Cathedral of the Drowned (The Lunar Gothic Trilogy, #2) by Nathan Ballingrud Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genres: Gothic, horror, science fiction horror
Series: Lunar Gothic Trilogy #2
Pages: 144
Published by Tor Nightfire on August 26, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
The sequel to Crypt of the Moon Spider, Cathedral of the Drowned is a dripping, squirming, scuttling tale of altered bodies and minds.
There are two halves of Charlie Duchamp. One is a brain in a jar, stranded on Jupiter’s jungle moon, Io, who just wants to go home. The other is hanging on the wall of Barrowfield Home on Earth’s own moon, host to the eggs of the Moon Spider and filled with a murderous rage.
On Io, deep in the flooded remains of a crashed cathedral ship, lives a giant centipede called The Bishop, who has taken control of the drowned astronauts inside. Both Charlies converge here, stalking each other in the haunted ruins, while a new Moon Spider prepares to hatch.
My Review:
Today is Halloween, so I was looking for something creepy and horrifying to review today. Considering that I was both enthralled and totally creeped out by the first book in the Lunar Gothic Trilogy, Crypt of the Moon Spider I was completely unable to resist the tendrils of this second book in the trilogy so here we are. Or there we shiver. Or both.
Definitely both, because now I’m even more creeped out – but still fascinated. And a bit appalled at that fascination. And appalled yet again.
If Shelob used both We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart and W.M. Akers’ Westside as birthing chambers for her monstrous children you might get something like Cathedral of the Drowned – and it would crawl all over you and quite possibly take a few bites along the way.
Crypt of the Moon Spider began with a bit of real world horror – the ease with which husbands and fathers could consign inconvenient female family members to bedlam – and moved that whole atrocity to the Moon by way of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne’s steampunk science fiction.
Which is when things got really strange. Things that are even stranger yet in this second book, with gang warfare over the spidersilk trade devolving into lunar drug running and earthly murder – along with a foray into an entirely new level of monstrosity in the bowels of a ‘cathedral-ship’ drowning on Jupiter’s moon Io.
It’s a battle of eldritch horrors, as the Spider Queen of Earth’s Moon meets the Bishop Centipede of Io in a battle for who controls the minds that roam behind the spacelanes and between the worlds.
While the perpetrators and the victims fight and die in places far from home in time, space and sanity.
Escape Rating B: The first book was a bit more coherent – or more of the story was seated in a fully human consciousness. Or in merely more single consciousnesses. Although I’m not sure if any of the characters in either book have consciences.
Which is, in a weird way, one of the few bright spots in this book. The situation in Crypt was utterly fucked, and so were a lot of people in it. A lot of the ones who made the situation in that first book so horrifying, starting with Dr. Cull, get their just – and justifiably horrifying – desserts in this second book.
(And OMG I’m facepalming because that name is so apropos and I didn’t see it until just now.)
I’m recognizing that I’m not completely coherent in this review. The story absolutely did catch me in its web – but it’s a web that’s sticky and oozy and stings in several spots and isn’t remotely comfortable to be in. (Speaking of both coherence and comfort, the UK covers for BOTH books in the trilogy are better IMHO than the US covers. They’re still creepy, but in a way that’s a tad more comfortable. Or make more sense. Or do a better job of reflecting something that’s in the story.)
From a certain point of view, its protagonist is poor Charlie Duchamp, a man who has been betrayed at every turn – even by the other half of himself as he has literally been divided in two. He hates himself and he kills himself and his halves succeed at one purpose and fail at another in a way that sets up the third book in the trilogy and eek I’m not sure I want to see how it ends but I also feel compelled to find out how it ends.
And whether or not the solar system ends with it.
