Books like Bad Brains

How is it Kathe Koja can take something as simple as an artist slipping and busting his head (or a strange couple of friends finding an even stranger hole in their apartment building . . . .) and turn it into an entertaining — and edgy — grand statement? She makes it seem so easy. The paranoia drips off the pages of this tale of love lost . . . and an artist driven mad by the visions in his head . . .Her works were cutting-edge back in the ‘90s; now, perhaps, they are even more so . . . the grunge era aesthetics only bolster the fundamental power of Bad Brains.A book I’m not quite worthy of reviewing, this 1992 horror paperback is, perhaps, my favorite read of the year thus far . . . . and certainly should be on all readers’ radars. (This is especially fine reading for fans of The Cipher.)