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wardhammer's review
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
acanthae's review
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
category_fury's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
mushababy's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
ldasoqi's review
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This book was highly recommended to me and I have to say that I loved it. It kind of came as a surprise despite the high praise because I don't read a lot of horror; outside of the classics I've found a lot of horror books to be pulpy and one-dimensional, often they're so focused on the blood-and-guts that they ignore important narrative elements and come out formulaic. That is not the case for Bad Brains and I am going to gush about this book. I don't want people to think I am an easy grader either, my October TBR just happened to be stacked with killer books and this was the pièce de résistance. If I am guilty of anything it's loving books with unreliable narrators and maybe I am criminally attracted to anything with a beat or post-beat influence (maybe that's all a fancy English education is good for).
Bad Brains is about Austen, an artist in the middle of a depressed slump. His art won't sell and his wife has left him. Instead of painting, he's working at a T-shirt shop and drinking himself into a stupor. One day his friend who curates an art gallery invites him to a party and tells him to grab some beers. On his way out of a 7-11, as he apes at the cashier, he takes a serious fall and wakes up in the hospital. Austen suffers from extreme chain seizures during his extended stay at the hospital and begins to see a horrible liquid silver monster thing on the edges of his vision. He is eventually released from the hospital with a clean bill of health, there is nothing physically wrong with him but he is still suffering from hallucinations and seizures. He seeks out help from a number of doctors but is too scared to tell them about the silver for fear of being labeled crazy. Turned away by all, he seeks out his mother who lives states away. While visiting meets a man named Russel who claims to know what's wrong with him as his father also had epileptic visions; the two of them seek out the answer as they travel across the country.
Bad Brains is about Austen, an artist in the middle of a depressed slump. His art won't sell and his wife has left him. Instead of painting, he's working at a T-shirt shop and drinking himself into a stupor. One day his friend who curates an art gallery invites him to a party and tells him to grab some beers. On his way out of a 7-11, as he apes at the cashier, he takes a serious fall and wakes up in the hospital. Austen suffers from extreme chain seizures during his extended stay at the hospital and begins to see a horrible liquid silver monster thing on the edges of his vision. He is eventually released from the hospital with a clean bill of health, there is nothing physically wrong with him but he is still suffering from hallucinations and seizures. He seeks out help from a number of doctors but is too scared to tell them about the silver for fear of being labeled crazy. Turned away by all, he seeks out his mother who lives states away. While visiting meets a man named Russel who claims to know what's wrong with him as his father also had epileptic visions; the two of them seek out the answer as they travel across the country.
The silver thing, itself a whorl, did not seem to care or notice; but that was because it was a creature of dream, an insubstantiality. Occasionally, in his less epileptic moments, Austen wondered if he should be frightened by it, frightened at least by the sheer number of its visitations; only his brain understood the secret omnipresence of that scaly mercury dance, and his brain was no true witness anymore. Which was maybe the most frightening thing of all.
Clench. That's what it's like to read Bad Brains; you are physically clenched for the entirety of this book as you try to piece together what is going on. From the moment that Austen wakes up in the hospital you as the reader are right there with him, experiencing viscerally his struggle with his situation. I'm not doing it justice just by describing it, but watching Austen as he is consumed in an abyss of despair and fear of his condition, reading the descriptions of his pain and his longing for his ex-wife as he lays bound and alone in a hospital bed are some of the most moving things I've ever read in fiction, let alone in horror. This book is unique in its use of horror elements to progress the story, it delivers these powerfully moving, empathetic, and visceral passages that couldn't really exist outside of the genre. It's tempting to say that this book is good in spite of its genre, but that's not true, it uses its horror elements as unique tools to tell a story that couldn't really be told otherwise.
I am standing here seeing this, I am seeing it and took off the top of its skull where the brain is and inside, the most delicate writhe, each lobe filigreed, threaded and girdled with silvery death in all its masques and manifestations, in all its irrevocable forms: the elegant pulse of an aneurysm, an extravagant clutch of tumors concealed like an oyster’s pearl, clots like molded caviar and each molecule burning, shining silver light on the bone chips ragged and blood like the swirled center of a dubious treat; and nestled in the rich middle like eggs in a nest, eyes. Exquisite and long and barely there.
I think that this book has some of the best prose that I have ever read, I am in no way understating it when I call Koja a master of the craft. There is a unique and intoxicating blend of lyricism and gritty realism that pervades this whole book. This is a stark and grimy read. Much of this book takes place in parking lots, gas station bathrooms, and seedy motels; we spend our time floating across this dark and desolate world locked behind Austen's eyes, seeing this disjointed world as he sees it. Koja perfectly describes an intensely claustrophobic, visceral, and emotionally charged journey across the urban wastes. Her descriptions are desolate and empathetic, beautiful in their grotesquery and dissymmetry. This book pushes the boundaries of conventional narrative structure and the prose is a powerful force, drawing readers into the gritty and tumultuous world she has created.
I can safely shelve this as a favorite, and I already picked up a copy of her first book The Cipher. I wish more horror was like this, where the "horror" is used in some way to progress a larger narrative. Maybe it's the unique appeal of internal horror, "it's coming from inside the house" type of dread that really made this click for me. Either way, I am glad that dipping my toe back into the genre turned out so spectacular.
TL;DR: Imagine getting sick and being told that the way you are is the way you're going to be forever. That's the most horrible thing of all
yak_attak's review
5.0
A book somehow fully composed of simply sensation and force, this grimy boiling mess of personal pain, depression, ennui, and existential dread. It's impressive how simple the story begins, and how natural each pitiful step feels until like the main character you're in far too deep and there's only one way out of this thing - through. A look into the horror of hospitals. Of not knowing the answer. Of bathrooms. of God. of transcendence and unknowingness.
Word of warning to that though, there's a heavy aspect of this book that's just absolutely bizarrely confusing - it's literally about something incomprehensible - through science, emotion, faith.... and there's a beautiful slipping quality to Koja's writing that binds all this together perfectly - a story about a man with brain trauma who forgets time, forgets things he does, blanks out, and Koja omits moments. sentences. Words - a chapter or two in and you won't notice, instead it spills out mercury smooth and just as deadly.
Fucking great, but a little hard to recommend - I suggest you give it a shot of course, but we're dealing with abstracted writing about confusing concepts dealing with a lousy fucking asshole guy who's not great to women and spends most of the book vomiting on the floor in the bathroom, like... it's brilliant, don't get me wrong, but you're in for it if you pick this up
Word of warning to that though, there's a heavy aspect of this book that's just absolutely bizarrely confusing - it's literally about something incomprehensible - through science, emotion, faith.... and there's a beautiful slipping quality to Koja's writing that binds all this together perfectly - a story about a man with brain trauma who forgets time, forgets things he does, blanks out, and Koja omits moments. sentences. Words - a chapter or two in and you won't notice, instead it spills out mercury smooth and just as deadly.
Fucking great, but a little hard to recommend - I suggest you give it a shot of course, but we're dealing with abstracted writing about confusing concepts dealing with a lousy fucking asshole guy who's not great to women and spends most of the book vomiting on the floor in the bathroom, like... it's brilliant, don't get me wrong, but you're in for it if you pick this up
agenc's review
2.0
Although just as well written as Skin, Cipher, and Strange Angels this story didn't resonate with me.
verkisto's review
1.0
I really like Koja's writing style. When I was younger, I didn't think much of it, but on re-reading it, I find I can appreciate it a lot more. When so much of the older fiction I read is more tell than show, it's nice to read a style where the narrative is almost entirely show. In the Abyss line, Koja and Kelley Wilde both refused to follow any standards, and their books are much more enjoyable for it.
That being said, Bad Brains is a pretty dull book. It starts off well, but it slowly becomes a story of the main character moving from place to place. The main character isn't that likable, which I expected, but he's somehow both less or a loser and more of a loser than the main character in The Cipher. The story is about Austen, an artist who falls and suffers a brain injury that causes him to see a shimmery silver color encroach on his vision. This has happened to him after his wife has left him, and after he has fallen into a depression that halts his artwork. Since this is a Koja novel, Austen is a bit of an outcast, but he starts off as someone more respectable than Nicholas, from The Cipher. Slowly, though, he falls further and further out of step, so while he starts off having accomplished more in his life, he winds up being more insufferable than Nicholas. Maybe it's because he did make something of himself before his wife left him and he fell into the downward spiral of his infection.
Bad Brains reads well, and makes as strong of an impact as The Cipher did, but the story just isn't that interesting. Her style was enough to keep me reading, but I wanted the story to be as good as her narrative. I'm hoping her later works will capture that same blending of prose and story like I found in The Cipher. This could be a case of the Sophomore Novel Syndrome.
That being said, Bad Brains is a pretty dull book. It starts off well, but it slowly becomes a story of the main character moving from place to place. The main character isn't that likable, which I expected, but he's somehow both less or a loser and more of a loser than the main character in The Cipher. The story is about Austen, an artist who falls and suffers a brain injury that causes him to see a shimmery silver color encroach on his vision. This has happened to him after his wife has left him, and after he has fallen into a depression that halts his artwork. Since this is a Koja novel, Austen is a bit of an outcast, but he starts off as someone more respectable than Nicholas, from The Cipher. Slowly, though, he falls further and further out of step, so while he starts off having accomplished more in his life, he winds up being more insufferable than Nicholas. Maybe it's because he did make something of himself before his wife left him and he fell into the downward spiral of his infection.
Bad Brains reads well, and makes as strong of an impact as The Cipher did, but the story just isn't that interesting. Her style was enough to keep me reading, but I wanted the story to be as good as her narrative. I'm hoping her later works will capture that same blending of prose and story like I found in The Cipher. This could be a case of the Sophomore Novel Syndrome.
the_bookubus's review
5.0
Another phenomenal read from Kathe Koja. Bad Brains tells the story of Austen. He used to be an artist but that has fallen by the wayside and he now works a crappy day job to pay the bills. He still holds a torch for his ex-wife. He's a bit of a loner and one of his only lifelines is gallery owner Peter.
One evening he stumbles and falls, the accident putting him in hospital. Austen begins to suffer from seizures and visions. The medications don't seem to help. Once released from hospital the seizures continue and he is haunted by the visions. Always the same thing. Silver. Austen starts to paint again as he tries to find a cure.
This was an incredible book. Koja's writing is unique and poetic. I was making notes of amazing sentences and passages on practically every other page. The story is mesmerising and I was compelled to join Austen on his journey. Sure, there are some slower, quieter sections of the book but I felt they gave necessary breathing room to the intensity of the rest of the story. It's unsettling and disturbing yet absolutely fascinating. There are some similar themes and elements to The Cipher but Bad Brains definitely felt like its own entity rather than retreading familiar ground.
The opening paragraph will probably determine whether this will be your cup of tea or not:
"Gargoyle benedictive, above his breakfasting head: oils, luscious as blood and framed in red, a reclining sphinxlike form in all the shades of black. Ram's head atop the dreaming body, poisoned eyes."
One evening he stumbles and falls, the accident putting him in hospital. Austen begins to suffer from seizures and visions. The medications don't seem to help. Once released from hospital the seizures continue and he is haunted by the visions. Always the same thing. Silver. Austen starts to paint again as he tries to find a cure.
This was an incredible book. Koja's writing is unique and poetic. I was making notes of amazing sentences and passages on practically every other page. The story is mesmerising and I was compelled to join Austen on his journey. Sure, there are some slower, quieter sections of the book but I felt they gave necessary breathing room to the intensity of the rest of the story. It's unsettling and disturbing yet absolutely fascinating. There are some similar themes and elements to The Cipher but Bad Brains definitely felt like its own entity rather than retreading familiar ground.
The opening paragraph will probably determine whether this will be your cup of tea or not:
"Gargoyle benedictive, above his breakfasting head: oils, luscious as blood and framed in red, a reclining sphinxlike form in all the shades of black. Ram's head atop the dreaming body, poisoned eyes."
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