Have you ever read a book and thought, “This book should be a movie”?
Well, Zach Bartlett’s To Another Abyss! was like that for me.
That being said, if I told you that this book was set in New England and prominently featured an Elder God, you might be expecting that movie to be very different from the one I have in mind.
To Another Abyss! is what happens when you take a quirky indie comedy and mash it up with Lovecraft, but the comedy is what comes out on top.
I mean, until about halfway through the book, there aren’t any Lovecraftian elements in the story (well, unless you count Massachusetts).
That imbalance, that fundamental shift at the mid-point, is something that I might peg as a weakness if it didn’t seem so damn intentional. I mean, it happens almost exactly at the midpoint in the novel. It is like the author is saying, “The main character has whole host of problems trying to run his art gallery, and an Elder God is just one of those.”
Or maybe I’m reading too much into it, what with my head full of thoughts of art: What makes good art? Is there any way to judge art objectively? Should art say something?
All of these are questions raised within this book.
So, if you like quirky indie comedies about quirky indie characters, if you like books that take traditional horror elements and flip them on their head to comedic effect, if you like your art to, if not say something, at least ask questions, To Another Abyss! is a genre-bending book worth checking out. If some or all of those elements don’t appeal to you, then maybe this one isn’t for you.
But the strange mashup worked for me. And that’s the beauty of a book like this: it can be for a small niche audience.
If this interests you, you can find the book for sale here, and you can follow the author, Zach Bartlett, on Twitter here.
Does it interest you? Or do you think the disparate elements in the story are too disparate to work? Let me know in the comments down below!
