Synopsis
<b>When a metal band’s lead singer vanishes in the woods, the mushrooms in the forest might know more than they’re letting on in this mycelium-metal horror novel from Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Jo Kaplan.</b> <i>The dead collect in low places.</i> That’s what Brynn Werner, lead singer of metal band Queen Carrion, wrote in her notebook before she vanished while staying at a cabin in Oregon’s Umpqua National Forest. A year later, on the anniversary of her disappearance, the rest of her bandmates visit the cabin to remember her and find a way to move on. But tensions arise over who should be their new singer and who is responsible for Brynn’s disappearance — tensions that boil over as they realize not all is as it seems at Trail Creek Cabin. Strange entries in the guestbook write about visions of a pale form that moves through the trees, figures wearing gas masks lurk in the distance, and there’s a strange fungus growing from the wall of a tunnel in the cabin’s basement. Then they hear Brynn’s voice echo impossibly through the forest — and the pale form that emerges from the trees is her perfect likeness. Is it her ghost… or something else? Brynn knew there was a secret in these woods. It’s why she chased her muse here to finish her masterpiece. <i>The Midnight Muse</i> is an alluring and grotesque dissection of self and fungus. Kaplan delivers an ominous spiral of psychological torment as the members of Queen Carrion slip into a more <i>natural</i> skin.
