Tussling with the unknown always comes with inescapable risks, but men generally only find madness and heartache when they start looking for meaning in an impossible universe. Gentler than Melville but less redemptive than Coelho’s magnum opus, The Alchemist (1993), this unpredictable adventure novel offers a heady reflection on science, faith, and the necessity of myth. Sampson “Gentle” Montgomery is a man in profound grief, soothed only by heroic doses of “Sweet Vitriol,” a potent combination of opium and laudanum. His best friend and scientific partner, Liam O’Kelly, is dead, killed by a gargantuan alabaster salamander terrorizing the Pacific Northwest circa the 1890s. Gentle is convinced that he can use his partner’s knowledge of alchemy, combined with the beast’s blood, to resurrect Liam from the grave. But a hunting trip takes money, a problem soon solved when Gentle’s runaway nephew, Kitt, shows up at his door, fleeing habitual abuse from his father, Gentle’s cruel brother, Emmanuel. Together, they head into the frontiers of Washington State, armed only with a copy of Liam’s alchemical spellbook, but they’re not alone. Before long, they’ve run afoul of a hypermasculine hunter named Hercules Belmont and a maniacal frontier warlord, Reverend Judge Malcolm Crane, not to mention a nihilist death cult, infected by apocalyptic visions generated by the animal they’ve dubbed “Leviathan.” Costa’s debut uses familiar building blocks, from the inherent quest for an impossible creature to the frontier violence that works so memorably in Stephen Graham Jones’ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025). Whether Gentle is a visionary or a drunk, whether the salamander is a creature of flesh or a shared delusion, and ultimately, the meaning of the mission is as much about human frailty and grace as the nightmares that stalk the page.
