Lovecraftian horror meets the inventive imagination of Shirley Jackson Award-winner Nathan Ballingrud in his latest novel, Cathedral of the Drowned. A hallucinatory journey into cosmic dread and grief, it expands his self-styled “Lunar Gothic” mythos while pushing the boundaries of contemporary horror.
A sequel to Crypt of the Moon Spider, the book follows two halves of Charlie Duchamp — one trapped in a jar on Jupiter’s jungle moon Io, the other stranded on Earth’s moon. Both are drawn to a crashed, waterlogged cathedral ship ruled by a monstrous, centipede-like Bishop and his drowned astronauts, blending Ballingrud’s psychological depth with grotesque, dreamlike invention.
To mark the book’s release on 21 October, CinemaChords’ Howard Gorman sat down with him to explore the origins of the “Lunar Gothic” aesthetic, the personal experiences that shaped the novel, and its engagement with themes of community, grief, and survival. They also discuss its reflections on gender dynamics and institutional control, and how the peculiar logic of nightmares can sometimes reveal more than realism ever might.
Nathan Ballingrud’s Cathedral of the Drowned is published by Tor on 21 October
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