The Cipher is a classic of horror fiction and one I have been meaning to pick up for some time. This book feels like sinking your teeth into the dark, or jumping into the abyss. I felt swallowed whole while reading this novel, and hollowed out at the end.

The basic premise is simple: Nicholas and Nakota find a pitch black hole in a storage room. They call it the Funhole and become increasingly obsessed with it.

Kathe Koja’s writing is dark and grimy. You can see the mess of the shitty apartment, the clutter of the storage room where the *Funhole* resides. You can feel the tension in the relationships between characters, and the hopelessness of a shitty job or an unrequited love. This novel isn’t just an exploration of the perhaps supernatural phenomenon that is the Funhole. But it is also an exploration of the blackness and bleakness within ourselves, an exploration of those moments when we head *toward* self-destruction instead of away, whether in the form of a substance, an obsession, or a toxic relationship.

This book, and the despair in it, took me back emotionally to some dark times I have had. The impact of reading this was profound. This book will stay with me for a long long time.

Koha’s writing style isn’t for everyone. Her prose is meandering. She writes how I think, so I very much like it. Others may find it distracting. I thought it served the narrative very well. There are parts of the book where we are inside Nicholas’s head, wallowing in his despair with him. I again thought this served the narrative very well, others may feel that some of this could be shortened.

Lastly, the audiobook is absolutely perfection. The delivery is so perfect. I did follow along in text, and I think it made the audiobook accessible. The prose is complex enough it was difficult to only listen, but following along in my Kindle was absolutely perfect.

This was a 5 star book for me and one I am sure I will read again in the future.
I received a digital copy of this book from Net Galley, in exchange for an honest review. I purchased the audiobook on my own, and would honestly have read this even without a free copy!

I LOVED this book. It was such an engaging and interesting read. My attention never diverted from the story because I had to know what waams happening and when I got to the end, it was so good. Highly highly recommended.

If it wasnt for the bloated middle then this would have been an easy four stars for me. Maybe even five. Unfortunately it becomes repetitive, and, dare i say it, boring around the halfway mark for a while.

Still, this novel is superb in places. Full of revolting characters and grotesque imagery, all written in kojas gorgeous, gritty prose. I cant wait to read her less famous novels and see if they hold up.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. I’ve been interested in reading this book for years but unfortunately it is not for me. Nicholas’ stream of consciousness is making it impossible for me to get into the story. DNF @ 27%

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book. After I started reading, I realized this is a book I had read before and enjoyed. Enjoyed more the second time around. Now, it is extremely weird, but I love books like that. And yes, you may need a shower after reading, but not for the reasons you might assume. Lol

This was an interesting story. It has an intriguing setup and the first third was great. After that, the story seemed to really bog down and not go anywhere. It began to get very repetitive and I found myself pushing to get through it. The writing is great, written in an almost stream of consciousness style, which I really enjoyed. I think this would have been a great short story or novella. I will definitely be reading more Kathe Koja stories, but this book was just not for me.

I feel dirty. These are the most unhygienic characters I've ever encountered. Their flat is filthy, they don't do laundry and one character constantly drips fluids from an open sore on his hand all over the bedding. I feel the need of a shower after reading the book; which says a lot for how descriptive it is.

Told from alcoholic Nicholas' stream of conscious, the story tells of how he and sometime lover, most times frenemy, Nakota find a supernatural hole in a storage closet. They dub it the Funhole and their fascination with it and how it takes over their lives leads us along. Just what is the Funhole? That's what Nicholas and Nakota and their soon-to-be troop of followers attempt to find out. Is it dangerous? Yes. What is its purpose? We don't know.

I don't generally like first-person narratives. I find them distracting and often confusing. This is the case with this book as well. We are treated to Nicholas' bodily functions, his less than hygienic lifestyle and his often wandering thoughts. All of the characters, with the exception of two minor characters, are unlikable. The two main characters being the worst.

Aside from that, the book did suck me in. The premise is good and the fact that I felt grimy after each reading session speaks to the author's descriptive ability. We follow the moral decay of both Nicholas and Nakota as they become more and more enthralled with the Funhole. I'm always up for a good horror story and this one does deliver. I just wish Nicholas would have done laundry once in a while.

A captivating premise, with vivid and bleak settings and characterizations, told in awe-inspiring prose -- but the story drags in the middle, ultimately feeling overly long even for the short page count.

I’ve never read a book quite like this before. It starts out a little mundane, beginning with the characters already knowing about “the black hole” (dubbed “the Funhole”). It kicks into high gear quickly.

Nakota (Nicholas’ former girlfriend) finds a strange black hole on the floor of an old storage room in Nicholas’ apartment building one night after a drunken party. “Black. Not darkness, not the absence of light but living black. Maybe a foot in diameter, maybe a little more. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you looked at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive, not even something but some - process.”

Nakota shows it to Nicholas, but she immediately becomes obsessed with the hole herself. At first it’s just the two of them, staring at it every night. Nicholas is both drawn to it and repelled. Nakota becomes extremely interested in what might be inside the hole.

They try a couple of experiments putting various objects down the hole, and not much happens. Until Nakota gets the idea to send a living thing down the hole. They start with a jar of bugs, which come out grotesquely deformed, and then a mouse down attached to fishing line... things do not go well for the mouse. Next, Nakota gets ahold of a dead hand. I won’t give away what happens with that.

Finally, a video camera is lowered into the hole. This turns out to be the worst mistake. The video that they get is basically insanity. Nicholas and Nakota are not only shocked by it, but can’t make any real sense of it. Nakota becomes obsessed with the video, watching it over and over for hours, sometimes days. Unfortunately, she feels the need to share this obsession, and tells a bunch of people about it. They end up sitting in the apartment watching it for hours. But now they want to see the real thing.

Unfortunately for Nicholas, without him nobody can see the hole. He is often forced into the room so people can see it, and once seen they can’t get enough. More and more people just end up spending most or all of their time between the Fun Hole and Nicholas’ apartment; some invited, some not. Nicholas starts to be dragged down to the storage room at their whim.

Things just get stranger from here. I feel like I could go on for longer as events spiral out of control until the equally crazy ending.

I’ve probably made this sound more like a book report than a review, but honestly , to even talk about it I feel I need to give enough detail for it to make sense.

I did enjoy this book, even with so much confusion and obsession. Everything that that happens near this hole is incredible, crazy, violent or greedy. Greedy for control of the room, control of who gets to see it. Even the very few people who don’t want be be involved end up involved merely through proximity. In the end, it’s just Nicholas and Nakota with the fun hole. “...she said I was the key. But what happens when you put that key in the door?”

Thank you to Netgalley for letting me read this book in return for a review. I forgot to put this part in originally, oops! I also put it in a comment to make sure everyone who already read the review sees it, hopefully. My first free book and I forget to say thank you, how’s that for gratitude. The fact that this book was free in no way affected my opinion in this review.

Originally published over 30 years ago, The Cipher was the debut title in the Dell/Abyss horror line and earned Kathe Koja a Bram Stoker Award for Best Debut Novel, as well as a Locus Award, and has been routinely mentioned on various lists as one of the best horror novels ever written. Out of print since the Dell/Abyss line collapsed in the late 90s, available only as an ebook, The Cipher finally returns in paperback thanks to Meerkat Press (publisher of Koja's recent short story collection, Velocity) this September.

The premise is as simple as it is odd - Nicholas, and his sometimes lover Nakota, discover a black hole in his apartment building's storage room. There's no rhyme or reason to its existence, and the whys and hows of its being remain unexplored. Over the course of the book's 260 pages, the two become increasingly obsessed with the void Nakota has named, strangely, the Funhole. Although neither are scientists (he's a video store clerk, she's a bartender), they conduct their own brand of experiments on the Funhole, lowering a jar of bugs inside, a detached hand from their morgue attendant buddy, and then a video camera in search for more information. The Funhole changes things, and, in turn, Nicholas and Nakota begin to change as well.

The Cipher is a dense, dark, grungy, complex read and it's definitely not for everybody. It certainly wasn't for me, I have to admit. The Cipher is a slog to read through, the race through its pages less a marathon sprint and more a challenge of plodding endurance and a single-minded determination simply to finish, just so you can say you competed. Koja's writing style is very stream-of-conscious, narrated via Nicholas's first-person-perspective. He drones on for incredibly long stretches of time in paragraph after paragraph of oddly constructed, jumbled, punctuation be damned, run-on sentences. His thoughts are a challenge to tackle, and Koja really makes you work at understanding his ideas and concepts, as he circuitously guides you through one weird moment after the next. A poet when he's drunk, we get glimmers of his literary stylings through his speeches and Koja turns some rather marvelous phrases, like "a good morning is still a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night."

Throughout The Cipher, there's a strong focus on art and artists. Koja, herself an artist who creates immersive performances, attempts to apply a similar aesthetic over the course of this work. For better or worse, when reading The Cipher, you exist within it, breathing the same dank, stale air as its characters. Koja masterfully creates a certain dark mood and leaves you to wallow in it. Our characters are wannabe poets, sculptors, mask makers, and their various hangers-on from the local gallery where Nicolas and Nakota go to score free wine. The story itself has a particular art-house flavor, feeling very much like an edgy film student's art project, reveling in pretentiousness and the weird in equal measure with its indie 'Fight Club meets The Fly' aesthetic (and yes, I'm aware The Cipher predates Fight Club by a few years; just go with it, huh?). By the halfway mark, though, it all just feels much too bloated, overly long, and repetitious as each successive chapter becomes little more than a retelling of the same simple premises over and over and over. Whatever forward momentum and intrigue The Cipher possessed in its opening chapters -- and there is quite a lot of both, to be fair -- dissolves into formulaic rinse-and-repeat storytelling as Nicholas and Nakota, their obsessions over the Funhole placing them in opposition to one another, bicker and fight and grow increasingly deranged, and they continues their own experiments with the perfect black hole.

It's a real shame novellas weren't as en vogue in 1991 as they are today, because The Cipher could have made for one hell of a powerful novella, or even a long short story. There's a lot of richness to these characters, moods, and the core ideas here. As a full-length book, though, it's grows increasingly plodding. Koja is forced to not just recycle but beat the ever-loving shit out of the dead horse that are her singular ideas and scenarios surrounding the Funhole, over and over and over to hit a novel-length word count. This, too, is a shame, because there's a lot of excellent metaphors and examinations of depression, toxic relationships, and unrequited love that could have been better served by being distilled down to their essences rather than bludgeoning us over the head with the same premises chapter after chapter after chapter. What was once thoughtful and engaging in The Cipher ultimately turns boring and annoyingly repetitious, not just stalling the narrative but grinding it to a damn halt, until you're forced to wonder, exhausted with this book and its characters, just how much longer Koja's going to drag things out, when and if anything is ever going to finally happen, and when the hell is it all going to finally be over?

A Terrifying Romance

Now here's a love triangle for you -- Nicholas loves Nakota; Nakota, (aka Shrike), loves a black, pulsing, devouring hole that possibly leads to hell; the hell-hole, (aka Funhole), loves Nicholas. Who's going to come out the winner in that one?

Our three main characters all appear within the first three pages of the book. As Nicholas and Nakota circle each other, and circle the Funhole, the tension and horror ratchet up. Nothing "big" happens. Nicholas and Nakota do things with and to each other, and do things with and to the Funhole. Without them being consciously aware, the Funhole also does things with and to Nicholas and Nakota. It's a dance of life and love and self-loathing and fear, all circling around a pulsating black drain that leads to somewhere else.

The hole has materialized in a dark otherwise empty storage room in Nicholas' apartment. The hole responds, (if response is the right word), only to Nicholas. Almost all of the action takes place in that storage room or in Nicholas' nearby apartment, to which the characters occasionally retreat to regroup and rethink. Lots of talk and lots of slow-motion lower-case gore, because the Funhole changes things. It changes them physically in a very bad way, and it probably changes them mentally, in an even worse way.

Since it's all about darkness, self-awareness, obsession, love, power, the grotesque, possession, misery, salvation, art, artists, flat beer, and lives half-lived, you can make this book a metaphor or allegory that covers pretty much any aspect of the human condition that you find interesting or care to name. Have at it. I enjoyed this, (although it is overlong and gets the wanders half way through), mostly because of the premise, a few set pieces, the sharp edges on Nakota, the dull edges of Nicholas, the perfect creepiness of the Funhole itself, and the abundance of elegant and pure individual sentences. If that's not enough to recommend a book, I give up.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

It's easy to see how Kathe Koja's 'The Cipher' became a classic of horror fiction: this is a brutal, unsettling book with clarity of imagination and control of style. It's also one of the few books I've encountered that builds the feeling of fear primarily though otherworldly disgust, rather than terror or alarm, and in that way it is a unique experience.

My main criticism is that I would personally like a bit more plot. The characters are well drawn and active, but the overall structure feels like a series of vignettes and tableaus, such that the main story advances are focused nearly entirely on changes in relationships and interpersonal dynamics; the characters' material situations, motivations, and goals shift much less over the course of the narrative.

For all that, though, it is very thematically rich. This is a book about art, addiction, desire, control, and helplessness, and as other reviewers have noted it resists easy analyses. There are many people and other entities that could arguably be the titular 'Cipher,' and any individual symbol stands or could stand for many different things. I'm glad I read this - I'll be thinking over it for some time to come.

The Cipher, written years ago, but hard to find, now available in ebook form. Fantastic, as I finally got to read Kathe Koja's first book. It was well worth the wait, and holds up perfectly. The blend of horror and fantasy is great. Definitily would recommend this book to anyone who loves horror, and anyone looking at the history of horror, and changes that occurred along the way.