REVIEW: Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud
Crypt of the Moon Spider, the first book in the Lunar Gothic Trilogy, was one of my favorite books of 2024. Cathedral of the Drowned has even more entrancing writing, delightfully disturbed characters, eerie horror, and a whole lot more legs, eggs, and mandibles. If you can stomach it, this sequel will be one of your most memorable reads of 2025.
Veronica viciously reaped her revenge after surviving the nightmarish “treatments” at Dr. Barrington Cull’s lunar psychiatric facility in the first book. Now, Veronica is the reincarnation of the ancient Moonspiders. While not a POV character in this book, her presence hangs over the story. The moon itself is one of her many eyes as she hatches eggs and hunts Cull.
The majority of the book follows Charlie. The gentle half of his brain is now housed in a satellite that Cull launched into space to explore other planets, leaving Grub, his enraged half, somewhere in the Barrowfield facility. After crashing onto a moon of Jupiter, drowned priests take Charlie into a sunken cathedral spaceship sent long ago by Catholic missionaries (such a cool idea) for an audience with the Bishop, a hivemind centipede. Will Charlie give in to what the Bishop’s power offers? Without Grub, he’s fragile. Without Cull, directionless. Without Maggie, unloved. Perhaps he needs a carapace for such an exposed mind. And what to do about the murderous creature in the bell tower?
On earth, Goodnight Maggie’s gang verges on destruction. With the Sicilian mafia killing her men, threatening moonsilk supply lines, and sowing mutiny, she already has enough problems when a mutilated Dr. Cull shows up. On top of that, a ghostly satellite appears some nights in her room, awakening her love for Charlie through the moon silk. Can she dominate her gang, the Sicilians, Cull, lurking Alabaster Scholars, Veronica’s Barrowfield horrors, and her own heart? For Maggie, love both threatens and soothes, and her desire may be a more dangerous enemy than those with guns and fangs.
I didn’t expect to see myself in a lobotomized brain wrapped in spider silk and encased in a tiny satellite or sympathize with a mafia boss making out with a psychic centipede and her empowering surrender to his undulating legs. But here we are. As a less experienced horror reader, I’m learning this is the disquieting beauty of the genre. A gifted writer like Ballingrud can take something I have experienced, like trauma causing a schism within ourselves, and bring the idea to life (or death) in characters.
After the first book, I did expect to be transfixed by the prose in Cathedral of the Drowned. Months later, I’m still drawn back to certain lines.
A standout quality is the vivid precision with imagery, description, and choice of detail. It’s not just that the imagery of the sunken space cathedral is beautiful. Or that the descriptions of Charlie’s psychology are poignant and strange. It’s that he uses the perfect details: the way the sea surges, a carapace glistening in torchlight, how time distorts in a broken mind. Two descriptions that stuck with me were tongues like “questing slugs”, and people as “dreaming meat”. If you’re uncomfortable with spiders, centipedes, or body horror, the vivid writing may twist the knife too far, and I’d recommend picking up another book. For me, though, it was a can’t-look-away marvel.
Imagery plays into another strength: the book’s pacing. Despite the short length of Cathedral of the Drowned, the book isn’t afraid to use imagery to slow to a languid, dreamy pace, or stretch a scene to build suspense, then whiplash into quick action. One scene had me holding my breath like a kid driving through a tunnel until their lungs burn. Before I could exhale someone was pasted to a wall as a tortured incubator for spider eggs.
My favorite aspect of the writing is tone. In the first book, Veronica’s POV was eerie, dreamy, and full of metaphors to unmoor herself from depression and emotional claustrophobia. In Cathedral of the Drowned, the tone of Charlie’s chapters are just as captivating. He ranges from resigned, curious, horrified, yearning, desperate, and meek, yet the tone maintains a disturbing detachment that reads brilliantly. Since much of the disorienting horror is abstract and centers in Charlie’s mind, analogies and similes cleverly ground the reader, contrasting how they were used with Veronica.
I was excited for the writing in Grub’s chapters. What does the mind of Charlie’s rage sound like when everything gentle has literally been ripped away? Part of the difficulty of being brilliant is that even something great can feel disappointing. The language didn’t feel much different than Charlie’s. I’m curious if other people were bigger fans of those chapters and I just had particular expectations.
In such a diamond of a book, there was only a small crack or two. One was the Charlie/Grub reunion arc. To lovingly accept the ugliest parts of ourselves is beautiful. If that means uniting with an interdimensional centipede, so be it. I just felt like the emotional groundwork wasn’t there to pull at my heartstrings. Maybe mine were out of tune for these scenes, and others connected to it. I was struck by their insight into the relationship between rage and fear, though.
Going into the final book of the trilogy, my main interests are the roles of power, control, and self-protection among the three main characters. Veronica commands the Alabaster Scholars. The Bishop controls the drowned priests. Goodnight Maggie—the only non-psychic leader—keeps power over her gang with cunning, violence, and her form of love. Great storytelling, overall, and hopefully this setup is built upon.
Cathedral of the Drowned has set up an epic and truly horrifying arachnid vs. arthropod cosmic showdown. Grab your tinfoil hat and bug spray, because I think the final book will be fantastic.
Read Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan BallingrudThe post REVIEW: Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.
