Reviews

Thank you to Tor Publishing Group, S.L. Coney and NetGalley for providing allowing me early access to this title.

S.L. Coney's Wild Spaces is a chthonic coming of age story protraying an idyllic family landscape rent asunder due to the visit of a stranger who brings the timeless truth of 'what is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh' with him.

A boy and his family lives near the sea. They go out in archaeological excursions and tell each other stories of pirates. Then they find a dog and bring it into the family hearth, and one month the boy's grandfather shows up from out of the blue to live with them for a while.

The tension of having this new strange relation living among them builds. The imposition of this grandfather seems very subtle:
...his physical presence in the small household makes it difficult for regular family time...
...his drives a wedge between father and mother...
...he is not 100% happy with how his grandson is being raised...
...he is trying to force a familiarity with his grandson...

...but these sorts of conflicts have been played out on many stages in many stories, surely there is nothing odd or sinister going on here? Names are not given to the human characters (only the Dog, Teach), surely this can imply that the drama played out here is archetypal?

It is at this point that you get a sense of an unspoken secret of the boy's matrilineal heritage ekeing its way out of the background.

“You know, being a boy in our family is special. The sea runs in your veins.”

And while the boy does not understand, he starts to feel the weight of this unnatrual truth.

One thing that I admired about this story is how little space is needed to tell it. If Covey can pack this wallop in less than 100 pages, then I am excited to see what they can do with a more fully realized novel.

Spoiler
Another thing that I really enjoyed was the graphic description of the transformation from the persepctive of the boy, especially that first time. Shapeshifting should not be a simple matter of magical glitter encircling a person between forms so you don't have to do the work of describing it. It needs to be messy and painful and Covey does a great job here.

One final point I would like to make (and would love to hear thoughts on from the GR community): I maintain that both dog and grandfather are components of the same force (even though they appear opposed to each other). I feel that the final pages of the book confirms this.

kt_jams's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

justabean_reads's review

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3.5

(Disclaimer, I know the author of this.)

Tor.com in physical copy, which is really making me feel that the quality of their paperbacks is leaning harder into the pulp side of things than is needed for the vibes. But the book was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick award (for SF/F/H first published in paperback), so I guess it worked out.

"What a lovely family," I said to my wife as I started this horror novella. "I sure hope nothing bad happens to them!" It's not much of a spoiler to say that something bad happened to every one of them. We get three pages of perfect happiness of an adolescent boy, his dog (with which there is absolutely nothing wrong), and his very cute parents, before his maternal grandfather arrives for an indefinite stay (there's absolutely something wrong with him). The tension ratchets up with every page, the boy able to tell that something is wrong, but not what, and yet when we find out the answers, it's neither relief nor catharsis, only more horror.

The prose is gorgeously specific to the sticky coastline of the Carolinas, some of the descriptions and turns of phrases enough to make me stop and stare. Likewise well handled are the powerless feeling of being stuck inside a slowly unrolling disaster, the ways people can be monstrous, the question of your body changing with puberty, but into what?

I've been trying to put my finger on why it didn't a hundred percent work for me, and I think there's a couple reasons: the parents felt a little underdeveloped, in part because it's the son's point of view, but I'd still have liked a little more from them: it was sort of "father perfect, mother troubled"? I also found the ending a little... I'm not sure if "showy" is the right word, but it felt like a more experienced author might have handled the resolution with a lighter touch. But horror's also not my usual genre, so difficult to tell.