When I reviewed Karin Tidbeck’s story collection
The Barnes & Noble Review, I said that it distilled and hybridized “almost every writer in the VanderMeers’ massive anthology
The Weird. A century’s worth of potent surrealism and estrangement surge through her veins and onto the page.” With the publication of her new novel, I’ll have to refine my description of her work, at least in this instance, because the book reveals that it is the sharp arrow tip of one particular lineage of fantastika, not inclusive of every possible type. (And really, how could a novel, as opposed to a short-story collection, aesthetically incorporate a million different styles and emerge organically whole?)