A Sick Gray Laugh Like Nothing I've Read Before
It’s hard to put a finger on exactly what A Sick Gray Laugh by Nicole Cushing is. It’s a little bit of historical horror fiction, which my regular readers will know is a huge plus for me. Dark humor? Yep it’s got a big handful of that too and who doesn’t love a little bit of humor in their horror now and then. It’s also got the feeling of meta-fiction, but put that in a horror book and guess what, I’m in for that too. And let’s not forget the fact that it has some downright freaky and messed up scenes in it. Put all that together in one book and you’ve got something like I’ve never read before and something that I freaking loved from beginning to end.
The first person narrative makes you want to read this thing right from page one and never stop. The voice is conversational and the story just flows naturally and easily. Our narrator is horror author Noelle Cashman. She has made her name by writing dark horror fiction that leaves her readers begging for more. Her fiction though reflects a lot of her personal demons and when Noelle begins to make changes in her life, she decides to change what she writes about as well, even if it hurts her author-brand.
Noelle then proceeds to explain how this book will be a non-fiction book, much different from her others. She has made progress and changed her life and now sees that much of the world, and Ohio especially, is covered in a blanket of a gray phlegm-like substance that not everyone has the ability to see.
From there, we are taken in an altogether different direction as the book shifts into a historical horror story detailing the history of the region and explaining how the greyness came to be there. It is in this part of the book we meet the mysterious New Moses and their group of followers. This portion of the books reads much different from the first and was my favorite part of the book.
This is followed up by a return to Noelle’s first person narrative and we learn more about her fight against the grayness that surrounds her. This, like the first part of the book is fast paced and easy to read, the voice of Noelle returns and her story is strange and enthralling. When the story ends you’re left thinking about all of the events and the story you just read. Cushing does a great job of drawing out even more questions from the reader as the end of the book approaches. At the end of it all you’re left wondering what you just read. But the execution is so well done you can only applaud the way in which the book was written.
Cushing proves she is a master at getting the reader to think about every detail in her books. She makes every page and sometimes every sentence seem like the most important one in the entire book. What you end up with in A Sick Gray Laugh, is a book that has you on the edge of your seat, hanging on the next page, the next sentence, the next word because you have no idea where Cushing will take you next.
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