THE FISHERMAN by John Langan

A bril­liant and mes­mer­iz­ing novel by John Lan­gan, THE FISH­ER­MAN begins as a tale of two wid­ow­ers and their attempts to come to terms with unimag­in­able grief. The nar­ra­tor, Abe, lost his wife to can­cer some years ear­lier; his friend Dan’s loss is more recent and, arguably, more bru­tal. Next to friend­ship, fish­ing is the great­est gift Abe has to offer Dan. In the search for new places to try their luck, Dan comes up with Dutchman’s Creek, which omi­nously enough, seems not to exist on any map and fig­ures promi­nently in local lore.

Here Lan­gan diverges from his orig­i­nal plot and goes into a lengthy, some­times mean­der­ing story told by the owner of a diner where Dan and Abe stop on their way to Dutchman’s Creek; it’s a dark tale of sor­cery and the fate of a man named Rainer and sets the back­ground for what is to come.

With the his­tory of Dutchman’s Creek estab­lished, Lan­gan returns to Dan and Abe, their bat­tle against the Fish­er­man, and the cos­mic forces in league against them. Here Lan­gan sweeps the reader into a mythic realm of mon­strous sea crea­tures, sur­real seascapes, and shapeshifters capa­ble of chang­ing from hideous denizens of the deep into that for which the men might sell their very souls.

Even with its fan­tas­tic imagery of a creek flow­ing through hell itself, THE FISH­ER­MAN tran­scends genre. Above all, it remains a very human story of loss, friend­ship, and redemp­tion that is sure to cap­ti­vate a wide vari­ety of readers.