Tuesday, January 1, 2019

COYOTE SONGS by Gabino Iglesias

"Whatever is happening there smells like blood and bad news."
Gabino Iglesias's novel Zero Saints was one of my favorite books I read in 2016. I also mentioned in that review that it was completely original and unlike anything I'd read before. This latest work follows that trend and goes even further. It's even harder to pin down than that previous book.
The silence on the other side of the door struck him as forced, pregnant with something tense, something that belonged to the world of screams, but that was forced to stay quiet.
Coyote Songs almost completely defies description. I won't even try. And good luck trying to pin it down to a genre. It's equal parts magical realism, crime noir, supernatural horror, manifesto, and who the hell knows what else. It's a mean and poetic ballad of la frontera: a place that's even darker than la frontera he explored in Zero Saints, a place filled with monsters, both human and otherwise. This book isn't for everyone, and I admit that I probably didn't understand all that it offered. But I was held rapt by it's imagery and language, a reading experience unlike anything else this year. Books like this make me happy that there are writers like Gabino Iglesias out there in the world, and publishers like Broken River Books brave enough to publish them.
"La frontera es un sitio malo, especially if you start caring about shit. La frontera es un sitio donde hay que ser un hijo de puta para sobrevivir. You have that, mijo. Don’t lose it. Nunca.”
GRADE: A

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