The Traitor

by Michael Cisco

Cisco (The Tyrant) ups the ante for provocative dark fantasy by giving this coming-of-age tale a subtle metaphysical edge. While still a boy, sensitive Nophtha realizes that he's uncommonly empathetic and able to see the world from the perspective of others. Tutored by his uncle, Nophtha apprentices as an itinerant spirit eater, or someone who absorbs lingering ghosts that congest the surrounding atmosphere and converts their essence into formidable healing powers. One day, Nophtha crosses paths with his alter ego, Wite, a soul burner who hopes to evolve to a higher level of being by gorging himself on the souls of the living. Under his sway, Nophtha is compelled to evaluate whether he and Wite are that different in nature, and to assess his feelings about family and community. Cisco writes in a reflective style that masks his narrative's virtual absence of a plot. Though discursive and sometimes repetitive, the story still moves toward its conclusion with a momentum borne of the author's meditative prose and aphoristic expressions.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Fiction, Weird Fiction, New Weird, Speculative Fiction, Gothic

149 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2007

About the author

Michael Cisco is an American weird fiction writer, Deleuzian academic and a teacher, currently living in New York City. He is best known for his first novel, The Divinity Student, winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel of 1999.

He is interested in confusion.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

and who does this so-called "traitor" yearn to betray? he is Judas to that quicksand of lumpish bodies, those cities of prison gray and sewer brown, this world of chittering mindless insects: he seeks to betray humanity itself. the traitor would see this race of fools fall, their cities flooded and their works in flames, their minds set free unto oblivion.

the story is recounted by Nophtha, a lonely fellow much abused by the world seeking to in turn abuse that world, an apostate, a man with strange powers: he is an eater of spirits. the novel was written by Cisco, the blood of Ligotti and Dostoyevsky pulsing in his veins: pedantic, misanthropic, malevolent, darkly witty; the imagery obscure, the narrative ambiguous, the theme cutting sharp, stabbing the reader again and again with its points.

the text was at first difficult to enter. the prose impresses, but does not ingratiate. nor do his characters. they challenge. but suddenly I found my way in via one phrase:

I've never been all that bored because I am either not paying attention or paying complete attention.

ah! I thought. such a trifling comment, but still: Nophtha is me and I am Nophtha! rather amusing to suddenly have empathy for a character with no empathy in him.

the world Nophtha inhabits is not our own. or is it? "Sin Eater" is a profession, for example, one that is particularly handy in a world full of spirits mooning about. there also exists the rare "Soul Burner" and they are feared pariahs; one such being becomes a mountain that issues a clarion call to our antihero's black hole of a heart. Nophtha has other powers including, ironically, the power to heal. in one particularly striking scene, something called a "minister" rips apart a door with its paws. the Soul Burner featured in this book, the delirious yet sneaky Wite, can pulp and incinerate others with a gesture; this leads to a couple massacres, depicted in an almost offhand manner. there is a master race of sorts, the Alak, who function as a near-parody of what the U.S.A. often believes itself to be, benevolently controlling countries and respecting their cultural traditions and mournfully upholding human rights; I'm not sure if the Alak are even supposed to be human. I'm not sure anyone is truly "human" in The Traitor.

a word must be said about the master class in writing that Cisco gives in the last third of this novel. as Nophtha's plans escalate and as he recounts those plans in his Alak cell many years later, increasingly excited and nastily triumphant, the prose itself quickens, taking on a feverish quality in its hallucinatory stream of consciousness and in its digressions, personal asides, lack of logic, and especially in its hypnotic use of repetition. by the end, I was spellbound by noxious Nophtha and his happy tale of horror.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5) The story is told by the dying spirit eater Nophtha. It is the story of his life and it is told in a passive, rather distanced style echoing at times that of Thomas Bernhard. Except the repetition is more wearying in its superfluity than in Bernhard's work, where it is carefully constructed as part of a formal composition, almost as a piece of music. There is a nebulous quality to the heart of this novel that weakens its overall impact. It's almost as if it has no center, as if Nophtha himself has fed on its spirit. Perhaps that was Cisco's point. For me the best part is when Nophtha meets the boy he names Tamt, after which he permanently heals all the trees of the forest by channeling the power of his mentor, the soul burner Wite. I loved that scene. In the end I was won over by Ciscos's ideas and philosophy, born out in certain striking passages, despite my misgivings about the book.

My pity is reserved only for those you've pushed out of your commonsensical way, you've pushed them right aside and now you press them up against the walls of your ruts, you're right now trying to crush the life out of them against the walls of your ruts, they are the ones who have earned my pity, they have, compressed into them, a power that must explode I am telling you it must explode and lacerate the commonsensical crowd that presses in on them, lacerate them and hack them down, turn to the walls of that rut and hack them down, clear all commonsense aside with the back of the hand and put an end once and for all to these pestilential mobs cities societies churches armies—and when that is done, they and and I will have nothing to say to one another, we will return to our homes in the mountains, under the trees, by the rocks, and live ghostly lives in unbroken silence and solitude, and watch trees rocks grass and water reclaim the ruins.

[P.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Outcast's Progress

'My call was to speak it thoroughly, to the last moment, in every detail as it was for me, and when I finish my lungs will finally fail and I will give myself up once and for all, but my lungs will hold me until I finish. I'm not finished.'


Without a doubt, what I loved the most about this powerful otherworldly short novel is how almost everything feels so disconcerting that you soon get the notion that anything can happen at the turn of a page. And anything does. Things along those lines, for instance:

'The minister simply plunged his two front paws through the door and seized both sides of the jamb, tearing them out and much of the wall as well.[...]The minister lunged forward and seized him, then bounded out into the street again.[...]I watched its blank, inhuman face, with lidless protruding eyes that saw in all directions, and this terrified me and attracted me [the same way that Wite terrifies and attracts me.]'


This is a story where one character, followed and worshipped by our narrator, undergoes a truly mind-bending transformation. One of the most disturbing elements I have ever faced in this genre to date. Counting Clarke Ashton Smith's Yondo and Zothique.

Over all, this was a masterful, wonderful, delightful dive in a unmistakably weird world, and I would like to recommend it to each and every reader looking for the poetry of what lies beyond the borders of normalcy! Beginning with the odd narrator and its unfathomable motives - till the end.

It is a rare occurence when I'm feeling as though I were stranded in a land devoid of familiar bearings for such a length of time. What an sheerly enrapturing experience!

I am certain I will venture again in the baffling visions of this highly idiosyncratic writer. The Divinity Student might very well come next, and soon indeed!


'Once things have become hopeless, it becomes possible to write.'

Also read:

Les Jardins statuaires
La Montagne morte de la vie
The King in Yellow
The Abominations of Yondo
Des milliards de tapis de cheveux
The Secret Agent
Harrouda
Citadelle
L’Homme qui savait la langue des serpents
Le Loup des steppes

Soundtrack:
When the Mountain Came to Muhammad

[Teodor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I doubt there is anything quite like it. Essentially a long monologue by a character who could crudely be described as a 'swallower of souls' (though only after you're done with them) and the cult-like community he operates within while a sectarian war rages between two fictional cities/regions/countries (like everything else in the book, all is rendered with tantalising opaqueness), Cisco's novel is 'weird' in the only way that true weirdness can be: it's frank, flat and unassuming about its strange, alienating makeup that it creeps you out all the more for it. The lazy connection to make would be to Kafka, whose obliquely horrific narratives and unapologetically unrealistic worlds Cisco seems to be tapping into. But if you've already read Kafka it doesn't mean you shouldn't read Cisco; there's a darkly energetic motion moving this sliver of a narrative forward, and there's something sinuous about its construction that offers brief glimpses of genuine beauty. On to the next one.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gothic or supernatural fantasy novel as written by Bernhard or Beckett. Using many of the stylistic traits of these writers (especially Bernhard’s repetition) and at some points almost being as funny as them(almost), Cisco creates an intense monologue detailing a journey to death or transformation, a bizarre messiah tale, and all wrapped up in an apocalyptic, Lovecraftian conclusion. An opaque but intriguing tale that doesn’t quite reach the stunning surreal heights of his last novel, The Tyrant.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel was something else. Cisco’s first person narrator, a prisoner committing his story to paper before his illness ends his life, tells a picaresque, fantastical, quasi-psychedelic and, especially towards the end, intensely feverish story about his relationship with and maniacal devotion to a man named Wite, who is a spirit eater. To give you some sense of this novel’s off-hand strangeness, about halfway through the novel Wite leaves his body and becomes a mountain. And this is related almost as a matter-of-fact occurrence. Cisco does a better job than just about anyone other than Thomas Ligotti at portraying controlled insanity with words.

[Charlie L · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Review written 5/21/2008)

Narration sometimes babbles together in such strings that each particular clause loses all meaning and focus, sometimes hiding any emotional response to something that with other phrasing could be emphatic and powerful, powerful and emphatic, but instead drones and continues, continues and drones, unwilling to please the reader in any way even if he or she strives to be pleased by its sentences, and this is Michael Cisco���s ���The Traitor.��� Being accustomed to sentences like those gaudy ones in Cormac McCarthy���s ���Blood Meridian,��� guttuggingly human ones like in ���Lolita,��� those flowing like Ursula LeGuin���s or even just smooth and precise like Gene Wolfe���s, these of ���The Traitor��� drag, but this dragging impresses toward a novel thoroughly pulled together.

The book has moments of beauty, like when the narrator ���stood in the wind on the roof and watched the fires come up, poking up like little flowers here and there, each fire came up like a little rip in my soul, in my chest, torn a little hole and smooched the little tear with firey lips, don���t argue with me I���m telling you how it felt I watched the fires come up and was whipped by cold rain and wind [...]��� (143), but its overall style is that of a lengthy monologue from a bitter old man. Its non-character is a blank, and the extent to which this is true is what impresses. He often refers to the story as his own, particularly when it seems that someone else���s story might be taking over: ���You���ll get none of their stories from me, this is my story, I won���t presume to speak for them, I won���t profane them by presuming to speak for them, if you want to know who they were from me, I will tell you who they were for me, that���s all anyone can say about anyone else or has any business saying��� (134). While it���s true that the story is entirely his own, his motivations are not: he���s only ever pushed by others. His primary motivation is the destruction of the world, and while this disposition comes from his upbringing as a blank���a person who has no feeling or thought or motivation of his own���and thus some drive to make others like him, this motivation itself prevents him from motivation. However, because his primary feature is his blankness, he���s infinitely swayed by others. When two of these others come in direct conflict, he vacillates between them like an infant.

This is the most convincing portion of the novel: his infantile vacillation between two loves. He immediately clings to Wite, a man who destroys others and eats their souls for his own sustenance, sustenance which thrives only to destroy more and more with no particular end goal but destruction itself���Wite, a soul burner, the narrator���s god. Just as immediately, though, he clings to Tzedze, Wite���s sister. He loves both, and because he lacks discretion, he obeys both. Because they are in direct conflict, he tangibly loses both. This response to conflict brings the novel together. The narrator is a blank, and every subtle technique throughout the novel follows this premise.

I find little technique in the book I can use for myself. I read it twice, hoping I could gather something from it to use for myself, but its only motivation is to show me I could potentially go further with characters in science fiction work than I might have thought: science fiction premises can easily permeate throughout a character���s entire being.

Regardless of whether or not I���ve gained much from the book, it does use a few noteworthy techniques. Its premise is that the main character is (and, actually, all the characters he surrounds himself with are) blank, and the limited use of dialogue contributes to this. Direct dialogue is rare, mostly only in moments of extreme stress, and I find this generally distances me from the characters. The book���s premise is to show characters which are as inhuman as they can be, and keeping me from their interactions adds to this. There were times when I���d been reading a lengthy passage of narration ending with a small piece of dialogue, and this dialogue would jump out at me and jar me slightly. That was the only indication that the characters had been talking throughout this narration: apparently, though, the narrator found the particularities of the discussion to be so banal as to not need be mentioned. This distance from the characters induces a kind of need or wanting in my reading, making anything I���m told more believable. Thus, when I���m told again and again that the narrator is blank, because I have little evidence to the contrary, I believe it stronger.

I may be stretching things too thin and departing too far from the text in this next statement, but it follows that in this reading process, I become blank. When I say that I���m devoid of the characters��� interactions with each other and thus am wanting for something from the text, that puts me in the same place as the narrator. I end up clinging to each direct, propaganda-laced statement as a blank.

I doubt that���s something I would use in my own writing, but it���s an impressive technique. It shows an intense dedication to a strict premise.

Let them know, and leave them nothing. Throw them down. A full stop to everyday business, the ruination of the city, that is the only completion that can be hoped for, or that should be hoped for. It���s the only hope that isn���t an obscene hope. A ruined city is the only sort of city I could live in. I could walk to and fro, one place looking much the same as any other, just piles of rubble, and I could meet people int he street and in the ruins, and feel at home with them, when it didn���t matter any more who they were supposed to be. Who we are would also be in ruins, and our language would be ruined and just barely intelligible. They wouldn���t be anybody, that���s how I would resemble them. We would all be at the mercy of the elements, all the same���that���s what I want to bring to every city in the world, I want to see every city in the world ruined like that, every abominable family, church, army, hanging in rags, all those abominable groupings of people smashed to pieces, leaving only the handful of permanently stupefied survivors and debris as far as the eye can see. (118-119)

Perhaps, to some extent, the narration does this. It certainly hasn���t left any resonating effect on me, but within my reading process, I wasn���t anyone���I was at the mercy of the random narration, stupefied and waiting to be told what to do and what to believe.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

More coherent in some ways than a couple of Cisco's books I've read thus far (Divinity Student and MAYBE The Narrator may have had a more solidly solid solidity, Animal Money definitely had the most abstractly abstracted abstraction), this short novel was quite the interesting trip to take. Some say there's no semblance of a plot; I say I disagree, though sometimes it's not quite easy to follow or find.

The book must be read slowly, for the repetitious nature and odd, confusing style of the narrator really deserves to be followed as closely as the reader can stand to get to it. The narration is often repetitive and sometimes somewhat fractured. The repetition is definitely intentional, but since most of the fracturing is at the end of sentences I'm still not sure if it was or if it was just some slightly sloppy editing. Never can tell with this one, and it's never bad enough that it detracts from the story. It took me a few nights of a few hours of reading to get through the almost 150 pages, but it was worth every minute.

The narrator, Noptha, is somewhat oddly and vaguely fleshed out, though not really, and other characters are even more translucently barely characters. It works for the style of the book, though, and the narrative voice and style. Dialogue is quite scant.

The story was often surreally bizarre, subtly funny, and occasionally darkly violent in a few scenes. I like it, I like it. Cisco solidly stays on my "to keep reading" list.

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not sure if it's the unrelenting awfulness of all the characters or the intentionally "unpolished" style, but I just couldn't with this off-putting avant-garde dreck.

Also, to quote from the Goodreads summary: "Cisco writes in a reflective style that masks his narrative's virtual absence of a plot."

No... no, it really doesn't.

[Bbrown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compared to Cisco's The Narrator and The Divinity Student (hereafter referred to as Cisco's "other works"), The Traitor is much easier to follow and much less strange. It's also much less interesting- the nightmarish qualities of Cisco's other works are decidedly less pronounced in this book, the inexplicable aspects of the world are mostly relegated to the periphery of the world and the asides of the narrator rather than being put front-and-center. Now, on its own, a strange but more standard narrative compared to Cisco's other works isn't a problem, as it allows for Cisco to tell a more cohesive story than he did in his other works. Unfortunately, the story that Cisco tells through The Traitor suffers from issues of pacing and structure that keep it from being compelling, with some short passages being the exceptions.

Through the narrator, Nophtha, we are introduced to the strange world of this story and the profession of Spirit Eater, an exorcist that can use the energy of consumed spirits to aid others or, in what society considers a darker path, use that energy for personal benefit (thus developing superhuman powers and becoming classified as a Soul Burner). After a torturous childhood Nophtha rises to the position of a high-ranked Spirit Eater, and as a part of that duty Nophtha is tasked with hunting down the Soul Burner Wite. Up until this point I've no big complaints, The Traitor does a good job of establishing the world and what I took to be the main conflict of this book. It's the middle act that I found lacking (spoilers ahead):

Instead of hunting down Wite, Nophtha witnesses Wite kill the entire party of men hunting him with ease, and instead of being killed himself he chooses to join Wite and aid him. From this point through the rest of the middle third of the book (and, really, beyond), Nophtha becomes incredibly passive, merely a recorder of Wite's actions. Not that Wite is particularly active- besides some brief action segments, which make up some of the high points of this book for me, Wite spends the majority of his appearance in the book at his cousin's house, professing his desire for death but hesitating before his plan's execution. While Wite mopes, Nophtha kills time with Wite's cousin. This section is really the heart of the book, but, despite being of the greatest narrative importance, it's a slog. Eventually, and much earlier in the book than I expected, Wite dies. At this point Nophtha gets even more passive than before, his narration even acknowledging this, writing "[t]his is idle talk. This is only idle talk." Wite, despite being physically dead, becomes something elemental, haunting the mountain where his corpse was placed, and in death he becomes even more powerful than he was in life. Under his influence, Nophtha becomes a missionary for Wite, converting the marginalized throughout the land, a series of events that eventually leads to a revolution of sorts. Eventually, Nophtha is captured, and writes his account while dying in his cell.

The problem with this narrative is that it is largely rudderless. The first third had a clear purpose, but, as already mentioned, the middle third is meandering and seems pointless at times. The final third features actions that seem of little importance to the narrator, and which reach an eventual climax that was not built up and that does not feel important even as it is occurring. The main character is passive for the majority of the book, and Wite, who serves as perhaps the true main character, is largely relegated to the status of an ominous presence even while he's still alive, and doubly so when he's dead.

There are interesting parts here- I appreciate how the eating of spirits is not framed as an etherial and spiritual pursuit, but a visceral one. Other authors would frame this story as one of an unreliable narrator of questionable sanity, who may have just imagined the supernatural things occurring- not Cisco, though, who gives us a narrator that clearly doesn't have all his marbles but who nevertheless is experiencing things that are true in the context of this world. Though I've not gone into them in this review, it's the random asides Cisco peppers throughout the book that I find the most intriguing, like an anecdote about a people that can only die on the soil of their homeland, or the beastial Alak minister. There are fewer of these segments in The Traitor than in Cisco's other works, which is why reading The Traitor was a less interesting experience for me than Cisco's other works have been.

I'd consider this a lesser work of Cisco's, though still interesting. Still, I'd recommend both The Narrator and The Divinity Student over this one.

[Mark Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really appreciated what Cisco accomplished with this book. The artistry is clear, the vision executed, and I could see how some readers find it a masterpiece. It reminded me of The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro. Both books deliver on creating a dream-like narrative. The Kafka influence was clear. Ultimately, the book fell a little short for me. It failed in the most important measure: I didn’t enjoy reading it. The repetitive words worked from an artistic standpoint, but made it less readable. I found myself skimming sections and then forcing myself to go back. I finished the book more out of obligation than desire. It's no doubt one of those novels where I would find deeper meaning on a second read, where I would work past the sandpaper resistance and uncover the true artistry. But that second read won’t happen for me.

[Niko · Rating 5 out of 5]

With narration resembling that of the Bible, The Traitor tells a story of a person who, rejected by society, strives to find the will to counter their so-called humanity. The main character, Nophtha, idolizes Wite, the person who is willing to go as far as he must in order to rise above nature itself.

Wite, a human in the beginning, ends up becoming a pure force of annihilation. His rationale for doing this is not explained; he functions as a messianic figure of antihumanism for Nophtha. The existence of someone willing to slaughter those who Nophtha considers unacceptable is enough to support him while he conducts his own rebellion, primarily within his mind.

By using Wite as a surrogate for his own disgust of humanity, Nophtha at the very start betrays that very disgust, as one of the things he hates about people is their tendency to decide who you are and then fit your actions to that model. Nophtha proceeds to betray his love, his messiah, and even himself, remaining completely human while progressively moving away from the concept of "humanity" which touts its superficial morality while rejecting those who dare to not be normal enough. Nophtha would like to be Wite more than anything but he is hopelessly limited by his own existence so he settles for being the Traitor.

The concept of a marginalized member of society who is unable to completely separate himself from that society's definitions and who for that reason brands himself as that society's enemy is done masterfully. While the style can be a bit difficult to get through at times, this is an exceptional novel that manages to be a precise observation of an aspect of the "human condition".

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

UPDATE:

In the end I just couldn't return to this book. It just isn't my cup of tea. This will possibly be my only 1 star review.




****


People who know me know that I have often boasted that no matter how much I dislike a book I will not stop reading it until I finish. How can you get a proper overview of something unless you finish it?

I could not finish this book.

Not because it was 'difficult', or 'had no plot' or whatever other reasons other readers give.

I couldn't finish it because I was not in the right frame of mind for this book. It's the middle of December, it's cold, dark. I guess I have a bit of the winter blues.

And this is not the book to read when you're feeling down. It is bleak and dark. The narrator (I don't know if you can call him a protagonist as he hasn't done anything within the 50% of the story I've read) is a traitor, but not just to his calling but to life itself. He rejects everything about life and living and humanity, and revels in it. It is like the ultimate post-human novel.

So, I had to put it down for now and wait until I feel psychologically stronger to read something of this intensity. Yes, I've given it 3 stars for now as I don't know whether I like it or not.

I will try to update my review after I come back to this book and finish it. After all I have a reputation to uphold.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite an unusual book - and definetely not one for all tastes.

It is a soliloquy, a monologue of sorts, a testament.
And the narrator walks us through his story the same way I would through mine - hesitating, babbling sometimes, going back and forth a few times, giving much importance to some little details while ignoring entire events.
Which packs the book with a sense of realism - if I am allowed to use such a word when talking about a fantasy book like this - and some extremely beautiful and personal moments.

I won't comment the plot itself as I think every word you say about it may become a huge spoiler.
Actually I disagree that the writer's style "masks his narrative's virtual absence of a plot". There is a clear plot there even though the narrator spends more time twirling around it than going straight to the point.

Overall an interesting book.
And you may wonder why does it not get a better score! Well, simply because it gets hard and harder to read, sometimes it's unnecesary confusing and more than once I wished it was written in a slightly simplier style.
Which does not mean it's bad - it just doesn't fit completely my taste.

[Vincenzo Bilof · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have seen the mountain, and it is beautiful.

Cisco's writing seems like he captures the the feeling of a dream, or rather, the feeling that follows you when you wake up from a particular type of dream in which you felt everything or nothing, and you were aware of these feelings or the absence of these feelings. Cisco does not need a contemporary setting for his stories; as in The Traitor, the names of places and the places themselves do not matter because they are nothing more than placeholders for inevitability. Cisco has taken the post-industrial society nightmare and has shown us that the Soul Eater and the Soul Burner concepts are as real as anything else that might be written. All writing is fantasy, and this fantasy is reality.

Beautiful. I devoured the pages and felt the emotional intensity pick up along with Noptha's brutal honesty.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spirit Eating. An amazing idea, in that it is presented as being entirely normal and necessary and rather visceral, but its presentation lacked any true depth. Neither Nophtha or Wite are all that interesting as characters, and there is little action to detract from their blandness. This story lacked the detail and conceptual complexity I have come to expect from Cisco, and quite long stretches of this narrative were dull to the point of almost skim-worthy. Rare, that, for me reading Cisco. Not much else to mention besides my overall ambivalence about the story. Another middling read for me from Cisco's catalogue.

[Pam · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think the narrator was intentionally written to be very unsympathetic, but the problem with that is it doesn't give you much reason to care about anything that happens to him. The run-on and repetitive style of the writing was unique and fit the situation the narrator was writing in, but tedious at length.

[Ken · Rating 1 out of 5]

http://nethspace.blogspot.com/2008/01...

[ECH · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prose is superb, of course. The protagonist is what elevates it for me. He is horrifying and revolting, highly biased and probably mad. However I found him... lovable. How apacalyptic...

[Curtain33 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Traitor revolves around a spirit eater named Nophtha, who has only ever experienced oppressions and hate from society. 'Sprit eaters' provide a service to society and gain magical energy by eating spirits, but are expected to only ever give back to society. Giving back entails healing the sick or injured for the most part. Nophtha happens to encounter a 'spirit burner' named Wite who takes the energy provided by spirits and uses it to wield great power. The encounter with Wite turns out to be the first time that it occurred to Nophtha that one could choose to act selfishly. Well, he devotes himself to Wite as sort of an acolyte and from there the story takes some unexpected twists and turns. I won't say more as it would ruin it.

As an introvert I found the character of Nophtha sympathetic. He's misunderstood, his hatred of society may be less authentic and more of a defense mechanism and for good reason: he has suffered a lot. He's an unreliable narrator, stating that he's never loved anything and then later confessing love for someone. Above all I found this story very sad. It doesn't look kindly upon society and serves as a warning to take care of those less fortunate, lest they fight back. Spoilers below if you wish to hear more:

In the latter half of the book Wite becomes a force of nature--quite literally a mountain. Nophtha becomes head apostle and the misfits (the oppressed) lend their hands eradicate society. It's both terrifying and cathartic as a climax.

If you make it as far as the first encounter with the spirit eater Wite, then be warned that things only get darker after that. It's likely that you'll hate the rest of the book if you weren't into the story up until that point.

I've read this book twice and loved it both times. Michael Cisco creates literature that leaves so much to unpack and so many layers to be analyzed.

[rhodeswarrior · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great style. You're literally in the mind of the antagonist. Or protagonist... Dark though, which is fitting given the story itself.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

#260

[Dennis Conrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m never going to stop screaming at everyone I know to read Michael Cisco. Holy shit

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

More a work of interior characterization and psychology than plot-driven; still, really evocative of a certain state of mind.

[S.M. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could not finish this. Not my kind of writing style at all.

[Dark Morag · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just wow.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Incomprehensible and poorly written. At least it's short.

[Piotr Szczęsny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as Divinity Student. Also tackles transcending humanity theme, but in different way. Still good weird fiction, I might missed something - the narrator sometimes goes into feverish rambling and it's easy to fell off the track.

[Wealhtheow]

recommended by Nick Mamatas here: http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com...

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know what just happened.