“In CHRISTOPHER WILD, Koja gives us an intensely romantic vision - one that is entirely appropriate for Christopher Marlowe, the man turned legend.” “ is a gothic, glam-rock take on love and sex and death that reads a little like what would happen if Sarah Waters and Angela Carter played a drunken game of Exquisite Corpse in a brothel. “VELOCITIES: STORIES at their most superb where they study the strength in bodies perceived as delicate or fragile … Koja explores the misunderstood and the dark.” This funhole has a way of sucking in those who drop their guard.“THE CIPHER: A stone-cold landmark of the genre. It may even be a religious awakening - close to the one that both Nick and Nakota share - beaming with potentiality and madness alike. It’s a nihilistic romp if such a thing could ever exist. It may make your skin crawl, but it’ll satiate that penchant for all things dark and disturbing. Best of all is Nick’s unabashed narration which demonstrates Koja’s proclivity toward the lewd and unsavory. One teeming with rain-soaked nights, beer-drenched hallways, bug-infested walls, and a dark hole filled with infinite possibilities. The Cipher is the debut novel that announced author Kathe Koja to the world. And then it becomes a movement bigger than either of them could ever wish to handle. It also offers more than what their faltering lives could ever hope to achieve: artistic satisfaction.īut when others see what their camcorder documents, Nick becomes the reluctant ringleader, the dungeon master, the barker holding the keys to this circus sideshow. However, the thrill of the unknown excites them, growing their new hobby into something akin to praying at the altar of a roadside funhouse.

Each time the hole spits them back out, augmented in ways neither is prepared to see or understand. They test its boundaries, tossing in various objects: a jar of insects, a mouse, a severed hand, a camcorder. Could it be a black hole, an orifice, a fissure, or maybe even a portal? It has many names but only one sticks: The Funhole. Tucked away in the second-floor storage room is a hole that confounds and fascinates their creative acumen. But that would all change when they discover a secret hidden within Nick’s rundown apartment building. And Nakota serves as a barmaid at Club 22, doling out drinks to career alcoholics. Nick wastes his time in the role of assistant manager, longing for the day when his haikus can generate a payday. Would-be poet and Video Hut employee, Nicholas Reid, and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Nakota, are the apathetic loners of a society indifferent to their artistic aspirations.

The cipher book kathe koja