Words, formerly normal, that now unnerve me thanks to Cathedral of the Drowned: meat, scoop, jelly.

Words that were already uncomfortable that got worse: glutinous, birthed, slurry.

Words that I use to describe Cathedral of the Drowned as a result: brilliant, disturbing, devouring.

Yes, devouring. I had the sense, while reading, that rather than devouring it, it was devouring me. I couldn’t put it down, and it fully consumed my evening as I read it all in a single breathless sitting.

Sometimes a sequel is a sophomore slump, or a lot of setup for the third act. This is so, so not. An escalation, an elaboration, and absolutely a masterful next step, Cathedral of the Drowned is the perfect continuation of the story kicked off in Crypt of the Moon Spider. We see what established characters have been up to and get to meet new ones. We also get to do more than peek outside the window of the moon asylum. Though it didn’t feel it at the time, Crypt of the Moon Spider was a very narrow slice of world, one woman’s limited experience as she arrives on the moon. Now we see beyond, to Earth and to Io, the moon of Jupiter, and understand a far greater context.

Goodnight Maggie is our guide to the earthside world, a woman who was briefly introduced in the first book but didn’t do much more than set the stage for Charlie’s story. Now, we see her and get to know her whole criminal enterprise as she searches for a way, no matter how strange, to get Charlie back She handles the usual gang enterprises of racketeering, booze, and so forth, but also has a monopoly on moon silk. The strange substance from the moon spiders is not just good for the neurosurgical experiments we saw in the first book. On earth, it’s a strange sort of opiate and a workable material, put to use in all kinds of eerie and enchanting ways, including as the bowstring for a violin.  

It’s a lucrative trade but a dangerous one, and the new Sicilian immigrants want to move into Maggie’s turf. Yes, the Mafia has arrived in this alternate New York, though this isn’t quite The Godfather II.

Nostalgia for an imagined past is tired (not to mention frequently problematic, these days). Nostalgia for an imagined future is where it’s at. Ballingrud takes us back to the possibilities of the turn of the 20^th century, as well as its ugly realities. Rocket ships to the moon and all the other planets do not undo the low, brutal exploitation of immigrants just as they did not erase the sexism and stigma of mental illness in the first book. There are horrors in history, and Ballingrud does not mean to spare us from them.

Though lurid at times, this is not splatterpunk, nor does it try to offend. It is upsetting on its own merits, which are within the bounds of the time and the world beyond it, which is cosmic horror-adjacent. I say adjacent because there’s not a sense that the universe is fundamentally unknowable, or that vast powers are at work but fully indifferent to us. Things are strange out there among the stars—very strange—but there is a sense to them, and a meaning. The entities Charlie, Maggie, Grub and the rest encounter are not sublime, only terrible and wondrous. And yes, crawling. This book, and this series, will infect you, swarm you, invade you.

Let it.

Cathedral of the Drowned comes out October 21, 2025.