Kathe Koja

When a black hole materializes in the storage room down the hall from his apartment, poet and video store clerk Nicholas allows his curiosity to lead him into the depths of terror

The Cipher

Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Awards, finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and named one of io9.com's "Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm." With a new afterword by Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker and Rag. "Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive." When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says, "We're not." But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.

Geoffrey Froggatt

“If I could have broken his neck I would have, just for the pleasure of the silence after the snap.”

I like despicable, flawed people in fiction. I think protagonists should be as varied as the people we encounter in real life. I don’t need to like people in order to emotionally invest in their stories. Sometimes, hating them is just as fun as loving them. In Kathe Koja’s The Cipher, Nicholas and Nakota are pretty loathsome people. They happen upon a strange, black hole in Nicholas’s apartment building and become obsessed with experimenting with it. Much of the novel focuses on their horrendously dysfunctional relationship, as he continuously fails to protect her from the darkness she is drawn into, and she surgically hacks away at his psychic wounds to get exactly what she wants from him. I was surprised by how real the characters felt and how horny they were. Not horny in a sexy way, but horny in a pitiful, dirty way, in a way that reflects two people who are so defeated and beat down by life that the only comfort they can find is endless sex in a shitty apartment with someone they dislike as much as they dislike themselves. The dynamic between Nakota and Nicholas and their friend group reminded me of the darker parts of my adolescence. It really has that whole ’90s nihilistic twenty/thirtysomething vibe, where everything is sarcastic or done ironically and everyone seems too self-absorbed and unsure of themselves to function, everyone abusing themselves and each other without the wisdom of wanting to make a better life for themselves or anyone. To me, The Cipher is about rot. Its main characters rot inside of their rotting apartment built in a rotting world. But these characters are alive and like all living things, the rot must be dealt with. Giving in to the rot means being swallowed and digested by it. Each character fights the rot in their own way and at their own level of intensity. Some wave a torch at the dampness to ward it off, others scrape off the mold only when it gets too unbearable. This book depicted what becomes of people who continue to let themselves be consumed by the void, and it shows how unsustainable that lifestyle is. This book may have featured literal black holes, but it much more about inner darkness and what happens when you let yours consume you. I think this was a good cautionary tale, even if I was too distracted by how easily this could have been my life.

Oscar von Hauske

Mind blown, the bits are all over the floor

This is just...not my kind of book. I found the premise interesting, but I never really got into the story. Ultimately, this is the kind of book that makes me go "but...why?" when I finish.

That said, it wasn't terrible. Just definitely not my thing.

Jessica Nottingham

This is a tough book to review, for a myriad of reasons, but I promise to do my best. See, The Cipher is something completely different from most of the horror novels that I have read in the past few years. There’s something raw, dangerous and downright uncomfortable about this story. Kathe Koja doesn’t write about Nicholas and Nakota’s experience with the Funhole, she drags the reader into that terrifying space with them. I still have goosebumps, and my thoughts are all over the place.

Let’s start with what I liked about this story. First off, I actually appreciated the fact that Nicholas and Nakota feel so realistic. I had a few friends tell me before I started this story that they didn’t like how unlikable these two are. For me, it was kind of a breath of fresh air. Koja doesn’t care whether you like Nicholas and Nakota. What matters is that they are people. Real, gritty, possibly unlovable, people. As the story twisted and turned, I found myself caring less about how much I liked them and more about the fact that their decisions were leading them closer and closer to certain doom. The feeling of their descent is visceral. It claws at you and, whether you like them or not, you’ll end up following them down.

Another aspect of this book that I appreciated was the way that Koja never really gives away the ending. I won’t spoil it for any other readers either. Still, I can guarantee that you might think you know what you’re headed into but you’re probably wrong. The story takes moments that seem cut from any other horror novel, and manipulates them into something even darker. There were portions of this that I had to read twice over, just to even understand what was unfolding. Poor Nicholas.

So what made me ultimately give this book a three star rating? Quite honestly, it was was the writing style from the middle onwards. As Nicholas becomes consumed with the Funhole, the book becomes almost a rambling stream of consciousness. While I understood the intent, he repeats himself constantly and it grated on my nerves after a while. This book already had an odd punctuation style, which I took at face value since it benefitted the feel of the story inside. However at Nicholas’ worst points it became something that was almost unreadable. I was a little frustrated at how slowly I had to read, to fully understand what was happening.

Do I think that The Cipher is a story that others should read? Absolutely. Provided that you are okay with some gore, a lot of darkness, and the kind of uncomfortable dread that follows you for days after you flip the last page. This is a horror story on a whole new level. I’m still not sure if I’ll ever forget it.

The Cipher

Reviews