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A review by tfrohock
The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky by John Hornor Jacobs
5.0
It's rare that I give any book five stars, but The Sea Dreams it is the Sky is the best horror novella that I've read since I burned through Stephen King's 1922 several years ago.
Isabel meets a fellow ex-pat, who is simply known as the Eye. When the Eye receives a mysterious note, he returns to their homeland and leaves Isabel in charge of his apartment. There, she finds that the Eye is none other than the reviled poet, Rafael Avendaño.
As Isabel reads the manuscripts the poet has left behind, the reader is immersed into a creeping sense of dread that intensifies with every page. Like Isabel, we are drawn into the terror of Avendaño's life during a military coup that left him maimed in body and soul. And behind the coup, seen only by Avendaño, is an ancient horror that Jacobs reveals to us by stripping away one layer of reality after another before our eyes.
Equal turns poetic and hypnotic, Jacobs resurrects the surreal imagery of Jorge Louis Borges and couples it with visceral prose that cuts to the bone.
Christ, it gave me nightmares.
Don't miss it.
Isabel meets a fellow ex-pat, who is simply known as the Eye. When the Eye receives a mysterious note, he returns to their homeland and leaves Isabel in charge of his apartment. There, she finds that the Eye is none other than the reviled poet, Rafael Avendaño.
As Isabel reads the manuscripts the poet has left behind, the reader is immersed into a creeping sense of dread that intensifies with every page. Like Isabel, we are drawn into the terror of Avendaño's life during a military coup that left him maimed in body and soul. And behind the coup, seen only by Avendaño, is an ancient horror that Jacobs reveals to us by stripping away one layer of reality after another before our eyes.
Equal turns poetic and hypnotic, Jacobs resurrects the surreal imagery of Jorge Louis Borges and couples it with visceral prose that cuts to the bone.
Christ, it gave me nightmares.
Don't miss it.