Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud
Publisher - Titan
Published - Out Now
Price - £11.99 hardback £6.02 Kindle eBook
A young woman, committed to an asylum, undergoes a bizarre treatment that unlocks a vast well of power in this cosmic horror novella, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher.
Veronica Brinkley has been committed to The Barrowfield Home, run by Dr. Cull, to treat her depression. The institution is built on the crypt of a giant Lunar Spider, tended to by a monastic group of worshippers called the Alabaster Scholars. Dr. Cull is using the lunar silk from the dead spider to "repair" people's brains.
As Veronica's memories are tampered with, she finds a surprising reserve of power within herself, upending everyone else's plans for her and stepping into a grand new role she had never imagined for herself.
If you know your story is impossible will you still want to read it. There is a dissonance particularly in science fiction that we have ideas that don’t exist in reality; that contradict our understanding of our own world and yet we feel these places are real while they make images in our minds. In Nathan Ballingrud’s dramatic gothic horror novel Crypt of the Moon Spider we are sent to an alternate past where the Moon is livable and a woman is cast adrift and placed in immense danger.
Veronica is being taken by her wealthy husband to The Barrowfiwld Home for Treatment of the Melancholy on the dark side of the moon. Her depression has become too much for her husband to tolerate. Veronica meets the menacing Charlie and his employer the sinister Dr Cull. Despite the luxurious location in the moon’s forests Veronica feels in danger and the strange treatments on offer start to give her menacing dreams and fears for her safety. The moon has many dangers to face.
This is an ambitious story taking an 1930/40s style noir setting and placing it in almost a pulp SF horror tale of an asylum on the moon. Just with added cults and ancient corpses of moon spiders. Yet despite that Ballingrud doesn’t play this as a melodrama we feel Veronica’s isolation and the hospital she is trapped in is ominous as is the menacing Charlie she nicknames Grub.
What turns this story into genre is that we have this more fantastical moon that we are told had a moon spider cult on it. There is a sense of cosmic horror here and Dr Cull seems to use the cultists for something in his process. There is a mix of body horror and spiders here that will make you glad you’re not in the room. We also have Veronica perhaps as a side effect of the treatment getting more and more vivid and disturbing dreams. There is a huge feeling of something dangerous at work.
The finale doesn’t quite work for me though. We have a strange detour to explore Charlie’s backstory which itself is a pulp like but menacing gangster tale but it slightly doesn’t fit the story at this point. I also felt Veronica despite being our heroine is quite passive and very much someone who things happen to rather than drives the story herself which in a story about how men control women in such circumstances felt a little lacking.
Crypt of the Moon Spider is a novella with inventive ideas, a great sense of atmosphere and bar a few issues I felt a solid strange read perfect for those who enjoy their horror on the weirder side. Well worth a look!
