A review by jan_coco_day
The Cipher by Kathe Koja

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The Cipher opens with Nakota and Nicholas discussing the Funhole: a mysterious hole that has appeared in the storage room at Nicholas's apartment complex. The first line of dialogue in the novel is almost a challenge from Nakota to Nicholas: "You know it. The big black-hole thing, right?" This sets the stage for the most fucked up desire triangle in history: Nicholas wants Nakota. Nakota wants the Funhole. The Funhole wants Nicholas. 

Many stories in the horror genre describe a terror that disrupts the routine lives of normal people, putting a strain on relationships that the characters need to overcome in order to save themselves and each other. But there is nothing to save between Nakota and Nicholas from page one. "Nakota would rot differently from other people; she would be the first to admit it," is a *loving* description from Nicholas. Their relationship is about as toxic as you can get. The Funhole doesn't work on normal people like it works on the already depressed, anxious, narcissistic, and suicidal.

 The temptation for any review is to try to describe the Funhole. But it defies description because, while it is *something*, it is not a thing. It is an absence. Does it give anything? Does it take anything? It certainly wants ("want you") but its desires are incomprehensible. Nakota describes the Funhole as "a process." It is neither creative nor destructive, but both at the same time: transformative with no end product. And its medium is people. All the characters are crustpunk artists, but the narrator and focus of the novel is Nicholas, a noncreative entity who considers himself a failed poet--one who either never writes, or destroys what he is written while drunk so that he (or the reader) can read what he has written. Thus begins a downward spiral over what will destroy Nicholas first: the Funhole, or himself? 

Ultimately, the story offers no answers to the questions it arouses--as a novel with a hole at its center should be.</spoiler)
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