![]() The narrative in The Cipher head-hops a bit from one character to another. I find Koja’s style a bit jarring and disorienting at times. Some of the stories, like “Baby,” really worked for me, and some of them didn’t. I’ve read a few short stories in her collection Velocities, also released by Meerkat Press this year. This is not my first time reading Koja’s work. The mystery of their relationship was as fascinating to me as the affectionately named “Funhole.” Obsession, as we all know, does not end well, and horrible things do happen mostly because Nakota is self-destructive, impulsive, and a bit of an emotional “black hole” herself. ![]() They happen upon a strange, black hole in Nicholas’s apartment building and become obsessed with experimenting with it. ![]() In Kathe Koja’s The Cipher, Nicholas and Nakota are pretty loathsome people. ![]() I don’t need to like people in order to emotionally invest in their stories - sometimes, hating them is just as fun as loving them. ![]() I think protagonists should be as varied as the people we encounter in real life. There’s kind of this unofficial debate among readers concerning those who enjoy unlikable characters and those who need protagonists to be tolerable in order to invest in their story. Reviewed by Sadie “Mother Horror” Hartmann ![]()
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