The Blade Between

A Novel

De: Sam J. Miller

Narrado por: Graham Halstead, David Sadzin

A Recommended Book from CrimeReads

From Nebula Award winner Sam J. Miller comes a frightening and uncanny ghost story about a rapidly changing city in upstate New York and the mysterious forces that threaten it.

Ronan Szepessy promised himself he’d never return to Hudson. The sleepy upstate town was no place for a restless gay photographer. But his father is ill and New York City’s distractions have become too much for him. He hopes that a quick visit will help him recharge.

Ronan reconnects with two friends from high school: Dom, his first love, and Dom’s wife, Attalah. The three former misfits mourn what their town has become—overrun by gentrifiers and corporate interests. With friends and neighbors getting evicted en masse and a mayoral election coming up, Ronan and Attalah craft a plan to rattle the newcomers and expose their true motives. But in doing so, they unleash something far more mysterious and uncontainable.

Hudson has a rich, proud history and, it turns out, the real-state developers aren’t the only forces threatening its well-being: the spirits undergirding this once-thriving industrial town are enraged. Ronan’s hijinks have overlapped with a bubbling up of hate and violence among friends and neighbors, and everything is spiraling out of control. Ronan must summon the very best of himself to shed his own demons and save the city he once loathed.

©2020 Sam J. Miller (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

New take on a ghost story

I enjoyed the swap between Ronan's inner dialog in first person and the narration of the rest of the town's residents from a third person perspective, and the two performers were great.

This is a pretty emotionally and politically charged book, with very progressive lgbtqia+ themes along with the struggles that many American towns face with "revitalization" (read: gentrification). So if those themes and ideas offend you or you're on the more conservative side of the spectrum, this book is not for you.

Without diving too much into spoiler territory, I was slightly disappointed that while the town and its residents were fully realized three-dimensional characters, the supernatural elements were very vague and not well-defined. And maybe that was intentional; not really knowing the inner workings or motivations of the forces at play so that the focus is on the town itself. It was still a good read overall, but to me if felt like it was trying to mash together two different stories while being very successful at one, and the other feeling more like an afterthought.

All-in-all, it was an entertaining and unique read featuring some very well written lgbtqia+ characters who didn't fall into the typical stereotypes or token roles.