Friday Links: Reading When The Gods Have Abandoned The World Edition

“But there was no goddess of mercy, and Lilac had no time to waste on made-up gods when she needed the real thing.” – Hailey Piper, ‘No Gods For Drowning’

Have you ever tried explaining “there are fires in Canada, which is another country, and that’s why we can’t go outside?” to a four-year-old on summer break? Neither have I. Oh, those words were said on Tuesday, but explanations were useless. We went to the bookstore.

What I’ve Been Reading This Week:

Gonna be straight-up right off the bat like an Ohtani shot to the centerfield bleachers—I am only halfway through this book. Not the book’s fault! It rips! It is dense yet thrilling, it has short chapters that somehow take a long time to read (in a way I like). It has lore the reader learns on the fly—which made me realize I don’t read a ton of novels this speculative—and it’s an interesting world. There are literal gods—as in, people believe the Holy Land is falling because the gods went away. But it’s not like the Elves in LOTR sailing to the Undying Lands. More like the gods got sick of one place and moved. Like petty little bitches. Very cool stuff! Oh, and it’s a coastal town and full of sea imagery, so you know yr man the shipwrecked sailor is into it.

I’m talking, of course, about No Gods For Drowning by Hailey Piper.

Blame my not finishing this novel in a week on the lousy school system for letting these layabout children get *checks calendar* “a coupla” or even “a few” weeks off before summer programs start. Just don’t blame my being a slow reader and prioritizing other, less important things (like parenting). As I stand, I’m about halfway through/200ish pages in, and the narrative is ever-stacking. It sets up to be a braided detectives/municipal services vs. serial killer narrative, but that semi-collides early and there’s a shift into more religious entanglements—then I still have half the book to go. So far, I recommend it! Whatever streaming service that doesn’t totally suck right now should throw huge piles of cash at Hailey to adapt this into a mini-series (after the WGA gets a fair contract), it really is that visually original of a world. It feels both 19th/early 20th century and late 20th century, it at turns reminds me of the UK, New Orleans, Baltimore, or San Fransisco, it’s got people dressed in both robes and trench coats. If they can make Lovecraft Country, they can make No Gods For Drowning.

One last note: I very much love how in both this novel and I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself (which I also finished after writing it up, and holy shit, does that book’s last quarter dazzle) is how casually and confidently queer everyone is. I mean, IKME is a narrative about an oppressive police state, don’t get me wrong. What I mean is that in both of these books, people are open and honest about who they are, and no one goes “huh. Explain that to me.” Queer people just get to be queer people! We love to see it!

LINKS!

• Pairing extremely well with No Gods For Drowning, may I offer this short-but-not-quite-flash from Erin Brown in The Deadlands, “Jar.” I love the literalization of the randomness of death with “a handful of people had died agonizing deaths, melting into puddles of screaming sludge where they stood. We remain helpless to prevent it,” even as houses are built above sea level.

• Typically brilliant from Sabrina Imbler at Defector—usually linked here for their “Creaturefector” series—asking what extreme tourism is for in the wake of the Titanic disaster of the 21st century. Since Defector is subscription-based, I’m going to try to remember to have a good pull quote when I link these. Subscribing to Defector is worth it, but I won’t presume to tell you what to subscribe to. Here’s a pull quote: “The whole saga encapsulates an inevitable outcome of the industry of high-risk luxury tourism: Private companies will cut corners and dodge regulations only to eventually beg for government intervention they once scorned, and that people, some rich and some not, will die. Extreme tourism is not just an unfathomable waste of resources on a faltering planet, though it is very much that: It is also a feedback loop of class, the elite’s attempt at becoming even more elite, without actually exerting any physical or mental effort.”

• Very cool writeup of Transit Productions, who produced Denali Foxx’s Chicago Drag Excellence video a few years back—from Ariel Parrella-Aureli in Block Club. *Touches ear* hang on, I’m hearing from the Chicago Over Everything gods that we should link the video, too: