King Nyx: A Novel
Staff Reviews
The Lives of the Monster Dogs came out in 1997 and instantly became a classic of strange, literary speculative fiction. 25 years later, we get King Nyx, which starts with real historical figures (Anna, wife of Charles Fort, investigator into the paranormal and godfather of American crackpotism) then sends them madly off into an arresting, dreamlike feminist gothic. I hope Bakis keeps writing, and I don't care if it takes another 25 years -- I will read anything she puts her pen to.
Description
A haunting mystery about lost girls and the woman driven to find them, from the author of the contemporary classic Lives of the Monster Dogs.
Anna Fort wants to be a supportive wife, even if that means accompanying her husband for the winter of 1918 to a remote, frozen island estate so he can finish his book as the guest of an eccentric millionaire. When she learns three girls are missing from a school run by their host, Anna realizes finding them is up to her—even if that means risking her husband’s career, and possibly her life.
Her husband’s masterpiece-in-progress features strange meteorological anomalies along with wild speculations about “facts” he believes scientists hide from the public. Most people think Charles Fort is a crackpot. That’s about to change now that wealthy Claude Arkel is his patron.
Yet Anna is sure something’s not right on Prosper Island, though the alarming return of her “troubles” makes her question her own sanity. Is the figure in the woods really the ghost of her long-lost friend Mary, or a product of her disturbed imagination? Accompanied reluctantly by a fellow guest, the elegant and troubled Stella Bixby, Anna embarks on a dangerous quest to find the missing girls before Arkel finds her—or her own mind unravels.
A contemporary feminist tale with a dreamlike, gothic setting, King Nyx reintroduces readers, twenty-five years after her acclaimed debut, to one of our most astonishingly imaginative storytellers.
Praise for King Nyx: A Novel
Bakis’ language throughout the novel is appropriately lush, moody and dark—perfectly gothic, endlessly readable... [T]hrilling with slow burn reveals . . . King Nyx is a complex fever dream of a gothic narrative, a little bit Jane Eyre, a little bit Bluebeard, a little bit feminist historical fiction, a little bit remote location murder mystery, even a little bit steampunk . . . timeless.
— Mahvesh Murad - Reactor
It’s all wonderfully bizarre... King Nyx is one of those thrillers that smuggle real substance into their scares without ever taking on a lecturing tone.
— Neil McRobert - Esquire
Bakis's gothic journey, rendered in mellifluous and dreamy prose, will keep readers turning pages long past midnight.
— Shelf Awareness
I enjoyed the dark, gothic tale of King Nyx and each of its elements, including the caged-bird metaphors, as well as the denouement.
— Bossy Bookworm
Bakis, author of Lives of the Monster Dogs, creates an atmosphere of gut-churning dread from the first chapter . . . Trouble happens quickly, and there are scenes so anxiety-producing that you might want to put the book down and check to see that your windows and doors are secure. King Nyx is a scary good book.
— BookPage
Bakis’ latest novel has the pacing and suspense of a smart literary thriller: it’s almost impossible to put down once you’ve started it.
— Kirkus Reviews
A new novel from Kirsten Bakis is a reason to be wildly excited. King Nyx delivers all I could’ve hoped for from an author of such great gifts. A tale of gothic mystery and mounting dread with a narrator who is troubled, insightful, and quite funny at times. This is a novel of delicious disquiet. I sank into this book like it was a warm bed, or a warm grave. Some of its scenes even made their way into my dreams.
— Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling
Enticing, shadowy, and wildly compelling, King Nyx transports the reader to a world where every ghost brings new revelations, and every secret, greater truth. A smoldering, feminist dream of a book.
— Ami McKay, author of The Witches of New York
I don’t generally believe in page-turners, but King Nyx actually is a page-turner, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it long after I turned the last page. Opulent, haunting, riveting, and centered around a great gothic mystery—it’s like a Wilkie Collins novel for modern feminists.
— Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You
A magnificently unnerving dream of a book. I loved devoted, clear-eyed Anna, and watching her navigate a world in which reality slips toward symbol—full of images that might be pulled from the most gorgeous and haunting nightmare—genuinely terrified me. King Nyx is a marvelous novel.
— Clare Beams, author of The Illness Lesson
Once I began reading King Nyx, I couldn’t stop. In Bakis’s hands, the real, previously unvoiced Anna Fort has a story she must tell, and the only way she can tell it is to travel to the eerie, atmospheric, murky realm of her memory. I was mystified and entranced to the very end, lost in Anna’s mind and the strange, frightening landscape she finds herself in. This is a bold feminist novel that I will return to again and again.
— Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive
