Gabino Iglesias Reviews The Merry Dredgers by Jeremy C. Shipp
The Merry Dredgers, Jeremy C. Shipp (Meerkat Press 978-1-94615-446-0, $16.95, 200pp, pb) April 2023. Cover by Tricia Reeks.
Jeremy C. Shipp’s work is always wonderfully weird, and in their latest, The Merry Dredgers, they have embraced weirdness like never before. At once a story of sisterly love, a strange noir narrative about a young woman trapped in a crappy job, and a whodunit with a surreal touch that takes readers deep into a cult inside an abandoned amusement park, there is something for everyone in this one.
Seraphina Ramon doesn’t have much going for her at the moment. She has a few friends and loves her cat, but she’s stuck playing princesses in kids’ parties for money and her sister, Eff, is in a coma after a very suspicious accident. Seraphina wants to get to the bottom of what happened to her sister, and she’s pretty sure her accident is connected to the last place Eff was in: an abandoned amusement park where a cult now resides. But just like there is a set of rules for being a princess, there is a set of rules when it comes to figuring out what the cult is up to and whether or not they are to blame for Eff’s accident. In order to get to the bottom of it, Seraphina must become someone else and join the cult. The people are weird, but also welcoming, and Seraphina must keep up her act as she investigates the strange world of the cultists.
The Merry Dredgers is a lot of fun. Between the mystery, the little goblins, and the cult’s antics, this novel reads like a novella and almost demands to be devoured in a day or two. However, there’s also a serious angle, and Shipp uses a noir lens to filter Seraphina’s life, work, and her sadness about her sister being in a coma. It’s hard to think of noir, which is usually associated with crime fiction, as being part of a fun weird horror novel, but the way Seraphina is treated at some of the parties she goes to, the way she sits in her car in the heat and thinks about things, and the relentless dark thoughts that occupy her brain as she goes about figuring out who almost killed her sister all belong to that subgenre.
Shipp is one of those authors you can’t help but follow regardless of how weird things get, and their powers are in full display here. Whether Seraphina is going to a wedding between cult members or making balloon animals at a party, the character development is so on point that it’s almost impossible not to feel empathy for Seraphina and want her to get the answers she craves. Also, Seraphina tells her sister stories, and between those and her dreams/nightmares, Shipp weaves a gripping, bizarre tale that might just be one of the best in their oeuvre.
I’ve said it before and it needs to be said again: I think you can tell when a writer had a blast writing something, and that’s the feeling that permeates this novel, even in its darkest moments. Shipp wanted to take readers on a wild ride, and they pulled it off with flying colors. Trust Shipp and enter the Goblin’s mouth with them. You won’t regret it.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
This review and more like it in the May 2023 issue of Locus.
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