Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud: Review by Gabino Iglesias
Crypt of the Moon Spider, Nathan Ballingrud (Nightfire 978-1-25029-173-8, $17.99, 85pp, tp) August 2024. Cover by Sam Araya.
Nathan Ballingrud is one of the finest purveyors of speculative fiction working today, and Crypt of the Moon Spider, the first book in what will be The Lunar Gothic Trilogy, further cements him as one of the strongest voices in the field. Wonderfully atmospheric and very strange, Crypt of the Moon Spider is a superb start to what promises to be a fantastic trilogy.
Many years ago, there was a giant spider living in a cave on the moon. There was a group of beings that worshipped the spider because its silk gave them powers. But now it’s 1923 and the spider is gone, and the worshippers are being hunted underground. Veronica Brinkley is a young wife whose husband brings her to the moon to get help at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy, which was built on top of the cave. Barrowfield is where Dr. Barrington Cull works. Dr. Cull is famous for treating patients, but his treatments are brutal and extremely invasive. Like many before her, Veronica has her head shaved, her skull opened, and spider silk used on her brain. But that’s far from the end. One of the remaining worshippers does something, and Veronica soon finds herself at the center or a chaotic series of events that take place under Barrowfield.
Brain surgery on the moon using magic spider silk sounds relatively simple, but this is a Ballingrud novel, so there’s much more than that going on. Crypt of the Moon Spider is short and fast, but it establishes three characters very well – Veronica; Dr. Cull; and his helper, Charlie, a man Veronica calls Grub – while also giving readers the basics of what went on underground when the giant spider was alive, what the worshippers are up to now, and what really is going on at Barrowfield. Also, there is plenty of action and a few body horror passages that show that Ballingrud is a master of beautiful prose who can also get extremely violent and gruesome (there are few deaths I won’t spoil here that are worth the price of admission).
This short novel does something few others manage: a perfect blend of brutality and elegance. The writing here is top-notch and the story is truly engaging, but from time to time there are things like multilimbed monsters or people picking at the stitches in their head while small spiders crawl out of their wound that remind you that Ballingrud can do it all.
Crypt of the Moon Spider is ghastly, stylish, atmospheric, full of cruelty, and strange in the best ways possible. Ballingrud is always in control, constantly showing the ease with which he transitions between mellow dialogue and viciousness, between the eerie present and the very present ghosts of the past. If the two more book in this series are as good as this first one, lovers of great speculative fiction with heavy doses of horror and science fiction are in for a treat.
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 October 2024 issue of Locus.
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