Kathe Koja's SKIN is possibly the best horror novel ever. This book will tear U up. MayB it's not really a horror novel in the classic sense -- no ghosts or vampires, just people being their usual dark unpredictable selves. But when somebody gets hurt in this book, U will hurt. Everything from the setting, characters & happenings to Koja's brilliant, abrupt, feverishly vivid writing style will hook U, involve U, & guarantee U'll have an unforgettable reading Xperience. This woman should be on the best-seller lists. The best novel I've ever read. Also great by Koja: THE CIPHER, BAD BRAINS, STRANGE ANGELS, KINK. Her short-story collection EXTREMETIES also has a few outstanding, visionary items in it. If U're a horror reader, U need to pick up Koja's work.

Koja explores the limits of flesh in SKIN,chronicling the
desire to transcend these limits in her own unique style.
This is a great modern novel concerning extreme body
modification and the physiological scars it leaves; it
is also an accurate look at underground culture. Koja is
one of our very best writers,and SKIN is a classic.

This was the first Kathe Koja book I ever read, and it was not the last. This book was great on so many different levels. I loved the writing style, long sentences and all. I especially loved the characters, Bibi and Tess, and the secondary characters of the performance troupe - they were presented as true artists of the industrial culture, the ideas at the heart of industrial music and its fans, not poseur whiny kids in cute black clothes. (Aside from Koja, I recommend Poppy Z. Brite and Caitlin R. Kiernan for getting past cliches of kids in subcultures.) This book was real and raw and different. I don't think the author was trying to "push" homosexuality on a reader or exploit it for book sales. What do people want? A label on books that says: Warning: Contents May Offend or Challenge Your Sensibilities? That's what good books are supposed to do! If one wants a label that says the opposite, perhaps one should look for books with Koontz and Rice embossed nice and shiny on the cover.

In the novel, Buddha Boy, Kathe Koja describes the life of two boys in high school. Justin had never been popular, but he has always had two great friends. Everyone had been talking about a weird new kid at school, but Justin hadn't seen him until lunch that same day. A boy came up to him, and asked him for money, and that's when he got his name Buddha Boy. Justin becomes friends with Buddha Boy and starts hanging around him. Buddha Boy gets invited to a very famous art school, and has to make a banner for the school to use to make sure he's ready for the challenge. The day of judging comes but things go terribly wrong. In the novel, Koja teaches that everyone's different, but you should still accept him or her. Find out what happens in Buddha Boy.

There are coming-of-age books that deal with some things that are simple -- like love and sex. And then there are those that handle the harder topics - such as fighting cliques, going against the social order, or confronting inertia. This book is in the latter category, and is more about Justin, than about Jinsen (the Buddha Boy). Jinsen is harrassed daily by his classmates. This is half high school tale and half mystery, as new facets of the chracters are revealed in each chapter. There is also a dollop of karmic buddhism to give the story some uniqueness. The author has created a realistic story of Jinsen, a teenager who decides to live as a monk with a shaved head, calming smile, new name, and begging bowl. Justin, who is assigned to an Econ class project with Jinsen, must then face guilt by association, and decide what choices to make when confronting his parents, teachers, class leaders, bullies, drama club members, and friends. What sounds like a canned stereotypical story turns out to have much deeper nuances.

Great book--similar to Stargirl by Spinnelli in that it portrays an individualistic teen who flaunts the established social behaviors. Would be great for discussion!

A lovely story about trust and letting go. Any dog lover would love this.

The protagonis is a girl named Rachle.The conflict is Rachle works parttime in a petstore and one sertin collie mix she names grrl goes crazy every time she goes a round her.

Rachel falls in love with grrl the dog, and they will learn to trust each other. A boy named Griffin thinks of a plan to take grrl home. Grrl isn't the only one she has to learn to trust.

This is a great action-packed book for boys and girls of all ages.

Kathe Koja, Straydog (FSG, 2002)

Over the course of my existence I've read somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand books. While I am one of those people who will start sniffling at the merest hint of decently-rendered emotion in a movie, and bawl like a baby when certain songs come on the radio, I've never been that way with books. With reflection, I've been able to think of three books that reduced me to tears while reading them (Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows, Kathe Koja's Strange Angels, and Clive Barker's Sacrament). Add a fourth to the list: Kathe Koja's newest offering, the short novel Straydog.

Marketed as a young adult title (but those of us who know Koja's writing know better), Straydog is the story of a high school outcast, Rachel, who volunteers at an animal shelter while not at school. She develops a bond with a feral collie brought into the shelter one day. While writing a short story to submit to a competition, she begins to identify with the dog to an almost supernatural degree.

Koja's writing is, as always, dead on in its ability to capture and explain the essence of the outcast in society. Anyone who was part of a fringe group during high school should be able to well identify with Rachel's words, and more importantly with her actions as she's thrust into unfamiliar situations. Straydog explores adolescent coming of age in a way few books have, and shines in so doing.

As usual where Koja is concerned, there is no comparison that gives a good understanding, no way to recommend the book based on anything you've already read; Koja is still too far out on the bleeding edge for that, with a style that approaches poetry in places and the same strong undercurrent of classic surrealism that runs its way through almost all of her work. (The only book I was put in mind of while reading this is Ursula LeGuin's novel Very Far Away from Anywhere Else.)

A shoo-in for the ten-best list this year, and will probably be at its pinnacle. *****

I just finished rereading BAD BRAINS...it still speaks to me,
as an artist. The process of creation is often difficult,and
sometimes,as Austen,Koja's protagonist finds out,the artist
must travel through Hell to find inspiration. BAD BRAINS is
Koja's second book; there are no wasted words in Koja's
surreal prose. The characters are memorable and I am haunted
by the images she evokes. This book is both beautiful and
grotesque and very much worth reading...

This book could have been the story of my life. Still could be. I reviewed it four years ago -- and my review still stands, right there where I said it's probably the best book I've ever read. Buy it. It'll do you good.

Bad Brains, which I was moved to purchase after reading a rave review by Linda Marotta, was the first book of Koja's that I ever read. I read it as slowly as possible, dreading the conclusion because it was so beautiful.

This isn't a novel for people seeking a good horror tale for two reasons. First, Koja is not a horror novelist, but because her books contain violent and often fantastic elements not seen in non-genre fiction, she is frequently referred to as one. Second, her books are powered by her magnificent prose, rather than by the usual story telling devices employed by Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz. With Koja, finding out what happens to the characters is less important than accompanying them on the journey. Her novels all deal with artists and their relationship with their art: her first novel, The Cipher, was about a poet; Bad Brains was about a painter; Skin was about a sculptor turned performance artist and Strange Angels was about a photographer.

Bad Brains tells the story of an artist named Austen Bandy who, after a nasty fall in a parking lot, suffers strange and powerful hallucinations and seizures, during which he sees and tastes a silvers sheen over everything. However, the book is mostly about the demands of art on its creator and how far he's willing to go for it.

It's a shame that it's out of print, but don't let that deterr you, look for it at auction sites and online used book sellers. It's worth it. Give Koja a few hours of your time and she'll change the way you view art.

Kathe Koja's work was hailed as something new and exciting when this novel first appeared. I believed the hype and ran right out and bought a copy. Ugh. My excitement over this supposedly great new voice carried me through the first twenty or so pages before her ridiculously rendered prose brought me to a halt. I put the book down and gave it another try some hours later, but the attempt to hack through this verbal tripe was useless. However, to give the author a chance to redeem herself, I slogged through the novel bit by bit until I reached the final page. What a monumental waste of time. Since then, I've been able to see her work in promotional and review copies, so I haven't wasted another dime on her name. I don't know who this work appeals to, other than a small clique of circle-back-patters and a couple of editors trying to justify their faith in this stuff. I've since learned not to believe the hype, and just patiently judge the merits of such "great new voices". Unfortunately, Koja's work has no merit.

Kathe Koja is a brilliant writer; reading her stories is a
true experience not only of the mind,but of all the senses.
THE CIPHER is a truly horrific novel,relying not on cheap
shocks,but going for your brain instead,affecting the reader on both visceral and intellectual levels. At a time when I was
looking for unique literary experiences,THE CIPHER was my wake-up
call. Reading Koja's stories makes me want to write. THE CIPHER
is Koja's first novel; the rest of her work(especially
her short stories) is absolutely wondrous and should be sought
out and devoured by bibliophiles.

...if your looking for
that story that sticks to the ribs and really intices (as opposed
to the general "light weight" material that seems to have infected both the music and literary industries in unison in
recent years), then you're in for a real treat.
I will not go into the specifics concerning plot, characters,
or anything in relation to "Cipher".
It is the literary equivalent of hearing Nirvana for the first
time or to seeing the movie "Dead Man"; beautiful,dark,comical,
brutal,and mezmerizing. ------------Enjoy!!!!!

There can be little doubt anymore that Kathe Koja is America's finest living writer. From the moment her first short story was published close to ten years ago ("Illusions in Relief," reprinted here), the world heralded the coming of the first truly original writer since Clive Barker, and Koja went-- and still goes-- places Barker has never trod. 1991 saw the publication of more stories and the first novel, _The Cipher_, which still stands as the single finest surrealist work in the English language. After a slight slip which shall remain nameless, she returned to publish two of those rare novels that are perfect in every way, Skin and Strange Angels. And throughout, every once in a while she'd unleash another story upon the world in some small, out-of-the-way magazine, or some small-press collection of cutting-edge horror bought by the few thousand faithful who are aware of the genius that is the "new horror." Meanwhile, the rest of the world has overlooked Koja and her contemporaries... until now. Four Walls Eight Windows, one of the most prestigious and well-distributed of the literary presses, has signed both Kathe Koja and Lucius Shepard, among others. _Extremities_ is the first offering of what I can only half-jokingly call the new era of Four Walls Eight Windows, and it's a barnburner, all right.

That's not to say it doesn't slip now and again. When Koja's on, she's on, and when she's off, she's still pretty close to on, but there's a difference in tone to those stories where she's off. They don't grab and hold quite as well. It's more allowable in an eight or ten page story than it is in a two hundred page novel like Bad Brains (oops, there, I said it), but there's still a change, almost as if the air around the reader warms a few degrees and becomes more comfortable.

So what is it about "the new horror" that makes it markedly different horror of the Stephen King variety-- and, for that matter, everything that's come after, such as splatterpunk, cyberhorror, and all the other neat little catchphrases-- deals in the monster, wheter that monster is the panther stalking through Central Park, the many-eyed horror from outer space, or the soul of a psychopath. And whether you show the panther (as in the 1982 Cat People) or show what may be the shadow (as in the 1944 Cat People), you're still dealing in the monster. "The new horror" likes to deal more in the surreal-- the horror is in the absence of the monster, or perhaps the fear that you'll open the door and the monster won't be there. Surrealism, defined, is mainly composed of unrequited longing, something that many of the new surrealists have never grasped. Perhaps, then, the mantle needs to come down to the (do I need to say it again?) authors whose fiercely original stories and novels cause far more shuddering than the new, ponderous tomes by the old masters.

And that's what Koja's done best, since day one. "Illusions in Relief" is a short, quite deranged story about an artist whose work is rumored to be, in some odd way, faith-healing. And as the story unfolds, you see that it's not faith-healing, it's something else entirely; but _what_ that something else is is never explained. You don't know. And you don't care, because some part of you doesn't WANT to know, just like you didn't want to know what was really at the bottom of the funhole in _The Cipher_ (or whether the funhole even had a bottom). It's never explained, and it shouldn't be, because what scares humanity most is that very lack of explanation. Once you know that the monster in the corner is a bathrobe draped over a chair, it's no longer scary. And horror doesn't have to be supernatural, either; "The Ballad of the Spanish Civil Guard" covers the last twenty-four hours of the life of Federico Garcia Lorca, and a more horrific twnety-four hours may never have been spent by any human being.

Extremities is not yet out of print, but judging by the length of time it took Borders to order it for me, it's probably pretty close. I'd suggest you find a copy of this as soon as humanly possible, or it will become just as hard to find as all of Koja's other books.

This short story collection is a gift, indeed. Kathe Koja's stories are so wonderful that I often scanned the shelves of bookstores for anthologies with Koja stories, then I'd sit and read her story in its entirety.

Now, at last, we have all of her stories in one volume. Buy this book, then seek out her novels, even the ones out of print. Koja is by far the best novelist alive and by signing with Four Walls Eight Windows and getting away from the horror publishing houses, she may finally get the attentions she deserves.

Favorites from this collection include "Angels in Love," "Bird Superior" and "The Neglected Garden." Buy this book now so you can start catching up on years of great reading!

It was so nice to read a collection of stories by an author with a truly original voice and style. Ms. Koja meshes prose and poetry to create a complex - yet unimperious - flow. I read this book quite some time ago, and I can still remember each story that comprised it vividly. That is the tattoo of a talented author.

My favorite stories were, by far, "Waking the Prince" and "Lady Lazarus", a wicked memorial to Sylvia Plath if there ever was one. Although some of the stories were better than others, it seemed to me that each story served as an integral part of the eerie-riddled beauty that Ms. Koja meant to create.

I went through three stages while reading "Kink". The first was, "Why is this guy so stupid?" The book is written from the point of view of the man in a three-way relationship and he does the dumbest things. This isn't a case of, "You're in a three-way, dummy, it doesn't get any better so quit complaining." No, he just does dumb things. I chalk it up to the book being written by a woman. I mean, a woman writing from a man's point of view is as difficult as a man writing from a woman's point of view. Difficult but not impossible and the author doesn't pull it off.

The second phase was, "Get on with it." I'm not familiar with author Koja's works but this book is wordy. It's entertaining at the beginning of the book but it grates after a while. I found myself searching for quotation marks which signalled that the book was moving forward.

The third phase was, "I have to find out how this ends--quickly." It was a good story, just poorly executed (if it was a movie I would have written, "Good story, bad script."). Because of Koja's wordy style, I was able to quickly get through the last third of the book and find out what happened to the characters and not just to finish the book. I really wanted to find out what happened to these people. The author was successful in getting me to care about the characters. I just didn't care much for the book.

Well...I guess I would say that I like this book. In fact it seemed amusing and humorous to me how incredibly inane Jess (the main character) was. There are moments where he seems on the verge of total stupidity and other times he just seems like your ordinary average clutz. Other than that, the characters seem pretty well drawn out. The plot gets confusing with what reminded of Kafka's writings. It's not a noir mystery, but somehow it carries just as stark an atmosphere as it deals with the little menage a trois that goes on in the story. Very interesting to say the least, but the story is confusing enough to make one want to read it again. Not that it would help...I'm still trying to figure some things out about it...I do like it though. Very visceral and a good read if you want something different.

This book is one of the most interesting I've ever read. It is somewhat satirical and looks at the frailties of human relationships.Jess, the narrator is an ordinary guy in a very unusual situation. He's in love with two women and must struggle both with his own psyche and selfish drives and the manipulitiveness of both women. This is a book about selfishness and it's consequences. It's not so much a plot-based book as a fascinating study of human relationships. Both dark and humorous at times and always intelligent and insightful. In summary, I loved it. Highly reccomended,

The title is at least half right. This book is strange but not in the least bit interesting. In fact, there isn't anything in this book remotely scary. It reads like a regular fiction novel. I agree with other reviews on this book: if you're looking for action, then you've picked up the wrong book.

"Strange Angels" is one of those books I clearly remember reading, for no other apparent reason than I was on vacation. It's also one of those books I had to read a second time to like, basically because my first impression was one of disappointment. I had thought "Strange Angels" was about--what else?--angels or some other type of supernatural entity, going by the synopsis on the back cover. However, I must have misinterpreted it, because the book isn't supernatural at all. It's about a photographer named Grant who becomes obsessed with his girlfriend's client, a mental patient named Robin, after he sees some of his drawings. Grant's interest in him has its repercussions, though, especially when he isolates Robin from his doctors and family in attempt to understand him better.

Koja's schizophrenic writing style perfectly suits the chaotic madness in both Grant and Robin's minds, making the story come more alive. Unfortunately, the ending is rather predictable and somewhat misleading. Mental disorders aren't as contagious as catching something like the flu, which makes me guess Grant wasn't all there to begin with. So, if you're into low-key, psychological horror, then you might like "Strange Angels."

As someone with manic depression, I related so much to both Grant and Robin. Grant needs to be surrounded by creative people and Robin needs his illness to keep his creativity flowing. This is a story that delves into mental illness and the lifestyles that a lot ill people live that we are not aware of. Koja's writing style is incredibly choppy...and I love it. It's dramatic and keeps you almost in Robin's mindframe, where the thought process is not the same as most. If you want something out of the ordinary that will pull you in, try this.