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Daryl Gregory

The Devil's Alphabet: A Novel Paperback – November 24, 2009

by Daryl Gregory (Author)

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From Daryl Gregory, whose Pandemonium was one of the most exciting debut novels in memory, comes an astonishing work of soaring imaginative power that breaks new ground in contemporary fantasy.

Switchcreek was a normal town in eastern Tennessee until a mysterious disease killed a third of its residents and mutated most of the rest into monstrous oddities. Then, as quickly and inexplicably as it had struck, the disease–dubbed Transcription Divergence Syndrome (TDS)–vanished, leaving behind a population divided into three new branches of humanity: giant gray-skinned argos, hairless seal-like betas, and grotesquely obese charlies.

Paxton Abel Martin was fourteen when TDS struck, killing his mother, transforming his preacher father into a charlie, and changing one of his best friends, Jo Lynn, into a beta. But Pax was one of the few who didn’t change. He remained as normal as ever. At least on the outside.

Having fled shortly after the pandemic, Pax now returns to Switchcreek fifteen years later, following the suicide of Jo Lynn. What he finds is a town seething with secrets, among which murder may well be numbered. But there are even darker–and far weirder–mysteries hiding below the surface that will threaten not only Pax’s future but the future of the whole human race.

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Del Rey
Publication date

November 24, 2009
Dimensions

5.6 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches
ISBN-10

9780345501172
ISBN-13

978-0345501172
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Gregory (Pandemonium) produces a quietly brilliant second novel. As a teen, Paxton Martin left the town of Switchcreek, Tenn., to escape a scandal and the retrovirus that afflicted many of the town's inhabitants. Many died hideously, and most survivors turned into strange creatures: towering argos, parthenogenic betas, enormously obese charlies. A decade later, Pax returns home to attend the funeral of a close friend who has committed suicide. Hoping to avoid his estranged father, Pax plans to leave immediately after the funeral, but he soon finds himself caught up in both the complexities of his old life and the deep quantum weirdness that Switchcreek has become. A wide variety of believable characters, a well-developed sense of place and some fascinating scientific speculation will earn this understated novel an appreciative audience among fans of literary SF. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Daryl Gregory's first novel, Pandemonium, was published in 2008 and won the 2009 Crawford Award, given each year by critics and scholars of the fantasy field to "an oustanding new fantasy writer whose first book was published the previous year." The book was also a finalist for The Shirley Jackson Award, the Locus Award, and the Mythopoeic Award for best fantasy adult novel. Gregory's short stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's, several year's-best anthologies, and other fine venues. In 2005 Gregory recieved the Asimov's Readers' Award for the novelette "Second Person, Present Tense." He lives with his wife and two children in State College, Pennsylvania, where he writes both fiction and web code.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Pax knew he was almost to Switchcreek when he saw his first argo.

The gray-skinned man was hunched over the engine of a decrepit, roofless pickup truck stalled hood-up at the side of the road. He straightened as Pax's car approached, unfolding like an extension ladder. Ten or eleven feet tall, angular as a dead tree, skin the mottled gray of weathered concrete. No shirt, just overalls that came down to his bony knees. He squinted at Pax's windshield.

Jesus, Pax thought. He'd forgotten how big they were.

He didn't recognize the argo, but that didn't mean much, for a lot of reasons. He might even be a cousin. The neighborly thing would be to pull over and ask the man if he needed help. But Pax was running late, so late. He fixed his eyes on the road outside his windshield, pretending not to see the man, and blew past without touching his brakes. The old Ford Tempo shuddered beneath him as he took the next curve.

The two-lane highway snaked through dense walls of green, the trees leaning into the road. He'd been gone for eleven years, almost twelve. After so long in the north everything seemed too lush, too overgrown. Subtropical. Turn your back and the plants and insects would overrun everything.

His stomach burned from too much coffee, too little food, and the queasy certainty that he was making a mistake. The call had come three days ago, Deke's rumbling voice on his cell phone's voice mail: Jo Lynn was dead. The funeral was on Saturday morning. Just thought you'd want to know.

Pax deleted the message but spent the rest of the week listening to it replay in his head. Dreading a follow-up call. Then 2 a.m. Saturday morning, when it was too late to make the service--too late unless he drove nonstop and the Ford's engine refrained from throwing a rod--he tossed some clothes into a suitcase and drove south out of Chicago at 85 mph.

His father used to yell at him, Paxton Abel Martin, you'd be late for your own funeral! It was Jo who told him not to worry about it, that everybody was late for their own funeral. Pax didn't get the joke until she explained it to him. Jo was the clever one, the verbal one.

At the old town line there was a freshly painted sign: welcome to switchcreek, tn. population 815. The barbed wire fence that used to mark the border was gone. The cement barriers had been pushed to the roadside. But the little guard shack still stood beside the road like an outhouse, abandoned and drowning in kudzu.

The way ahead led into what passed for Switchcreek's downtown, but there was a shortcut to where he was going, if he could find it. He crested the hill, scanning the foliage to his right, and still almost missed it. He braked hard and turned in to a narrow gravel drive that vanished into the trees. The wheels jounced over potholes and ruts, forcing him to slow down.

The road forked and he turned left automatically, knowing the way even though yesterday he wouldn't have been able to describe this road to anyone. He passed a half-burned barn, then a trailer that had been boarded up since he was kid, then the rusted carcass of a '63 Falcon he and Deke had used for target practice with their .22s. Each object seemed strange, then abruptly familiar, then hopelessly strange again--shifting and shifty.

The road came out of the trees at the top of a hill. He braked to a stop, put the car in park. The engine threatened to die, then fell into an unsteady idle.

A few hundred yards below lay the cemetery, the redbrick church, and the gravel parking lot half-full of cars. Satellite trucks from two different television stations were there. In the cemetery, the funeral was already in progress.

Pax leaned forward and folded his arms atop the steering wheel, letting the struggling air conditioner blow into his damp ribs. About fifty people sat or stood around a pearl-gray casket. Most were betas, bald, dark-red heads gleaming like river stones. The few men wore dark suits, the women long dresses. Some of the women had covered their heads with white scarves. A surprising number of them seemed to be pregnant.

An argo couple stood at the rear of the group, towering over the other mourners. The woman's broad shoulders and narrow hips made a V of her pale green dress. The man beside her was a head shorter and skinny as a ladder. He wore a plain blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up his chalky forearms. Deke looked exactly as Pax remembered him.

The people who were seated rose to their feet. They began to sing.

Pax turned off the car and rolled down the window. Some of the voices were high and flutelike, but the bass rumble, he knew, was provided by the booming chests of the two argos. The melody was difficult to catch at first, but then he recognized the hymn "Just As I Am." He knew the words by heart. It was an altar-call song, a slow weeper that struck especially hard for people who'd come through the Changes. Leading them through the song, her brickred face tilted to the sky, was a beta woman in a long skirt, a flowing white blouse, and a colorful vest. The pastor, Pax guessed, though it was odd to think of a woman pastor at this church. It was odd to think of anyone but his father in the pulpit.

When the song ended the woman said a few words that Pax couldn't catch, and then the group began to walk toward the back door of the church. As the rows cleared, two figures remained seated in front of the casket: two bald girls in dark dresses. Some of the mourners touched the girls' shoulders and moved on.

Those had to be the twins. Jo's daughters. He'd known he'd see them here, had braced for it, but even so he wasn't ready. He was grateful for this chance to see them first from a distance.

A bald beta man in a dark blue suit squatted down between the girls, and after a brief exchange took their hands in

his. They stood and he led them to the church entrance. The argo couple hung back. They bent their heads together, and then the woman went inside alone, ducking to make it through the entrance. Deke glanced up to where Paxton's car sat on the hill.

Pax leaned away from the windshield. What he most wanted was to put the car in reverse, then head back through the trees to the highway. Back to Chicago. But he could feel Deke looking at him.

He stepped out of the car, and hot, moist air enveloped him. He reached back inside and pulled out his suit jacket--frayed at the cuffs, ten years out of style--but didn't put it on. If he was lucky he wouldn't have to wear it at all.

"Into the valley of death," he said to himself. He folded the jacket over his arm and walked down the hill to the cemetery's rusting fence.

The back gate squealed open at his push. He walked through the thick grass between the headstones. When he was a kid he'd used this place like a playground. They all had--Deke, Jo, the other church kids--playing hide and seek, sardines, and of course ghost in the graveyard. There weren't so many headstones then.

Deke squatted next to the grave, his knees higher than his head like an enormous grasshopper. He'd unhooked one of the chains that had connected the casket to the frame and was rolling it up around his hand. "Thought that was you," he said without looking up from his work. His voice rumbled like a diesel engine.

"How you doing, Deke."

The man stood up. Pax felt a spark of fear--the back-brain yip of a small mammal confronted with a much larger predator. Argos were skinny, but their bony bodies suggested scythes, siege engines. And Deke seemed to be at least a foot taller than the last time Pax had seen him. His curved spine made his head sit lower than his shoulders, but if he could stand up straight he'd be twice Paxton's height.

"You've grown," Pax said. If they'd been anywhere near the same size they might have hugged--normal men did that all the time, didn't they? Then Deke held out a hand the size of a skillet, and Pax took it as best he good. Deke could have crushed him, but he kept his grip light. His palm felt rough and unyielding, like the face of a cinderblock. "Long time, P.K.," he said.

P.K. Preacher's Kid. Nobody had called him that since he was fifteen. Since the day he left Switchcreek.

Pax dropped his arm. He could still feel the heat of Deke's skin on his palm.

"I didn't get your message until last night," Pax lied. "I drove all night to get here. I must look like hell."

Deke tilted his head, not disagreeing with him. "The important thing's you got here. I told the reverend I'd take care of the casket, but if you want to go inside, they're setting out the food."

"No, that's--I'm not hungry." Another lie. But he hadn't come here for a hometown reunion. He needed to pay his respects and that was it. He was due back at the restaurant by Monday.

He looked at the casket, then at the glossy, polished gravestone. Someone had paid for a nice one.

JO LYNN WHITEHALL

BORN FEBRUARY 12, 1983

DIED AUGUST 17, 2010

LOVING MOTHER

"'Loving Mother.' That's nice," Pax said. But the epitaph struck him as entirely inadequate. After awhile he said, "It seems weird to boil everything down to two words like that."

"Especially for Jo," Deke said. A steel frame supported the casket on thick straps. Deke squatted again to turn a stainless steel handle next to the screw pipe. The casket began to lower into the hole. "It's the highest compliment the betas have, though. Pretty much the only one that counts."

The casket touched bottom. Paxton knelt and pulled up the straps on his side of the grave. Then the two of them lifted the metal frame out of the way.

Paxton brushed the red clay from his knees. They stood there looking into the hole.

The late Jo Lynn Whitehall, Paxton thought.

He tried to imagine her body inside the casket, but it was impossible. He couldn't picture either of the Jos he'd known--not the brown-haired girl from before the Changes, or the sleek creature she'd become after. He waited for tears, the physical rush of some emotion that would prove that he loved her. Nothing came. He felt like he was both here and not here, a double image hovering a few inches out of true.

Paxton breathed in, then blew out a long breath. "Do you know why she did it?" He couldn't say the word "suicide."

Deke shook his head. They were silent for a time and then Deke said, "Come on inside."

Deke didn't try to persuade him; he simply went in and Pax followed, down the narrow stairs--the dank, cinderblock walls smelling exactly as Pax remembered--and into the basement and the big open room they called the Fellowship Hall. The room was filled with rows of tables covered in white plastic tablecloths. There were at least twice as many people as

he'd seen outside at the burial. About a dozen of them were "normal"--unchanged, skipped, passed over, whatever you wanted to call people like him--and none of them looked like reporters.

Deke went straight to the buffet, three tables laid end-

to-end and crowded with food. No one seemed to notice that Pax had snuck in behind the tall man.

The spread was as impressive as the potlucks he remembered as a boy. Casseroles, sloppy joes, three types of fried chicken, huge bowls of mashed potatoes . . . One table held nothing but desserts. Enough food to feed three other congregations.

While they filled their plates Pax surreptitiously looked over the room, scanning for the twins through a crowd of alien faces. After so long away it was a shock to see so many of the changed in one room. TDS--Transcription Divergence Syndrome--had swept through Switchcreek the summer he was fourteen. The disease had divided the population, then divided it again and again, like a dealer cutting a deck of cards into smaller piles. By the end of the summer a quarter of the town was dead. The survivors were divided by symptoms into clades: the giant argos, the seal-skinned betas, the fat charlies. A few, a very few, weren't changed at all--at least in any way you could detect.

A toddler in a Sunday dress bumped into his legs and careened away, laughing in a high, piping voice. Two other bald girls--all beta children were girls, all were bald--chased after her into a forest of legs.

Most of the people in the room were betas. The women and the handful of men were hairless, skin the color of cabernet, raspberry, rose. The women wore dresses, and now that he was closer he could see that even more were pregnant than he'd supposed. The expectant mothers tended to be the younger, smaller women. They were also the ones who seemed to be wearing the head scarves.

He was surprised by how different the second-generation daughters were from their mothers. The mothers, though skinny and bald and oddly colored, could pass for normal women with some medical condition--as chemo patients, maybe. But their children's faces were flat, the noses reduced to a nub and two apostrophes, their mouths a long slit.

Someone grabbed his arm. "Paxton Martin!"

He put on an expectant smile before he turned.

"It is you," the woman said. She reached up and pulled him down into a hug. She was about five feet tall and extremely wide, carrying about three hundred pounds under a surprisingly well-tailored pink pantsuit.

She drew back and gazed at him approvingly, her over-inflated face taut and shiny. Lime green eyeshade and bright red rouge added to the beach ball effect.

"Aunt Rhonda," he said, smiling. She wasn't his aunt, but everyone in town called her that. He was surprised at how happy he was to see her.

"Just look at you," she said. "You're as handsome as I remember."

Pax felt the heat in his cheeks. He wasn't handsome, not in the ways recognized by the outside world. But in Switchcreek he was a skip, one of the few children who had come through the Changes unmarked and still breathing.

Rhonda didn't seem to notice his embarrassment. "This is a terrible thing, isn't it? People say the word 'tragic' too much, but that's what it is. I can't imagine how tough it must be on her girls."

He didn't know what to say except, "Yes."

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0345501179
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey; Original edition (November 24, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780345501172
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345501172
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.6 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,491,209 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #39,756 in Paranormal & Urban Fantasy (Books)
- #42,677 in Horror Literature & Fiction

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Daryl Gregory

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Daryl Gregory is an award-winning writer of genre-mixing novels, stories, and comics. His latest novel, SPOONBENDERS, about a down-on-their-luck family with psychic powers, was published by Knopf in June, 2017, and is being developed for television by Paramount and Anonymous Content.

His recent work includes the young adult novel HARRISON SQUARED (Tor, March 2015), a Locus Award finalist which will be reissued by Tor Teen in 2018, along with two sequels. The novella WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY FINE won the World Fantasy award and the Shirley Jackson award, was a finalist for the Nebula, Sturgeon, and Locus awards, and is in development for television by Universal Cable Productions.

His SF novel AFTERPARTY was an NPR and Kirkus Best Fiction book of 2014, and a finalist for the Campbell and the Lambda Literary awards. His first novel, PANDEMONIUM, won the Crawford award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy award. His other novels are THE DEVIL'S ALPHABET (a Philip K. Dick award finalist) and RAISING STONY MAYHALL (a Library Journal best SF book of the year).

Many of his short stories are collected in UNPOSSIBLE AND OTHER STORIES, which was named one of the best books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly. He wrote the choose-you-own-adventure -style video game, "Flatline", for 3 Minute Games. His comics work includes the sereies "Legenderry: Green Hornet," "Planet of the Apes," "Dracula: The Company of Monsters" (co-written with Kurt Busiek), and the graphic novel "The Secret Battles of Genghis Khan."

He lives and writes full-time in Oakland, California.

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Adrienne

The story opens with him returning to attend the funeral of his once best friend Jo Lynn Whitehall who turned beta

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 25, 2016

Verified Purchase

Plot spoilers in review.

Prior to the events of the story, the prior named "disease" (if it can even be called that) comes in waves, the first of which left argos, giant 11-12 foot tall people with chalky colored flesh; the second produced betas, hairless, dark red skinned people who resemble seals; and the final changed people into immensely obese charlies.

The main character Paxton Martin is what they call a "skip," one of the few that both survived and remained unchanged by the virus. He left the town 13 or 14 years ago after the changes occurred and the quarantine was finally lifted, fleeing to Chicago to escape the legacy of a dead mother and charlie turned preacher father. The story opens with him returning to attend the funeral of his once best friend Jo Lynn Whitehall who turned beta, had twin girls, and purportedly committed suicide. Only expecting to remain through the funeral and aftermath before returning to Chicago and his pretty crappy life as a restaurant server, Pax is pulled into the mystery and intrigue of the town where the "clades" as they call themselves have in many ways become segregated, but still coexist and are held together by Aunt Rhonda, a charlie woman and self-proclaimed mayor.

The clades are as different from each other as they are from the rest of humanity, because TDS essentially rewrote their genetic code and DNA structuring. Argos, betas, and charlies are not technically human, and there is some speculation about the condition being an invader from an alternative universe. Betas can become spontaneously pregnant and always produce girls, often two. This is both a relief and despair to Pax when he realizes that neither he nor his (now argo) best friend Deke are the father of Jo's twin girls, since the three of them had a very strange/interesting sexual relationship after the changes.

Conversely argos for the most part appear to be sterile, which is discovered with Deke and Donna, his argo wife, who are going through expensive fertility treatments in order to prove this isn't so. As for charlies, once the men of that clade reach a certain age they start producing what's known as "vintage," a secretion from their skins that is in high demand from younger charlie males since it makes women sexually attracted to them, but it also makes Pax insanely empathetic and addicted to the secreted substance. That...was definitely one of the weirder almost incestuous parts of the story where the reverend's son is essentially getting high off of his bodily secretions. Kinda gross. And through all of this is Rhonda who has a home for the older charlie men where she collects the it. Gross.

The running plot of the story is Pax trying to figure out what really happened to Jo. Whether or not she actually committed suicide or if she was murdered. He's able to find her laptop, but it's password locked, and a good portion of the book is spent with her twin daughters trying to figure out a way into it.

Honestly, Pax sucked as main character. (Maybe his name was too "peaceful." Ah language puns...) He spent most of his time being strung out or getting beaten up by the huge younger charlie males for trying to sneak his father out of Rhonda's home. The vintage made him very empathetic, but it was hard to empathize with him. He was also not very intelligent, which I hate in main characters. Jo, who's dead throughout the entire story, is much more interesting.

What I did like is all of the issues this novel brings up. Because betas become pregnant asexually, there was a huge question of pro-choice vs. pro-life. This was ultimately what lead to Jo Lynn's demise. She was kicked out of the beta co-op for having an abortion and then getting a hysterectomy. There was a faction within there of girls wearing white scarves on their heads who believed themselves to be "purer" betas since they went through the change before puberty, had never had sex with a man, and were therefore having virgin births. Jo's daughters were the first of the second generation betas who look "more beta" than humans changed to beta, as if the invading cells grow stronger in later generations. They were revered because of this, but also hated because of what their mother did.

To the betas, an abortion was the worst possible thing anyone could do. It was as if their bodies were wired to produce children and nothing else and they wholeheartedly believed this like a cult. The issue of drug use and abuse was brought up, as well, but I feel more glossed over whereas the whole abortion thing was very heavily drilled. Paxton is little more than a junkie who almost gets abducted himself in a plot to kidnap his father (who produces the best vintage) by a couple of younger charlie males who are annoyed that Rhonda is reaping all of the profits from this.

I'm also not quite sure where the author falls on the pro-choice vs. pro-birth argument. Whether or not he was presenting the "white scarf" betas as a fanatical cult or as a beacon of righteousness, and since it's been years since I read the story, I can't remember all of the nuances. While I obviously do not and will not advocate suicide, I still find it poignantly fitting that Jo took her destiny and body into her own hands in choosing to have a hysterectomy. I can't say I wouldn't have done the same. It's a shame she was driven to that ultimate decision because her right to choose could not be accepted.

I really wish the novel had come to some resolution as to what really did cause the changes, deaths, or lack thereof in the people of Switchcreek. It felt like Gregory was building up to it. Each chapter/section was written in such a way to keep you reading more and more because you were waiting for that big reveal, but the novel falls flat in this. We never find out what caused TDS or why certain people changed, why certain people didn't, why certain people died. If the answer was supposed to remain obscure, I feel that the author could've done a better job of keeping it that way. Don't introduce all of these possibilities and then leave them to blow away in the wind. It feels like he presented a ton of ideas to get your mind racing, but then left you in top gear with nowhere to go. I would've even been satisfied with a rumor or a clue of resolution. Nothing big or conclusive. Many scientific mystery novels do such a thing. Throw something in that is possibly the answer, but that's never confirmed. I don't think Gregory wanted to commit to anything, but when you have such a marked change in human physiology, you need to make a decision. I was more than willing to accept the parallel universe idea; that honestly was fascinating. I think that would've worked very well for this story. Cells from one dimension competing with the others for survival taking the ultimate change/sacrifice and throwing themselves into another universe our universe and taking over human bodies. This novel could've drawn on an almost Cthulhu like mythos, while still keeping its steady, southern slow tempo. That would've been amazing to see such a thing from that lens of view.

I gave it three stars for its ability to hold my attention for the length. I'm not entirely disappointed because as I mentioned above the pro-life/pro-choice issue was very well done, but the main question of the novel was never resolved.

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Moses Siregar III - Tao of Moses YouTube

Literary SF in a Small Southern Town with a Great Sense of Humor Thrown In

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 4, 2009

Verified Purchase

I stumbled onto one of Daryl Gregory's short stories ("Unpossible") in a yearly anthology and instantly became a fan of his work. THE DEVIL'S ALPHABET is entirely different than Unpossible, but because of reading the short story first I expected to be left with a great feeling in the end and I was not disappointed.

I found something from Gregory himself in an interview he gave to Locus Magazine, and not surprisingly it describes the book well:

START QUOTE "I turned in my second novel, and it's totally unrelated to Pandemonium. Instead of a fantasy that feels like science fiction, it's a hard SF book that feels like fantasy. It's got a working title of Oh, You Pretty Things, a riff on the David Bowie song. It's about quantum evolution running wild in a tiny Tennessee mountain town. I'm calling it a Southern Gothic/science fiction/murder mystery." END QUOTE

I would've rather seen Gregory's suggested title and a less creepy-looking cover for the book, because I think that would have portrayed the book more accurately (plus, David Bowie). There is definitely enough suspense in the book (its biggest mystery is a whodunnit), but it isn't a fast-paced thriller, and it comes across much more charming than it does frightening. Yet its premise is a sufficiently weird SF/F one, and I mean that as a compliment. It's not a story with nice shades of grey.

The book reads like a rich literary work, especially, I think, toward the beginning. As the book goes along, I thought the pace picked up some and there is a bit less description. I thoroughly enjoyed the book from start to finish, though, and Gregory provides an excellent sense of place in the small southern town in the Tennessee mountains where the book takes place (cue: John Cougar Mellencamp music); I grew up some in the south, and I think Gregory did a rather good job describing it. Its characters are well-developed (Paxton, the main character, especially towards the second half of the book), and its premise remains interesting and oddly "believable." Oh, and I don't think I'll ever be able to get the image of Rhonda out of my head. If she starts haunting my dreams, I will have to track Daryl Gregory down and seek revenge.

What I liked most about it, though, was the sense of humor running through a good story. My favorite thing about Gregory's writing is his ability to throw in a hilarious line that fits completely within the context of the story he's writing; I laughed out loud about a dozen times. I also appreciated the realistic (and funny) references to modern Americana. One key character, for example, used to slick his hair down with Alberto VO5. That was in the second chapter, and at that point I knew it was going to be a fun ride.

Publisher's Weekly named it one of the top five SF/F books of 2009. Here's what they said about it, which I agree with:

START QUOTE "This subtle, eerie present-day horror novel mercilessly dissects and reassembles the classic narrative of a man returning to his smalltown birthplace, where the familiar folks have become strange creatures... Gregory (Pandemonium) produces a quietly brilliant second novel... A wide variety of believable characters, a well-developed sense of place and some fascinating scientific speculation will earn this understated novel an appreciative audience among fans of literary SF." END QUOTE

The "Stomping on Yeti" blog sums up something else that I wanted to say:

START QUOTE "There are books that grab you from the first page, dragging you along at a relentless pace. Then there are books that slowly seduce you with strong characters and until you find yourself captivated and caring more than you would ever expect. Daryl Gregory's brilliant sophomore effort, The Devil's Alphabet, is definitely one of the latter." END QUOTE

Most novels I try to read get thrown against the wall and abandoned before their half-way point. I read this one quickly, and happily, straight through. Its often southern-style pace was gentler than I expected from the cover and title, but its literary richness turned out to be a pleasant surprise and it was a quick page-turner for me nonetheless. I look forward to more stories and laughs from the author.

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josh

Has Some Great Ideas That Demand a Sequel

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 15, 2011

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"The Devil's Alphabet" by Daryl Gregory is a solidly written novel with some excellent ideas and spins on a sci-fi theme. The main character Paxton pulls himself from a dead end restaurant job to go back to his hometown when his childhood friend commits suicide. Having not returned in ten years it is still as he remembers it, full of mutated humans! The novel flirts with several possible reasons for why the majority of citizens of the town became mutated into one of three different mutant human types (1/4 died) and many of these have a surprisingly strong scientific base in reality. The best part of the novel, for me, was the scientific explanations that Gregory was able to provide that made the story more intriguing. Could it really happen? I wouldn't say so, but the ideas in the book are exciting none the less. I would also recommend that readers pay attention to the explanations for why the different human mutant groups act as they do.

If I seem vague it's because I want to avoid any possible spoilers.

The only criticism I have of the book is that it leaves many things unanswered. Paxton himself is not a very likeable character, but this is not as important as I thought it would be at the start of the story. Instead I was bothered by the feeling that the novel should be a couple hundred pages longer with more explanations and expansions on its major themes. As such the ending was a bit lackluster.

Overall the story should be attractive to any sci-fi fans that enjoy quick reads with cool ideas. I'm just hoping for a sequel!

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