Review: A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs

A Lush and Seething Hell: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by John Hornor Jacobs 
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publication Date: October 8, 2019

Cosmic horror is by far my favorite subgenre, so I was really excited about A Lush And Seething Hell, a duology containing a novella ("The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky") and a short novel ("My Heart Struck Sorrow"), both dealing with the horrors within and the horrors without and the horrors teeming beneath. Overall, I'd say this is an excellent addition to any cosmic horror afficionado's bookshelf, though I definitely preferred the second work to the first, as I'll discuss below:

THE SEA DREAMS IT IS THE SKY: The first (and shorter) work in the duology has a lot to recommend it, but---unfortunately---also a lot to condemn. The central concept is refreshingly original: two refugees from Magera---a nonexistent Latin American country that ticks all the boxes Americans associate with that region, including suffering under a brutal American-backed dictatorship---encounter each other in a cafe in Spain. One is a famous poet, wanted by the regime and haunted by his experiences in his homeland . . . and by an otherworldly text whose translation contains, and brings, madness. The other, our narrator, is a young academic who gets caught up in the poet's, and her homeland's, many horrors.

I loved the ideas behind this. A Latin American country that never existed . . . or did it, now? If an eldritch horror overtook a country Down There and pulled it from existence, how many Americans would even notice the hole? Here, cosmic horror provides the perfect analogy for American influence on, but ignorance of, Latin America that I can possibly think of.

But . . . well, the main joy of cosmic horror lies in what isn't and can't be shown. That's why it's a genre that's always incredibly difficult to translate well to the screen. But that doesn't mean a writer can go for long, interminable stretches ignoring the whole 'cosmic horror' part of their cosmic horror tale. Far too often, "The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky" suffers from that worst malady: it's more concerned with its narrator's navel-gazing than with any eldritch horrors. "Turgid" is probably the word I'd use; not for all of it, of course, because the parts in past and present Magera, suffering from its otherworldly 'miasma', are quite fantastic. There just aren't enough of them. (I've never read Roberto Bolano, which the description tells me is an influence, so perhaps there are depths here that I missed. All I know is, I had to force myself to read through parts of this because my attention kept wandering.)

Overall, this is the sort of story whose plot I kind of want some other author to steal and re-work, because the ideas behind it are superb, it's just . . . the execution is somewhat lacking.

MY HEART STRUCK SORROW: Had this been a stand-alone, I'd have given it five stars without blinking. Heavier on plot and far, far creepier than its predecessor, "My Heart Struck Sorrow" stars a folklorist who, recently having lost his wife and son to tragedy, discovers the chilling records of a famous colleague's trek through the Depression-era South, in search of an eldritch song. Racism and madness, guilt and suffering, the past and present darknesses of America and their ties to our cultural products: each of these strings gets deftly plucked, but unlike in "The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky", the author here never wallows in his characters' sense of self. The story charges, bull-like, through to the teeming horrors just out of vision, virulently present but just out of reach, acknowledging horrors within and without and beneath but never prioritizing one above the rest.

One of my favorite aspects was the weaving of traditional Christian ideas about hell and horror (oh, those rotten apple trees!) with 'traditional' cosmic horror ideas about true horror existing beyond and beneath our conceptions. (You can see the shadow of The King in Yellow overlaying the plot, but only a whisper, only a dream; this is its own horror, and all the deeper for it.) I really liked the author's incorporation of real American music, the way the author ties the real to the profane. I'd never heard of "Stagger Lee" (which is and definitely is not the song in question) before, but YouTube tells me it's old and popular. It takes a deft touch to draw on popular music like this (I'm looking at you, Battlestar Galactica and All Along The Watchtower!) but the author manages to avoid any triteness here while still wrapping otherworldly horror beneath the skin of our more ordinary horrors.

Overall: if you enjoy cosmic horror, or any horror at all, I'd say definitely pick this duology up. There's a refreshing, intricate originality in both stories that's well worth your time.

I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.