Robert Cole

This was one of the best books that I've read so far this year. Yeager is an upcoming talent and I knew it from the first pages I read of his last novel Amygdalatropolis. The story plays right to the ear, catches a milieu that the mainstream presses are mostly missing, and effectively leaves you with questions. They don't have to be answered, but all of the details are picture perfect, drawn vividly. For a story with a plot that circles itself like a spiral it continuously builds tension. The writing is beautiful, the story is finely honed, and the sentences have a bite that is authentic. It's a story I don't want to say much about because as a hallucinatory experience it is worth going into nearly blind so that you're caught off guard. The only thing I'll say is that the novel is set in a town that's been besotted by a chronic sort of spiritual illness that seems to cause people to commit suicide at regular intervals. It becomes a spectator sport, and of course, chasing suicides and then posting fresh ones to the internet is a plot point handled beautifully. If nothing else Yeager is a digital native that understands the arcane back alleys of the internet, the intersection of magic and hallucination, and the fact that every story deserves the sort of weird but ethereally compelling details that he has given this novel. It deals in gritty surreal teenage mysticism, and it needs to be read.