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Loading... Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abominationby David Nickle
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  Strider66 | Nov 21, 2017 | 
 A political, psychological and philosophical allegory of remarkable depth and ambition: the most intellectually provocative horror novel of the twenty-first century. [A] dazzling horror novel that’s unafraid to ask questions and leave some of them unanswered. Belongs to SeriesEliada Chronicles (book 2)
At the dawn of the twentieth century in the Idaho logging town of Eliada, orphaned farm boy Jason Thistledown and black physician Andrew Waggoner came face to face with monsters: the human sort, in the form of American eugenicists seeking to perfect the human race through breeding and culls; and the inhuman, a parasitic species named Juke, that lived off the hopes, dreams, and faith of humanity, even as it consumed it from within. The year is 1931 . . . In a remote valley in the Bavarian Alps, the Germanic students of those eugenicists seek to uncover the secret of the Juke and the promise of the Übermensch. In Paris, Dr. Andrew Waggoner enters his third decade of unravelling the mystery of the elusive organism. Jason Thistledown, now a veteran pilot of World War I, gets ready to embark on a new career flying mail and passengers in North Africa and, he hopes, forget the profound horrors that have shaped him. Soon, they will all have to reckon with one other: a terrible synthesis of those horrors, which moves among humanity with an inexorable and terrible purpose--obliterating and reshaping that humanity until there is only one thing left: Volk. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.13)
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Wikipedia in English
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Cons: not particularly scary
Jason Thorn (aka Thistledown) flew planes over the trenches in WWI. After some bad times, he’s landed a job flying post in Africa. But the flight there is diverted to Bavaria, Germany, where an experiment has gone wrong. An experiment with a creature Jason has faced - and survived - in the past.
This is a direct continuation of Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, picking up 20 or so years after that one ends. All of the survivors show up and play major roles in the book. It’s interesting seeing how their lives have progressed, but also sad, as some of them don’t recover from their ordeal as well as others.
It’s very interesting learning more about the jukes and their parasitic nature. Unlike with the first book, when you knew when the characters were under the creature’s influence, in this book characters often reexamine their memories to discover they’ve forgotten things or were completely unaware of them. It make most of them unreliable narrators, but imparts their feelings of confusion and hesitancy very well.
The plot is pretty interesting, trying to figure out what happened to Jason, who and what Orlok is, and whether the Nazi’s will get their ubermensch.
Several of the newly introduced characters are gay, which was handled well considering the location and period the book takes place (Germany and France in the 1930s). One of the gay characters considered it a disease and was looking for a cure, while others were more comfortable with who they were. For the most part the principle characters around them were supportive or, at least, not derogatory regarding them.
Race, obviously comes up given Doctor Waggoner is black and married to a white woman. Again, I was impressed with how that was handled, especially entering Germany. The introduction of the jazz band and the treatment of its members was well done, showing racism in a more individualistic rather than stereotypical manner.
I didn’t find the book particularly terrifying (unlike with the eugenics of the first one) despite the presence of Nazis and some horrible things going on. There are some uncomfortable scenes and the ending was unsettling.
It is a good sequel. It answers a lot of questions raised in the previous book and shows what happens to everyone. It also shows that however much you run, sometimes you can’t escape your past. (