Will Sargent reviewed 'Geisters by David Nickle
Review of "'Geisters" on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
Was it terror, or was it love? It would be a long time before Ann LeSage could decide. For most of her life, the two feelings were so similar as to be indistinguishable. It was easy to mix them up.
That's the thesis of The Geisters, and for most of the book, it slides a razor's edge between the two. On one side, there's Ann -- alone, confused and racked with guilt after an accident that resulted in her brother's crippling and her parents death. About to get married to a man, for love. And then there's the Insect, an invisible force that has followed and tormented Ann for as long as she can remember.
The 'Geisters is a conventional book in some ways -- it doesn't use fancy language, it doesn't confuse. At the same time, it's an alien experience. David Nickle is very good at framing her experience …
Was it terror, or was it love? It would be a long time before Ann LeSage could decide. For most of her life, the two feelings were so similar as to be indistinguishable. It was easy to mix them up.
That's the thesis of The Geisters, and for most of the book, it slides a razor's edge between the two. On one side, there's Ann -- alone, confused and racked with guilt after an accident that resulted in her brother's crippling and her parents death. About to get married to a man, for love. And then there's the Insect, an invisible force that has followed and tormented Ann for as long as she can remember.
The 'Geisters is a conventional book in some ways -- it doesn't use fancy language, it doesn't confuse. At the same time, it's an alien experience. David Nickle is very good at framing her experience in the form of available options, and the options that Ann thinks she has are... well, Ann tries very hard to control her thoughts and how she thinks about things.
The larger issue for me is the Insect. Why did it kill her parents? Even if it loved Phillip, why did it cripple him so severely -- was all just to kill Laurie, who was in the same car? Then why did the Insect let Ann get acute hypothermia? What was the motivation for wrecking the boat? Why did the Insect kill Peter Dumont (was it to kill Mr Sleepy?) and why did the Geisters not run like buggery when that happened? Are they that addicted to terror that they can't turn away from it? And what makes Ann disappear into the room in the Octogon? How did they condition the Incest when the only real contact they had was with Sunderland when she was a child? Why did Ann stay in the tower of the Arch-Liche? Despite taking days in the tower, Sunderland had just dropped her off at the conference center when she escapes, and Ann herself refers to "earlier that morning", but even so the time dilation is odd. And I'm still not sure about what the relationship between Susan and Little is like -- she's not "eaten" so much as distracted, with most of her mental energy being focused outside her body. And Ann's ability to kill (and total lack of empathy for Lily, the 8 year old girl trapped at the bottom of a hole with no poltergeist protecting her) is seems curiously soulless and empty -- there's no rage or joy there, and so it seems like the result of the merging is less, rather than more.
But in spite of that -- it doesn't have to make sense. It's a great book, and a good horror story, and worth reading.