Welcome to the world of Inbetween!
The World In Between, the land of Half-sleep, the afterlife, purgatory – this “level” is defined in various ways. It is the place where the souls of the dead after death go. It is a world parallel to our material world. It is not heaven or hell, although it is much closer to the latter. What can happen to us there? The wraiths, the dead tormented by their inability to get out, and over and over again committing suicide, believing it to be the last time. Others, unwillingly believing they are dead and looking for a return. Demons, monstrous apparitions, skeksy – ghostly, bird-like harbingers of death. Drinking the health of the living, from which health escapes in a parallel world.
The World Of Between offers many attractions!
“(…) nowadays computers also have souls.”
In the land of Half-sleep everything is built of Ka – ghosts, dead or half-living souls, objects, buildings, plants, animals – in short, everything that surrounds us in the world of the living. Visually, Ka are different from their counterparts in the material world in that they are surrounded by a peculiar aura.
People saturate objects with their energy during their lifetime. Their Ka is stronger in the afterlife when they saturate it more. Even feelings have their Ka. Evil thoughts, born of hatred and bad emotions, take the form of small, loathsome creatures called thoughtforms.
“I’ve been seeing strange things since I was a child.”
The story is captivating from the very first page of the prologue. From the beginning, the author teaches us to be vigilant, agile and only after a while changes the narrative into a first-person one. It suddenly turns out that we are reading someone’s memories, so twisted and crazy that we want to find out everything about the character who tells us his story as quickly and as deeply as possible. It turns out to be a fascinating, nameless man until the end of the novel, not young and old, a bit bored with life, although we can still see a smoldering sense of mission in him. A man who knows the answers to many inexplicable phenomena. As the plot develops, we slowly, very slowly discover the truth.
Because Grzedowicz also teaches us patience. We will not find out what this is all about for a long time. But believe me, patience will be rewarded …
While the protagonist sometimes calls himself Charon or Jacob, neither of these names actually belongs to him. So who is a hero without a name?
He is an ethnologist, lecturer, schizophrenic, freak, psychopump. The latter is someone helping the souls of the dead to enter that world . And this is the main occupation of the mysterious man who speaks to us from the pages of the book. With the help of a special ritual takes place between trips to the world to free them stray souls and perform . Where? Well, not even Charon himself knows.
The monk’s secret
Our hero’s friend, the monk Michał, dies suddenly in mysterious circumstances. Although the psychopomp has decided to abandon his profession of soul liberation, he must return to the land of Half-sleep to investigate the secrets and clues left to him by the monk, whom he sees nailed to a cross and entwined with thorns in his nightmares. He hears the warning, “Watch out for thorns” from everywhere. He discovers the existence of the ancient brotherhood of Spinofrats, begins to be chased by demons in both worlds he knows, and is even imprisoned in the In-Between world. Acquaintance with a beautiful, mysterious witch – although he did not even know before that they existed – will only complicate everything, although it seems that it cannot be done any more.
Is it really just fiction?
The author is an absolute master of drawing landscapes in which we blend in with words. All the action scenes, all the places and feelings of the main character are described in such a way that we almost feel like the supporting characters of the novel. For this purpose, Grzedowicz often uses metaphors so accurate that they sharpen our senses and allow us to imagine the world presented in the smallest detail. We can easily see the presented images, hear sounds, smell, temperature, texture, pain … Absolute mastery! Most often, however, it is not very pleasant for us. We see many macabre scenes taken straight out of Bosch or Munch’s paintings. A horror-filled fragment with a dried up, deceased old woman in a wheelchair, fed by her ghostly daughter with soup, which lands on the mummy’s dirty blouse,
Since Jarosław Grzedowicz partially answers the questions that each of us once asked (What happens to us after death? Do we completely disappear after death? Is there a purgatory?), A thought flits through the mind: maybe it’s all true after all? We are not going to prove him wrong. And here another bow to the author of Ashes and Dust – it can tear off the beret quite well.
Grzedowicz created a world that mankind has been asking about for centuries, without pardon confusing the reader’s mind. He placed in it events, seemingly chaotic, only making sense at the end of the novel. The open ending gives much food for thought.
Do not judge a book by its cover?
Error! And certainly in this case. This release is really great! The great artwork of the cover, which shows a terrible sketch, shows what awaits us inside. The terrifying and terrifying illustrations inside the book, by Dominik Brońek, perfectly reflect the atmosphere of the novel. And the fabric ribbon sewn into the spine of the book is invaluable, it practically replaces a bookmark and gives the book an exquisite charm. The whole thing is a real work of art.
