Portals (or “doorways”) are appearing on Earth. On the other side of some of them await fiendishly hungry, shape-shifting horrors that possess cunning and intelligence, making them an extinction-level threat (“They always look like things we fear, predatory archetypes like reptiles, spiders, and others, but twisted, misshapen. They are also big, very strong, and hard to kill”). Tom Lafitte (taking his surname from the legendary pirate-hero of New Orleans, Jean Lafitte) is a Cuban native, introduced as a terrified orphan fleeing a 1909 campaign against nonwhites in the island’s hinterlands. He finds a surprising guardian and mentor in “Pan,” a cloaked figure ultimately revealed to be a personable humanoid robot. Pan, with infinite patience, tutors the peasant lad in science fundamentals and the network of enigmatic doorways, several of which he is tasked to close with early versions of EMP bombs. An increasingly careworn and battle-scarred Tom returns to the central story thread at intervals; other chapters follow the travails of additional survivors, automatons who outlast the human race, and even the monsters themselves. The nontraditional narrative skips over a great deal of scientific exposition (and millennia of evolution) and get straight to business, some of which is very violent and gruesome (in the “splatterpunk” mode). There are also flirtations with Lovecraftian demon-worship, Voudon/Santeria spirituality, and the meaning of sentience (or, for that matter, existence), alongside cameo appearances by two children’s-book favorites, The Velveteen Rabbit and The Wind in the Willows. If those sound like curious ingredients for a bloodthirsty SF/horror story gumbo…they are, but they constitute a novel diversion for genre readers looking for something a bit outside the usual “weird tales” fare that still delivers the requisite claws, fangs, and tentacles.
