Yes oh all right huh no...no, surely - oh I see, no I don't see – what? All of them? Who's – oh yes. No! he would not do that. Ow, that must have – get him! No, her, not him. Ulp ergh. Too gynaecological! Dead Ringers meets Deliverance meets The Thing? Ha ha. What's this? God? God? Ridiculous. Author gone mad. This is the perfect Christmas present for your maiden aunt – the one you hope will die soon and leave you her house. Might speed up the process. Eurgh, I did not need that. Oh – aargh – ma...

"There's no such thing as Utopia, really. Not on earth."Nickle deftly takes things we should all fear: ignorance, prejudice, a deadly plague, forced sterilization, and religious fervor, then twists them together with some creepy, supernatural goings-on to create this unique, literary horror novel.The tugging pulled the sheet tight over his ankles and his toes and sent a chill up Jason's back. Something - the thing from the window - was climbing up from the base of his bed.Shiver.Chilling moments...

Pros: excellent writing, courageous, tight ending/Cons: the supernatural aspect isn't as scary as the historically accurate parts/Eutopia takes place in the early 1900's when the eugenics movement was becoming popular with a certain type of people. Mrs Frost, an agent of the Eugenics Records Office finds her nephew is the sole survivor of a plague ravaged frontier town. She brings him with her to Eilada, Idaho, where an industrialist has started what he intends to be a utopic community./But not

What an odd book. Reading it felt like listening to someone try to tell you about a dream they had: full of powerful images and gripping stories, all of which fail, by just a very little bit, to quite get across or make complete sense.I'm just the sort of terrible human being who can say, from experience, that there are MUCH better books about eugenics out there.

This is copy 4 of 41 signed numbered copies.

2.5 starsThis started out as a 4 star read for me. The beginning had mysteries and then a few very creepy scenes. Unfortunately as I learned more of what were behind the mysteries, the story had less of a creepy atmosphere and contained more icky scenes instead. On top of that, I felt like there were too many various elements thrown into the story that all were supposed to mesh together. It was just a bit over the top to me. The last 40 pages or so was a 1-2 star read.Overall, I give this book a...

A friend's grandmother once commented on her granddaughter's love of horror films featuring "stuff coming out the woods people ain't never even heard of." Well, Eutopia fits into that... uh, genre. It's billed as Lovecraftian, but the real horror of this novel is mankind's hubris. Highly recommended; super-duper gross.I read it in one sitting. True, it was my entertainment during a 12-hour travel day, but it kept me less resentful of that!

reading the sequel/bumping the first one - READ IT!like deliverance...with monsters!CZP is three for three!!i love this book. i always ask people to recommend me some good horror books because i just can't get scared by books, and i want to feel that lovely shivery feeling of "what's that noise!!??" "what is that shadow doing?? ahhhhhh!!" and while it's true i slept fine after reading this - i wasn't cowering in my bed with the blankets pulled up over my face for protection, there were several s...

An early (2011) entry in the Lovecraftian-but-confronting-Lovecraft's-awful-worldview genre, which is probably reaching its saturation point these days. Unlike the more recent examples, this one isn't explicitly a Mythos tale, but does take place in 1911, and features not-so-eldritch creatures and backwoods cultists, but also "rational" eugenicists (hence the titular wordplay). We have two protagonists here - Andrew Waggoner, a black doctor, and Jason Thistledown, a white country boy who just lo...

First published in April 2011 by ChiZine Publications, David Nickle’s novel of eerie horror entitled ‘Eutopia’ sets down a firm and establishing platform for the Canadian author to show the world his dark and imaginative capabilities.DLS Synopsis:Set in the bygone year of 1911, Jason Thistledown lays down his deceased mother in their nearby barn, leaving the seventeen-year-old alone in the world once and for all. With spring on its way and the unforgiving snow finally thawing, Jason sets his min...

Very disappointed by this one. The promise of an organized human experiment gone horribly wrong was enticing but the truth behind this part of the plot was a massive letdown. I was hoping for a purely scientific story of the blurry line between ambition and evil but the eugenical element of the story is simply crossbreeding between humans and fantastic creatures "discovered" in the wilderness of Idaho. I don't necessarily consider this a flaw but for those of you (like me) hoping for a purely hu...

Definitely in the running for the weirdest book I've ever come across. It reads like a science fiction-y story mixed with horror/medical thriller stuff but it takes place in the early 1900s and it has gunslingers, the KKK, mad doctors, really cool women, redneck-angel-messiahs, and a substance that is kind of like a hallucinogenic out-of-control germ that likes to kill large swaths of the population all at once. This was weird without being stupid or gratuitously esoteric and I have to say that

Eutopia was the kind of book that got into my head, seriously, I've been dreaming about it. The writing is very tight but descriptive and honest enough that it felt like I was diving into a Nickle's recreation of Idaho in 1911 every time that I picked it up. So much so that it was very jarring to return back to the "real" world when I had to put it down. Despite that, I read it in a little over two days and am still thinking about the historical and supernatural aspects. There was enough descrip...

Yuck!After reading the description of “The Juke,” the name of the monsters in this story, yuck is all that I can say.Seventeen-year-old Jason Thistledown is the lone survivor in the town of Cracked Wheel. Right after his mother dies, his “unknown aunt” comes and takes him away.They travel together until they reach the utopian village called Eliada, where “perfection” is the rule of the day.The “negro” doctor, Andrew Waggoner is being lynched with a strange creature, but the unknown creature does...

I really wanted to give this book 5 stars, but the last 1/4 of the story was a little underwhelming. The story of Jason Thistledown and the peculiar town of Eliada, Idaho is for the most part an intriguing tale; the extraordinary and transcendental happenings of a small mid-western town in the early 20th century which include KKK clansmen, degenerate hill folk, and an African Cave Germ provide enough mystery to keep the reader interested. When you tie in Nazi eugenics experiments, divine visions...

I was expecting this to be a story about the horrors of eugenics, but the whole eugenics aspect is more of a background thing. It gives the main character believable motivation, but other than that, the plot is a pretty run-of-the-mill monster story. It was creepy and well-written, sure. And the author gets bonus points for leaving some questions unanswered - horror is always scarier this way. I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure I enjoyed it enough to bother with the sequel anytime soon.

So this book is Karen's staff rec. and I think on her staff rec thingy she described it as "deliverance with monsters", but I had it before then when what stuck out from her review was plague, hill people, and eugenics. So when I started reading this and it as clearly about monsters I was more than a little confused. When David asked me yesterday what I was reading, I told him something about monsters, he responded "the drug addict aliens" and of course I had to say no that was another book. Whi...

I’m not the best judge of horror, but I’ve read Lovecraft, Poe, King, and good writing is good writing. Good writing carries over to a book regardless of genre. And there’s plenty of good writing in David Nickle’s “Eutopia.”“Eutopia” is set in the early 20th century and explores the world of American utopian movements, and the almost instantly corruptible science of Eugenics, how easily our desires for a utopian society can be exploited and corrupted no matter how idealistic the original intent....

Noting special here. I felt that something was missing and in truth I wasn`t so captivated by the story or the characters, so this was just an two stars read. Not my cup of tea.

I was going to give this book 5 stars, right up until the end, where it became unclear what was going on. Up to that point, the author managed to maintain a clarity of language, and create a weird and disorienting setting, but then about the last 50 pages or so, shit stopped making sense. I found the use of the n-word to be uncomfortable, crossing from portrayal of the time into excess where it might be rightly called out as endorsement, even though I don't think that was the intent. The treatme...