Review: "Eutopia" by David Nickle

To be honest, this book caught me off-guard. I'd seen a review of the sequel, "Volk", on BoingBoing and the premise intrigued me. I got "Volk" and "Eutopia" off of Amazon after skimming the reviews. I got "Eutopia" first, which is just as well and...

Damn.

Set in rural Idaho (and bits of Colorado) in 1911, "Eutopia" is essentially a tale of a would-be utopian community set up by an industrialist in Idaho, as seen through the eyes of two protagonists: the first is Andrew Waggoner, an African-American surgeon educated in Paris. As one might imagine, he encounters no small amount of discrimination and trouble being a "Negro" (this term is used constantly in the book) doctor in rural America a little bit into the 20th century. The other is Jason Thistledown, an orphan of a terrible plague that kills everyone in his flyspeck town in Colorado, save him.

The two wind up meeting one another in the town of Elidia,the aforementioned would-be utopian community just as shit goes sideways. You see, there's not just your backwoodsman, Klansmen (the early part of the book has Waggoner nearly lynched by KKK dickweeds), outlaws, and the like. Oh no. This book is a horror story. It's got non-human monsters to go with the human ones.

In this case, there's parasitical creatures known as Jukes who can alter one's perceptions and induce people to worship them as gods.

And it gets worse, but why spoil the story?

"Eutopia" is a horror tale told through an interesting filter of early 20th Century America. It's got eugenics (and all the racist baggage that comes with that), straight-up racism (above-and-beyond the eugenics), and just a lot of fairly horrible examples of humanity in it. Nickle's story almost doesn't need the Jukes in it to be a horror tale, truth be told.

But he's got 'em in the story, and they're creepy as fuck.

"Eutopia" was, at first, a slow read and not really the sort of thing I'd pick up, but I'll be honest: I couldn't put it down. It was gripping and fascinating. Andrew Waggoner and Jason Thistledown were engaging protagonists and the rest of the cast were fascinating in their own way.

If you're looking for a bit of Americana horror, go no further.

I'll be interested to see if "Volk" can keep up the intensity.