Chuck Palahniuk does weird like no other author I read. Some of his stuff makes Naked Lunch read like Goldilocks. You’ve got to love the chances he takes with his characters and – to some degree – with his readers.
The sequel to the 2012 novel, Damned has been officially announced, and it’s Doomed. The news broke over on The Cult, and pre-orders will soon be accepted for the October 8, 2013 release by Random House.
Here’s the official pitch for Doomed:
Having somewhat reluctantly escaped from Hell, she now wanders the Purgatory that is Earth as a ghostly spirit, seeking her do-gooding celebrity parents, fighting the malign control of Satan, recounting the disgracefully funny (to us, anyway) encounter with her grandfather in a fetid highway rest stop in Upstate New York when she . . . oh, never mind, and climaxing in a rendezvous with destiny on the new, totally plastic continent in the Pacific called, not at all accidentally, Madlantis. Dante Alighieri, watch your back, Chuck Palahniuk is gaining on you.
I like Chuck’s description better:
The next novel will follow Madison back to earth as a ghost, doomed to haunting her parents for a year. In flashback we see her earlier childhood, including the death of the kitten whose dead body subsequently clogged the plumbing of the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel. That death is not Madison’s doing, but another death is. Whether it’s murder or self-defense, as a ten-year-old Madison kills someone horrifically, and that’s the most-likely reason why she was damned in the first place. We also begin to recognize a centuries-long conspiracy engineered to train and test Maddy for her role as the savior of all spiritual beings.
Nope, nothing subtle, here.
Oh, I forgot to mention it but the world ends in this next book.
Well, alrighty then. Soooo… it’s a romance novel?
As always, when it’s Chuck, I’m in. Therapy has finally helped me block out all memory of reading Snuffed, and I’m good to go. Bring on more Madison.