The Ship of Death

Ship of Death is a modern epistolary novel, assembled from police reports, journal entries, note apps on phone, and most central to the plot, after game reports for someone playtesting a 'new' board game. Cole is our bartender main character and the initial recipient of the play test opportunity. His wife and later, against her will, a neighbor are roped into the game by our main antagonist. What starts as an interesting play test of a vastly complex game quickly turns into a terrifying blurring of reality, dreams, and the game. The final forum post documents leave us with questions as to reliability of our narrator at all, and of what reality might in fact have been. An honorable mention for Tess, our fortune teller/psychic/witch show more supporting character who is actually one of my favorites in the book (though her taste in blended scotch is understandably bad). It is in no small part through her that we're directly told what is otherwise just menacingly implied, that ultimately once events are set in motion both ourselves and the characters are on an inexorable march toward tragedy and terror.
For all its modern trappings and brisk pacing, Winkler is obviously drawing on strong, serious, literary traditions. Beyond the titular (and thematic) reference to D.H. Lawrence, there is a lot of Clark Ashton Smith here. Sure, Zothique is mentioned by name at one point, but even prior to that anyone familiar with CAS would easily notice that the parts written about/in the Mishilect are drawing heavily on his style linguistic traditions. There's a lot of clever things going on with the naming of things, especially books, if one cares to notice or look up some terms if they're unfamiliar to them.
There's also a lot going on here with themes of power and control...who has it, how its exercised, how far it can be pushed or fought, and how it shapes our lives and reality in both figurative and literal terms. I'd almost say there are shades of dysfunctional, unhealthy, versions of dom/sub relationships. Its most obvious with Rot/Atapath...but also between Javier and our protagonist couple. It never pushes into the sexual, but its definitely a more overt exercise in power than simple manipulation.
This book was a lot of fun, and the everyperson main characters are easy to connect with, down to their inabilty to find a livable home at an affordable price (though I'll be honest, compared to right across the border in Michigan, those prices seemed pretty damn good). This is well worth your time to read, and I've already got holds on other books by him from my library. show less