The Strange Book Review

It’s a peculiarity in some men that they cannot accept help without feeling compromised by it. It’s better to die alone, it would seem, than to live in the debt of another human being.

Synopsis

1931, New Galveston, Mars: Fourteen-year-old Anabelle Crisp sets off through the wastelands of the Strange to find Silas Mundt’s gang who have stolen her mother’s voice, destroyed her father, and left her solely with a need for vengeance.

Since Anabelle’s mother left for Earth to care for her own ailing mother, her days in New Galveston have been spent at school and her nights at her laconic father’s diner with Watson, the family Kitchen Engine and dishwasher as her only companion. When the Silence came, and communication and shipments from Earth to its colonies on Mars stopped, life seemed stuck in foreboding stasis until the night Silas Mundt and his gang attacked.

At once evoking the dreams of an America explored in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and the harder realities of frontier life in Charles Portis True Grit, Ballingrud’s novel is haunting in its evocation of Anabelle’s quest for revenge amidst a spent and angry world accompanied by a domestic Engine, a drunken space pilot, and the toughest woman on Mars.

Nathan Ballingrud’s stories have been adapted into the film Wounds and the Hulu series Monsterland, The Strange is his first novel.

REVIEW

Nathan Ballingrud’s The Strange is a… strange sci-fi western.

I was immediately drawn in at first, and while bits of the writing were certainly well done, I thought the main character was a brat (albeit interesting). Of course, that’s to be expected with a 14-year-old, but I couldn’t buy in to a bunch of adults so easily letting themselves be bullied and bossed around by her? There were also a lot of questions left unanswered—which, if there’s to be a sequel, I could forgive, but I don’t believe there is so???

Worse, there was a lot of buildup, just for the story to fall apart in the end, which was most disappointing. Idk, it wasn’t the most satisfying read, and the alternate history didn’t do much for me, but I did enjoy the horror aspects and delving into Annabelle’s psyche/what she thought of the world around her.

Thank you to Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, for the free copy for review!

Publication date was 21 March 2023.

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