.”
I don’t know what to say, folks – I think The Strange is absolutely wonderful. The pacing is damned near perfect, and the main characters feel well developed. And the story overall will grab you and not let go til the very end.
Rating:
Look – there’s a little bit of everything one might want from a Ghosts in Space Western Revenge Journey. I think I’ve made that clear.
The Strange By Nathan Ballingrud Gallery / Saga Press Published: March 21, 2023 ISBN: 9781534449954 Hardcover, E-book, Audio, Paperback (previously published through Titan) 304 Pages
