A Review of Hailer Piper's "No Gods for Drowning" (audiobook)

Hailey Piper’s No Gods for Drowning is a lesson in world-building and how to make a trope-filled murder mystery new and awesome. I found parallels between her work and China Mieville’s, one of my favorite writers. I would love to see more of Piper’s writing in this world.

The plot seems simple at first: something of a ritualistic serial killer is stalking a city, just as the city prepares for its catastrophic rainy season. On top of that, the gods, who used to walk among the people, disappeared ten years previous, and no one really knows why. A cast of characters including a flood fighter, a detective, and two descendants of the missing gods are thrown together in this setting, and both enemy and ally must work together to save their homes.

Elements of fantasy, noir, and horror meld together in Piper’s narrative, making for a book unlike any I’ve read in many years. The closest parallel I can draw is Perdido Street Station, but it’s not as odd as that, so if anything it’s more accessible. The world-building, particularly the history of it—the migrations, the generations of gods—is rich and detailed. The characters are well-rounded and fleshed-out, and there’s sympathy enough to go around even if you can’t decide who the villain and who the savior is.

I highly recommend this book to fans of mystery, fantasy, and horror, and I hope Hailey Piper revisits the world of No Gods for Drowning in more of her writing. I received the audiobook version from NetGalley.

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