Ichthyic In The Afterglow - Jason Wayne Allen
Jason Wayne Allen - Ichthyic in the Afterglow 5/5
JWA was gracious enough to give me a copy
of Afterglow in exchange for an honest review. This is a surreal
novella that blends in a variety of influences while staying original
and bizarre. Allen has a knack for creating a world that you would
only see in nightmares, and while you would expect the story itself
to ramble incoherently it makes a great of deal of sense. This is
where Allen thrives. He looks beyond the normal themes that lie
scattered around the bizarro genre and creates something that you
would only see while you're tripping on acid It's a nod to Lovecraft
and while it has elements of violence it isn't over done and fits in
with the theme of the novella.
There isn't a lot mentioned in
Afterglow about the cults or their origin. That doesn't matter though
and while at times I felt as if I were only getting pieces of the
story as they unfolded it made for an interesting read. I think there
could be a prequel here that goes into the importance of Cassie and
even Clem's role as the sacrifice that allows her to go to Carcosa.
Carcosa is essentially paradise and the novella itself is about the
destruction of one world to usher in another. At least that's what it
felt like to me. This is one of those novellas that is open to
interpretation and there really are no wrong answers. You don't just
read Ichthyic
in the Afterglow you're thrust into it and that's what a good book
does.
Allen
has created a jarring vision that distorts all rules of fiction and
writes something original. There's a lot of potential here for
another book and I hope that at some point we get that. For what we
have now it's a book that talks about the end of the world. The two
cults are opposing religions and the end result is paradise. In order
to achieve that there has to be sacrifice and war. That is how
organized religion tells it and so does Ichthyic In The Afterglow.
It's a novella that I've waited a long time to read and now that I
have I can't wait to see what JWA comes up with next.
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