As I write, 'Where the Gods Sleep' is not available in paperback, unless you have $497.01, plus $3.99 shipping. That's used, from a Goodwill thrift store in Virginia. I don't think so! Fortunately, I was able to buy a copy from Mike Duke himself for what it used to cost new. And this one's signed. Thank you, sir! Of course, if you're following along with my Books of Horror selection, it's also free on Kindle Unlimited, which is a great deal that you should leap at if you're on that platform.

It's a cosmic horror novel, clearly Lovecraftian from the outset with an abundance of adjectives, a collection of dreams and a bestiary of weird vast creatures to populate them, including an eerily memorable Manowar jellyfish god with an entire galaxy inside it. He uses "indescribably" as soon as the second paragraph, but also uses "humungous" a few pages later, which is more TMNT than HPL. And it's all about the one who called, an agreeably horrific vision for an elder god. And, yes, that's what we're dealing with here, albeit a new one to the cosmic horror mythos.

The one who called is Korrobbathith but we're initially here to follow the dreamer, Prof. Kenneth Marz. He memorably wakes up at the end of a marathon sex session with a callgirl who thinks she ought to pay him. She's Katydid Blues, which is my new favourite character name of the year. She says she's thankful to be chosen. Then he wakes up at the end of a class with a girl kneeling at his feet. He's losing whole days and, sure enough, it's because Korrabbathith is possessing his body a lot now. Of course, doing it during a class means that he's getting videoed, because, unlike back in Lovecraft's day, every student now has a smartphone.

Frankly, this updating of pulp era conventions to the modern day is one of the greatest successes of the book. Like 'The Call of Cthulhu', this is an assembled novel, compiled from multiple sources that include diaries, letters, case notes, interviews, e-mail correspondence, even a transcript of a news broadcast. None of them feel out of place because the story acknowledges the existence of modern technology and adjusts accordingly. When the girl at Prof. Marz's feet vomits up a ball of gelatinous filth and he distends his jaw to devour it whole, you can bet that goes viral on YouTube. The real question is how many people will believe it actually happened.

While Prof. Marz plays a pivotal role in this story—in fact, the pivotal role—he's far from the only character in play. There's Deputy Sarah Graham, now suspended after she investigates the weird ritual sacrifice reported on Retort Island, West Virginia. There's Gwenneth Anderson, the dean of the school Marz works at, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is secretly a cultist with her own goals. There's Fr. Rodrigo Garcia, Deep Initiate in the Blessed Hunters of Darkness. And there's Victoria Parker, who you've already met as Girl at the Feet of Prof. Marz. All of them get highly memorable scenes with them in the spotlight. Some of them live.

And, over the course of the book, those scenes add up into the typical sort of cosmic horror story but without the typical restraints. In most such tales, we tend to be shown the cultists as they go about their business to summon their eldritch god to rain down armageddon and we're shown an array of unwary travellers who get trawled into that nightmare. However, if that god ever shows up, it's to be capably sent away again by whoever has the right forbidden knowledge. You know it, because you've read it before, likely more than once.

However, this is not, I repeat, not that story. It starts out the same way, but Duke cuts the cables to the brakes. We realise early where it plans to go but, every time we think it's got as close as it will ever get, it promptly breaks through another boundary and keeps on going. Some of the fun for me was to try to figure out how far Duke is going to take it before I got to the end of the book and saw for myself. Let's just say I didn't figure it out and I'm especially eager to read the sequel that, as far as I'm aware, Duke hasn't written.

Another success is the way that he treats religion. Most horror authors who venture into this sort of territory reserve it for one religion, usually but not always Christianity. Here, the god banisher is who Korrobbathith calls the Carpenter King and His Father Jehovah, but other gods from many religions are seen as real too, or at least were before some of these elder gods ate them. When it gets seriously close to Big K's avatar opening the portal that will let him through, he visits a slew of spiritual sites to power up with neat lightning play and they're sacred to a slew of religions. I like how they bounce from Angkor Wat to Khajuraho to Petra to the Siwa Oasis to Stonehenge and on. I won't talk about the finalé, but it's agreeably equal opportunity when it comes to religion.

The scenes that many might consider the most horrific happen in Mexico at a site that's sacred to people who long predate the Aztecs: the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. Personally, while the happenings there are absolutely horrific, I found the most horrific scenes ones that are discussed with Katydid Blues by her parole officer. We hear her tell about how she became who she became and it's the most realistic, sadly everyday nightmare that I may ever have read in a cosmic horror novel. They don't tend to get this close to the gutter.

I liked this a great deal. It's a pretty quick read, my paperback running a couple of hundred pages with a few of those dedicated to black and white artwork that extends to edges of the book. That sounds odd but it works and so does the layout. The only flaw in the production is a growing curse for self-published and small press books, namely the wrong smart apostrophes. That's impossible to notice during chapters told in formal Lovecraftian language, but it's obvious in Katydid's slang when she gains the focus. That's annoying but hardly a major flaw in a singular take on a century old subgenre. I like contemporary cosmic horror but few authors get it right. Duke is one of them. ~~ Hal C F Astell