They call it “the funhole” and as anyone would be wont to do, they start putting things inside. The basic premise is this: two friends/lovers/enemies Nicholas and Nakota, find an other-worldly dark void in the broom closet of Nicholas’ apartment building. I have always been fascinated by how much beauty can be found in beastly art if only you look hard enough and The Cipher is a stomach turning stunner. I’m going to work very hard not to spoil this incredible work of body horror because I think everyone who can stomach it should read it. Those writers who, through their stories, teach us what’s possible for our own craft. I had to know how her dark, twisted story had twisted me right along with those living within its pages. What just happened? How on earth did they do that? Can I do it too? When I first read The Cipher by Kathe Koja, I was awed at how deeply the story affected me. As a reader this experience is exhilarating but as a writer it’s also a challenge. They force you to fly high with a character’s laughter or to grip their hand as anxiety takes you both. These books don’t just tell you how it feels to live the character’s life, they don’t just show you and rely on your empathy, they make you feel it for yourself. Books that spread throughout your systems, sometimes as an energy that lifts and warms and sometimes as a shadow that squeezes and aches, and drinks from your soul.

Books that burrow deeper with each passing sentence. Then there are the books that crawl inside of you. Good books let us immerse ourselves in their worlds and great books pull us in. Because it has already seared his flesh, infected his soul, and started him on a journey of obsession – through its soothing, blank darkness into the blinding core of terror… My Thoughts Now from down the hall, the black hole calls out to Nicholas every day and every night. Then Nakota began her experiments: First, she put an insect into the hole. She had to make love to Nicholas beside it, and stare into its secretive, promising depths. She had to see the dark hole in the storage room down the hall. It began with Nakota and her crooked grin.

Nicholas is a would-be poet and video-store clerk with a weeping hole in his hand – weeping not blood, but a plasma of tears…

“If I could have broken his neck I would have, just for the pleasure of the silence after the snap.”― kathe koja, the cipher About Book Reviews So, have I cracked the code? Partially…maybe

Koja the cipher