The Devil's Alphabet

A few years ago I was in the Chester County Book and Music Store (which I sadly believe is now defunct going the way of many brick and mortar bookstores) just browsing/wandering as I often do in such places.  Bookstores have fantastic energies that feed my writerly soul so if I'm feeling drained or listless I'll often venture there to recharge.  It's free energy.  In that particular venture I thought a key line of dialogue near the end of my story and I also ended up picking up a book by a hitherto unknown author by the name of Daryl Gregory called The Devil's Alphabet.  Pretty much any title having to do with angels, demons, devils, or gods will catch my attention and deserve at least a quick glance.  Most of the time they're usually metaphors, which I am also fine with, and sometimes I get really lucky and I find a story that's actually about such religious figures.  This book fell into the former category, but the blurb piqued my interest enough and I was in no hurry so I was able to read a few pages of the first chapter.  It was interesting, but I was either contemplating my current funds or already had too much to read/edit on my plate and I choose to abstain from purchases the paperback that day.  I thought about that book a LOT in the time between then and now, enough where I sort of regretted not buying it.  So when I signed up for Goodreads, I put it on my list of books to look for so I wouldn't forget and just a few days ago I downloaded for my Kindle so I could finally find out how the story unfolded.  I finished it in two days.

The Devil's Alphabet takes place in a backwater Tennessee town called Switchcreek where something both disastrous and extraordinary has occurred.  What was thought to be a disease swept through the rural town.  A condition called Transcription Divergent Syndrome (TDS) and it either killed, changed, or passed over the occupants, and when I say change I mean CHANGE.  The first wave left argos, giant 11-12 foot tall people with white/grey skin regardless of what your race or coloring had been before; the second produced betas, hairless, dark red skinned people who resemble seals; and the final changed people into grotesquely obese charlies (though nowadays I'm pretty sure I've seen people larger than what Gregory was going for with his charlies).

The main character Paxton Martin is what they call a "skip," one of the few that both survived and remained unchanged.  He left the town 13 or 14 years ago after the changes happened and the quarantine was finally lifted, fleeing to Chicago to escape the legacy of a dead mother and charlie turned preacher father. The story opens with him returning to attend the funeral of his once best friend Jo Lynn Whitehall who turned beta, had twin girls, and purportedly committed suicide.  Only expecting to remain through the funeral and aftermath before returning to Chicago and his pretty crappy life as a restaurant server, Pax is pulled into the mystery and intrigue of the town where the "clades" as they call them have in many ways segregated themselves, but still coexist and are held together by Aunt Rhonda, a charlie woman and self-proclaimed mayor.

The clades are as different from each other as they are from the rest of humanity, because TDS essentially rewrote their genetic code and DNA structuring.  Argos, betas, and charlies are not technically human, and there is some speculation about the condition being an invader from an alternative universe.  Betas can become spontaneously pregnant and always produce girls, often two.  This is both a relief and despair to Pax when he realizes that neither he nor Deke are the father of Jo's twin girls, since the three of them had a very strange/interesting sexual relationship after the changes.  Argos for the most part appear to be sterile, which is discovered with Deke and Donna, his argo wife, who are going through expensive fertility treatments in order to prove this isn't so.  As for charlies, once the men of that clade reach a certain age they start producing what's known as "vintage," a secretion from their skins that is high demand from younger charlie males since it makes women sexually attracted to them, but it also makes Pax insanely empathetic and addicted to the substance.  That...was definitely one of the weirder almost incestuous parts of the story where the reverend's son is essentially getting high off of his bodily secretions.  Kinda gross.  And through all of this is Rhonda who has a home for the older charlie men where she collects the vintage.

The running plot of the story is Pax trying to figure out what really happened to Jo.  Whether or not she actually committed suicide or if she actually murdered.  He's able to find her laptop, but it's password locked, and a good portion of the book is spent with her twin daughters trying to figure out a way into it.  Honestly, Pax really sucked a s main character.  He spent most of his time being strung out or getting beaten up by the huge younger charlie males for trying to sneak his dad out of Rhonda's home.  The vintage made him very empathetic, but it was hard to empathize with him.  He was also not very intelligent, which I hate in main characters.  Jo, who spends the entire of the story dead, is much more interesting.

What I did like is all of the issues this novel brings up.  Because betas become pregnant asexually, there was a huge question of pro-choice vs. pro-life.  This was ultimately what lead to Jo Lynn's demise.  She was kicked out of the beta co-op for having an abortion and then getting a hysterectomy.  There was a faction within there of girls wearing white scarves on their heads who believed themselves to be "purer" betas since they went through the change before puberty, had never had sex with a man, and where therefore having virgin births.  Jo's daughters were the first of the second generation betas who look "more beta" than humans changed to beta, as if the invading cells grow stronger in later generations.  They were revered because of this, but also hated because of what their mother did.  I felt this was a huge statement because to betas, an abortion was the worst possible thing anyone could do.  It was as if their bodies were wired to produce children and nothing else and they wholeheartedly believed this like a cult. The issue of drug use and abuse was brought up, but I feel more glossed over whereas the whole abortion thing was very heavily drilled.  Paxton is little more than a junkie who almost gets abducted himself in a plot to kidnap his father (who produces the best vintage) by a couple of younger charlie males who are annoyed that Rhonda is reaping all of the profits from this.

I really wish the novel had come to some resolution as to what really did cause the changes, deaths, or lack thereof in the people of Switchcreek.  It felt like Gregory was building up to it.  Each chapter/section was written in such a way to keep you reading more and more because you were waiting for that big reveal, but the novel falls flat in this.  We never find out WHAT caused TDS or why certain people changed, why certain people didn't, why certain people died.  If the answer was supposed to remain obscure, I feel that the author could've done a better job of keeping it that way.  Don't introduce all of these ideas and then leave them to blow away in the wind.  It feels like he presented a ton of ideas to get your mind racing, but then left you in top gear with nowhere to go.  I would've even been satisfied with a rumor or a clue of resolution.  Nothing big or conclusive.  Many scientific mystery novels do such a thing.  Throw something in that is possibly the answer, but that's never confirmed.  I don't think Gregory wanted to commit to anything, but when you have such a marked change in human physiology and biology, you need to.  I was more than willing to accept the parallel universe idea; that honestly was fascinating.  I think that would've worked very well for this story.  Cells from one universe competing with the others for survival taking the ultimate change/sacrifice and throwing themselves into another universe our universe and taking over human bodies.  This novel could've drawn on an almost Cthulhu like mythos, while still keeping its steady, southern slow tempo.  That would've been amazing to see such a thing from that lens of view.

I'd say 3 stars for this one for the ability to hold my attention for the length.  I'm not entirely disappointed because as I mentioned above the pro-life/pro-choice issue was very well done (though I definitely see preference for one side), but the main angle of the novel was never resolved.