The Haunted Stacks

review by Bec

I have a lot to say about this book.

The Necroscope is a story about consent, autonomy, spy shit, and a load of gross disgusting squishy necromancy.

Part of the premise is that there are two ways to get information out of the dead: the first is to speak to them, the second is to forcibly rip it out of their corpses.

Our main guy spends his childhood speaking to the dead; people who have been lonely for decades and desperate for someone to share their opinions and stories with. Through him, the dead learn to speak to each other (some mediums and exceptional minds could already do this, but not most dead people), freeing them from enforced loneliness. Everything Mr Main Guy gets from the dead is freely given.

Our baddie has the best, most visceral, recoil-from-the-book-in-your-hands, hideous scenes in the book. About 30 pages in we see him rip apart a body for information in such a way that means my chin is now permanently lodged between my C3 and C4 vertebrae. It was HORRIBLE. I loved it.

We follow them both getting up their antics, hijinks ensue, whatever.

What I want to talk to you about is how this story single handedly (pagedly?) cured my attention span issues and had me rapt for over 500 pages of what is largely men noodling around Romania and Hartlepool.

I haven’t been able to finish a 500+ page novel without skipping/skimming at least something since I was a teenager devouring hard fantasy and sci fi novels at the speed of… someone who has no responsibilities or other interests. I am easily bored now. It’s difficult to get me to care about characters. I have a load of little clowns who live in my phone to entertain me. More often than not, in order to avoid simply giving up on a book, I have to flip forward 10 pages every now and then to when something not as dry is happening.

Not so for the Necroscope.

This one really swept me up. The viscera! The cool powers. The texture of the place descriptions. Nothing feels pointless in this story. It never feels like it’s wasting my time. In the same breath, it doesn’t take itself seriously: I have never seen so many exclamation marks used in prose, for one thing.

I am completely baffled that this one seems to be at a 3.5 star average rating on Storygraph. If you like guts and gore, reading about how supernatural government agencies might work, spy shit, or generally having your brain chemistry altered by a Damn Good Story, definitely pick this one up.