Westlake Soul
by Rio Youers
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Apr 10 2012 | Archive Date Sep 01 2012
Description
"All superheroes get their powers from somewhere. A radioactive spider bite. A science experiment gone awry. I got mine from a surfing accident in Tofino. The ultimate wipeout. I woke up with the most powerful mind on the planet, but a body like a wet paper bag. . . ."
Meet Westlake Soul, a twenty-three-year-old former surfing champion. A loving son and brother. But if you think he’s just a regular dude, think again; Westlake is in a permanent vegetative state. He can’t move, has no response to stimuli, and can only communicate with Hub, the faithful family dog. And like all superheroes, Westlake has an archenemy: Dr. Quietus—a nightmarish embodiment of Death itself.
Westlake dreams of a normal life—of surfing and loving again. But time is running out; Dr. Quietus is getting closer, and stronger. Can Westlake use his superbrain to recover . . . to slip his enemy’s cold embrace before it’s too late?
Advance Praise
“Rio Youers is one of the most vital, most exciting young talents
to come along in this decade . . . [He] writes beautiful phrases and
sentences, and he has an instinctive feel for horror’s flash points,
those moments in a novel when its author must demonstrate that
he can keep his head while his readers are cheerfully losing theirs.”
—Peter Straub
“Westlake Soul is a novel of astonishing beauty and skill. In every
generation there are writers who can reveal the souls of the
characters that live inside their stories while simultaneously laying
bare the secrets of the reader’s own heart, if only to them. Rio Youers
is such a writer, and Westlake Soul—with all its pain, terror, beauty,
wonder, and redemption—is such a novel: a classic in the making by
an unforgettable, major new voice in speculative fiction.”
—Michael Rowe, author of Enter, Night
“Rio Youers is one of the reasons why I’m incredibly excited about,
and optimistic for, the future of horror fiction. If you haven’t read
his work before then start right here! Westlake Soul is a novel about
the very essence of what it is to be human. Numinous, poignant
and achingly emotional, it is both deeply tragic and soaringly life-
affirming.”
—Mark Morris
“There are writers who are so talented that they can make you
see the external manifestations of horror in all their full-blown
Technicolor ghastliness. And then there are even more talented
writers who make you feel horror’s heartrending internal effects.
Rio Youers falls squarely into the latter category.”
—Dark Scribe Magazine
“Rio Youers’ storytelling is so charming, so affable, so apparently
effortless, that you’re still grinning like an idiot when the sheer
horror of his imagination leaps up and suckerpunches you in the
gut.”
—Robert Shearman
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781926851556 |
| PRICE | $15.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 250 |
