As ancient horrors come to unmake reality, a political radical with strange abilities—a modern-day twist on John Brown—sets out to find some way he might deny them a foothold in our world. But of all the monsters he faces, he fears himself the most.
Dark contemporary SFF • 130K words • Elements of psychological and cosmic horror • Character-driven • Apocalyptic stakes • Informed, visceral portrayal of depression • Deeply humanitarian • Irish humour, grim and absurd • Single timeline, aside from that one guy
What’s the plot?
Darren Green learned much as a child. That shadows can come for you. That adults don’t like it when you tell them what they’re thinking. That you can’t let people see who you are because they will fear and walk away instead of stay and understand, because there’s something inscrutably wrong about you. That maybe you don’t deserve to exist.
At 32, he has grown into near god-like telekinetic abilities of unknown provenance, and begun a mission to free those pinned beneath the boots of despots, and end crimes against humanity. Something to keep living for. But to those powerful who crave order over justice, he must be stopped. Be discredited. If possible, be killed.
While preventing a massacre, he finds something deep in the woods: a sickening presence, overflowing with hate, that vanishes as he nears. Worse, it felt strangely familiar. As he investigates this unsettling connection, he discovers a nightmarish threat: an ancient evil is coming to unmake reality itself. They’ve already found someone here to help them, and time is running out.
Darren is a broken man, facing a hatred from beyond, as the world turns against him. But the monster he fears most is himself.
What’s it about?
As far back as I remember, I thought I must be broken, and that thought festered, fed by every blank expression, every sideways glance, every awkward interaction. In time I came to see my ostracism as a sign I must be something anathema even to reality, and I thought of myself as a monster because I was different. It took a long time before I could see that I was just… different.
Weapon… takes this emotional journey and cranks it up to eleven.
Though I was a man operating without the knowledge that I was autistic, Darren (though autistic-coded) is a nightmar
A man who has gro strange but fundamentally good. Not safe, mind.
One man struggling under the weight of self-hatred, who cannot see that what makes him different is worth celebrating.
Darren struggles to survive severe depression, and hates himself so much, he believes himself a monster. What he cannot see is, though he is a monster, he is a good one.
The book uses the idea of being a “monster” as a proxy for difference.
When my depression was at its height, I
Comparative titles
The Library contains an intricately arranged series of events that, it is revealed, have been orchestrated by the protagonist to further her goals. In Weapon…, someone is doing just that. It is built to be enjoyed in new ways on second and subsequent reads, with certain events and characters recast in the light of later information.
Darkness Visible shows Styron’s descent into extremes of clinical depression, culminating in his near-suicide. Styron describes his experiences (along with notes on the experiences of others), whereas with Weapon…, I hope to give the reader not a description but a visceral sense of the disease.
Between Two Fires frequently slips into displays of the brutal and the ethereal. In Weapon…, Darren has set himself against the tyranny, cruelty, and oppression of our world—and therefore finds himself in many nightmarish situations. He is tormented by a being that comes in the form of a preacher, who forces him to forget, and his experience of events is not always in order.