Tom's Crossing (Mark Z. Danielewski) REVIEW

 

TOM’S CROSSING

By Mark Z. Danielewski

Review by Matt Adcock (@Cleric20)

Twenty-five years after House of Leaves delivered a nuclear strike on readers’ brains, Mark Z. Danielewski rides back into view with Tom’s Crossing and death rides with him.

Set in Utah, 1982, this 1,232-page beast follows two teenage outcasts, namely Kalin March and Tom Gatestone, whose friendship ignites a small-town legend. When Tom dies young, Kalin swears to save the two horses his friend loved most from being slaughtered by local meat baron Orwin ‘Old’ Porch.

What starts as a rescue mission becomes something far bigger. This is the tale of a manhunt, a myth, a reckoning where the living and the dead both have unfinished business.

You know when a book grabs you from the first page and grips you, takes over your waking thoughts and makes you count down the minutes until you dive back in? Well that's what Tom's Crossing did to me!!

Tom’s Crossing trades basements for mountains, ink for dust, and typeface trickery for something rawer and more universal. Sentences roll like thunder, break into whispers, double back on themselves.

There’s a new kind of terror, too; it’s not the creeping dread of House of Leaves, but the fear invoked by the brutality of human rage and consequence. Old Porch, furious and armed, becomes an avatar of everything toxic in power and patriarchy. He’s a villain as Biblical as he is believable, a man so desperate to maintain control he will do unthinkable things and blame the kids who fled with his horses.

By the time Kalin and Tom’s sister Landry, reach the high pass of Pillars Meadow, the novel has transcended the western and turned mythic. You could say it’s part Iliad, part Blood Meridian, part ghost-lit American scripture.

For fans of House of Leaves, (as we are at Darkmatters) Tom’s Crossing is a revelation. Reality and myth burn through the lens of how memory ‘bends’ truth, leaving stories of the dead.

It’s sprawling, gorgeous, probably longer than it needs to be, but isn’t that part of the point? Every legend worth the name has room for exaggeration.

Tom’s Crossing is a singular, howling achievement, what feels like a million pages scrawled by a poet of the uncanny. It’s violent, lyrical, and unafraid of its own bigness. This is Danielewski burning a new trail, through blood, bone, and the language of the American myth.

By the end, I felt haunted, exhilarated, and strangely grateful that House of Leaves wasn’t a fluke.

An epic of grief, friendship, and redemption that dares to find ghosts not in walls, but in wide open sky.

Out of a potential 5, you have to go with a Darkmatters:

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(5 - A blood-soaked miracle of storytelling… this is the Western reimagined as an elegy for both the living and the dead.)

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Matt lives The Life of a Showgirl (review)

Taylor Swift: 

The Life of a Showgirl

By Matt (@Cleric20) Adcock 

It starts with static.

Not silence, static, like the sound of old Hollywood trying to reboot itself on a dying hard drive.

Then comes the hum.

A synth shiver, a breath that feels half-human, half-machine. And then: Taylor.

Not the wide-eyed ingénue. Not the cardigan poet.

This time, she strides onto the virtual stage as something other.

A cyber goddess in sequins, transmitting heartbreak across the grid.

This album feels like watching fame eat itself in slow motion, neon fangs and digital mascara, but Taylor doesn’t flinch. She conducts the whole shimmering disaster with a flick of her hand. The Life of a Showgirl is a concept album disguised as a pop record, a fever-dream manifesto about identity, illusion, and the cost of being adored.

It’s an album that wants you to dance but also to look at what’s twitching under the glitter.

There’s a line (in “Wi$hli$t”) that caught me sideways:

“We tell the world to leave us the fuck alone, and they do.”

That’s the thesis right there.

Swift has always been meta, but here she’s radioactive. She’s uploading memories into melody, weaponising charm, rewriting the firmware of femininity under pressure.

The Songs That Glitch Beautifully

“Wi$hli$t” is the purest heartbreak code,  a twilight lament whispered into the circuitry of longing and playfully taking down those vibing life’s superficial desires…

“Elizabeth Taylor” isn’t just a song, it’s a séance. She channels the old-world glamour ghost like it’s living inside her bloodstream fame as both mirror and curse. When the beat drops, you can almost hear diamonds cracking.

And “Honey” … oh God. It’s narcotic, dangerous, sticky with desire and self-awareness. It could be a love song or a weapon. Maybe both. The sweetness turns venomous, it’s a reflection that’s been selling her to the world.

Taylor’s production team have made this thing sound like a memory you shouldn’t have access to: a sleek pop one moment, distorted VHS playback the next. It’s Blade Runner Barbie filtered through Black Mirror, scored by the ghosts of disco balls past.

There’s no filler, just confessions in chrome, sighs encoded in reverb. Even when she falters, it feels intentional, like she’s daring the façade to crack.

The Life of a Showgirl will mesmerize you and burn a Taylor-shaped silhouette onto your neural interface and leave you wondering if any of it was real.

By the time the final track fades, you half expect her to wink and dissolve into pixels.

Because that’s the trick, isn’t it?

The real Taylor Swift doesn’t exist anymore.

She’s still touring in 2242 - check my Complete Darkness comic 😀