About the book
A brutal assault nine months ago left eccentric portrait artist Micah with facial scars and PTSD. He’s struggled to leave his apartment ever since, and he can’t let anyone in. Then his only sanctuary is disrupted by signs of a haunting.
Between the 80s synth pop and motivation messages scrawled on his bathroom mirror, Micah finds himself more charmed than frightened by who he believes to be Cosmo, the deceased previous resident of his apartment. But when Cosmo’s ghostly visits suddenly stop, Micah is determined to lure him back.
Meanwhile, sculpture artist Cosmo – dramatic, unconventional, and very much alive – is mourning his old self. His boyfriend’s a serial cheater, he’s continually passed over for a promotion at work, and he’s lost contact with his best friend. To make matters worse, his apartment is being haunted by the ghost of a bespectacled man with an eye socket of scars. It’s his last straw, and seeking a new start, Cosmo moves out.
In a chance meeting, Cosmo and Micah’s paths cross again, and tentative sparks fly. But the phantoms of their pasts still linger. In order to find a future where they can both be happy together, Micah and Cosmo need to confront their trauma once and for all.
My Review
Thanks to Kai at Angry Robot for organising this tour. I love Al Hess’ books so I was looking forward to getting into this one. I received the book a few weeks ago and just got to it in time for the tour. I ended up reading most of it in one evening and finishing the last fifty pages the next afternoon.
Emotionally complex story of romance between two artists who help each other with their mental health problems through patience and love. They just happen to think they’re both ghosts for the first part of the novel and once they realise they’re both alive, they set out to discover the cause, save each other from monsters and make progress in their artistic careers. They’re both deeply traumatised by assault (physical and psychological) and have low self-worth – caused, for Micah by physical scaring and how people react to it, and, for Cosmo by how people treat him/them and ignore what Cosmo actual wants.
Hess’ skill as a writer is definitely increasing with every novel. This book was inspired by late night conversations about spacetime. The author has worked some interesting hypothesise into this novel; the dismissal of the simulation hypothesis is definite, while others are toyed with as Micah and Cosmo, and later Ximena and Deja with them, try to work out what’s going on. Hess’ experience as an artist also shows in this novel; it shows in the the way his characters talk about art and the art world. While sit am only on the periphery of the local art world, I can recognise some of the same elements. There are predatory people out there and the gossiping is constant. And bitchy.
The characters in Shake Out The Ghosts are complex and self-aware. Their motivations are clear and work through all of their actions. Deja is fabulous, and all of them demonstrate clear messages of consent, trust, mental illness acceptance and Queer acceptance.
The twin mysteries of who’s stalking Cosmo, and why they are being haunted by future ‘ghosts’ run in parallel. We never get an answer for the why, although the epilogue shows that their plan to help Other Micah and Other Cosmo works, while I sort of worked out who the stalker was about half way through, but I can see why Cosmo didn’t – he’s too close to the stalker and doesn’t see it until he’s forced to.
I had to stop 50 pages before the end because I couldn’t cope with the potential devastation before bed – the future ghosts show Micah and Cosmo some terrible things – but finishing the book in the light of a sunny day helped, and it wasn’t terrible, even with the car chase. And the emotional support knife. To say nothing of the graveyards and the notebook.
While World Running Down will always be my favourite Al Hess book, because it’s the first of his that I read, this one is a close second.
Also, Al, your drawings are amazing!
Al Hess
is the author of the self-published post-apocalyptic Travelers series and the 1930s flavoured dystopian series, Hep Cats of Boise. When not hunched before a computer screen, Al can be found at his art desk. He does portraits in both pencil and oil paint, and loves drawing fellow authors’ characters nearly as much as his own. He writes cozy and uplifting stories with queer, trans, and neurodiverse representation.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 