REVIEW: Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher
From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award–winning author T. Kingfisher comes an enthralling contemporary fantasy seeped in horror about a woman trying to escape her past by moving to the remote US desert—only to find herself beholden to the wrath of a vengeful god.
With only a few dollars to her name and her beloved dog Copper by her side, Selena flees her past in the city to claim her late aunt’s house in the desert town of Quartz Creek. The scorpions and spiders are better than what she left behind.
Because in Quartz Creek, there’s a strange beauty to everything, from the landscape to new friends, and more blue sky than Selena’s ever seen. But something lurks beneath the surface. Like the desert gods and spirits lingering outside Selena’s house at night, keeping watch. Mostly benevolent, says her neighbor Grandma Billy. That doesn’t ease the prickly sense that one of them watches too closely and wants something from Selena she can’t begin to imagine. And when Selena’s search for answers leads her to journal entries that her aunt left behind, she discovers a sinister truth about her new home: It’s the haunting grounds of an ancient god known simply as “Snake-Eater,” who her late aunt made a promise to that remains unfulfilled.
Snake-Eater has taken a liking to Selena, an obsession of sorts that turns sinister. And now that Selena is the new owner of his home, he’s hell-bent on collecting everything he’s owed.
TW – animal in danger but don’t worry, the dog lives, the MC has heavy social anxieties
Once upon a time, she could talk without worrying about it, and didn’t run every sentence through her head a dozen times first.
Dear Ms. Kingfisher,
This is a funny short novel that combines found family, self discovery, plus growing creepiness about a situation few, if any, of us could ever imagine ourselves in. Though the book is being tagged as a horror story, I really think it is more tension and dark fantasy.
There was so much sky that it was hard to think. In the city, there were walls you could put your back against, doors to shut, places to hide. To hide out here, you’d have to crouch down and worm your way under one of the scrubby little bushes, and you’d probably get a faceful of spines for your trouble.
Selena and her black lab mix Copper arrive in the small town where Selena’s aunt lives only to find that Aunt Amelia died a year ago. Selena is fleeing from a controlling relationship that everyone but she could see was toxic. Now alone with her dog and a small suitcase plus $27, she’s almost overwhelmed. That is until the entire town pretty much pitches in and takes her in. As the major/ postmistress/police chief tells her, “we don’t get a lot of people moving in.”
If the two windows were eyes, then the left one was half closed into a wink by the rioting vine. The porch sagged into a smile. The desert was enormous and the house was very small, but it looked brave and rather hopeful.
It reminded her of Copper when she was a puppy, deeply convinced that the world was full of kind giants who loved her, and if she only waited long enough, one would come and play.
Selena might keep insisting that she’s only saving up enough money to buy her return ticket but somehow, with the help of her nearest neighbor Grandma Billy, the local Catholic priest, and a town that manages to be welcoming while not being too outlandishly eccentric, Selena starts to settle in. Then she starts hearing horrific screams at night, thinks she’s being watched, and begins getting “gifts” from a roadrunner. Selena is about to discover there’s more to this area, and its life forms, than she ever realized.
“Weird energy, huh? Anything more specific you can tell our listeners?”
“I can tell ’em I don’t like it. It’s all angry and jittery and . . . look, it’s weird. That’s all I know.”
The story starts a little slowly as Selena and Copper arrive and begin to know this very small, isolated town. At first it seems like the kind of small town that will turn eerie and creepy after dark almost immediately but no, that doesn’t happen. Instead Selena frets about her finances and how she’ll feed her dog, worries that she’s done something foolish and that she ought to just go back to her old life after she earns enough money to do so.
Grandma reemerged from the house, carrying a shotgun.“Relax,” said Grandma. “It ain’t loaded. Yet.” She patted her pocket.
“You’re going to walk into a church with that thing?”
“Gotta, if I want it blessed.”
Little things she says – she’s got a lot of scripted comments memorized as she often doesn’t know what to say or says what she later thinks is the wrong thing – and her worries about meeting new people and not being a burden or thought foolish show us how her mother (yech) and later boyfriend Walter (asshole) have emotionally controlled and beaten her down. Selena is actually a nice person who loves her dog, tries to help others but whose confidence will need to grow. A lot.
No, I am not okay, I am not remotely okay, I am the farthest thing from okay.
Grandma Billy is a bit of a larger-than-life character but she’s also a hoot in the best sense of the word. Selena is taken under her wing, and soon Grandma Billy has our girl planting a garden, attending the local potluck dinners at the Catholic church, and starting to blend in even if Selena is still saying she’ll be leaving. Staying in her aunt’s old house, Selena starts to learn the ways of desert living including that there might be spirits around and it’s better to live and let live if possible. She also begins to read her aunt’s journals, has moments when she thinks she’s being watched, and has some wild dreams.
The idea that something magical had attacked her was surreal enough, but that the attack had involved rayon was entirely too much. You could have a world of magic or a world with synthetic fabric, not both.
One of Selena’s main fears is that she will unknowingly do or say something wrong and suffer for it. Well, yeah that happens here but in a way that few of us would understand either so no finger pointing at her. One thing Selena is told and actually sees is how real life roadrunners are. Nope, they’re not the cute Warner Brothers cartoon character constantly foiling Wyle E. Coyote. They can be mean little mofos and have earned their nickname of snake eaters. Grandma Billy warns Selena about them and also not to kill any javelinas – for good reasons.
It was profoundly absurd that being the assistant manager at a deli would prepare you to fight a god. But it was profoundly absurd that there were gods in her garden and that a roadrunner would turn out to be a frightening little dinosaur of a bird and that your best friends would turn out to be an elderly chicken lady and a Catholic priest.
“Okay,” Selena said. “Okay.” She couldn’t believe she was saying this, but Grandma Billy was grinning so hard that it was the only thing she could say. “Let’s go kick Snake-Eater’s ass.
When things go corkscrewy because of the fact that Selena truly didn’t know what particular etiquette rules she was breaking, it’s going to take all her courage, Copper’s love, Grandma Billy’s chutzpah, Father Aguirre’s knowledge of local lore as well as his prized 1950 Ford F-1 pickup truck and assistance from some of the “locals” Selena manages to impress in order to get her out of a tricky situation.
She had to say something. “You believe there are monsters?” she asked. “Like—really?”
“Of course,” said Father Aguirre. “There have always been monsters. The ones in the desert are a bit more straightforward than the ones in men, that’s all.”
“And fewer people complain if you shoot them,” said Grandma Billy.”
This is a slow moving story so don’t expect a lot of action until near the end. I enjoyed getting up close and personal with the amazing desert environment, although I don’t think I could ever live there, as well as learning local lore. Copper is the sweetest dog ever. Grandma Billy is a great neighbor to have. Father Aguirre is Da Bomb and would be fun to have theological discussions with. Selena does gain in self confidence and knowledge of herself and by the end, stands up for herself against two males who think they can push her around. But I think she is still a work in progress by the end of the epilogue. I’m confident though, that she’s found her place and her people. B
~Jayne
“Meep, meep, motherfucker.”
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I’m not one for scary books, @Jayne, but this does sound intriguing! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
@Kareni: There are some of her “horror” stories that I haven’t been able to bring myself to read but I did okay with this one. More creepy than horror.
“…you’d probably get a faceful of spines for your trouble.”
As someone who lives in the southwestern desert, I can confirm that you would absolutely get a face full of spines if trying to hide under any one of the bushes around here. And roadrunners are absolutely little dinosaurs.
@Kris Bock: ☺ From her author’s note, she grew up out west and she and her husband recently moved to New Mexico. When she set her book “Hemlock and Silver” in a desert environment, I thought “She must have moved from North Carolina because the desert details are just too exact to guess at them.”