Novella Review: "to rule the desert" by Monica Robinson
/We all know to be afraid of the woods. But have you learned to fear the desert? Monica Robinson’s to rule the desert - an eerie, mystical, violent yet tender queer odyssey - will certainly take you there as it traverses the secrets and horrors of the American southwest.
In a world where ghosts hitchhike along the side of Route 40 and motel managers are rattlesnakes turned human, Quinn and Ava are headed west on a roadtrip to gods know where. They’ve got their life savings in hand, the perfect soundtrack blasting through the speakers, and, most importantly, they’ve got each other. But when their grand adventure is turned upside down over the course of a single fateful night, they’re thrown off course - and Quinn finds herself alone and forever altered, forced to traverse the narrow boundaries between life and death if she wants to see Ava again.
to rule the desert is a loose retelling of the familiar Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but through a queer speculative lens and with a unique penchant for creepiness. As the Underworld inches closer (or rather digs its claws in deeper), we encounter a host of strange and terrifying creatures: there’s the weeping woman in a heart-shaped pool, the sharp-eyed hawks with a penchant for prophecy, the shadowy figures in a diner who are hungry for more than breakfast, and the ghosts that seem to rise from Quinn’s very own memories. We’re never quite sure what is real and what imagined; we don’t know where that rattling semi-truck is headed, just that all the wraiths scatter quickly from the path of its high beams for fear of being seen.
The true horror of this desert, though, is not the specters who haunt it but the utter humanity that runs through them. If the ghosts provide a spellbinding setting, Quinn’s hope and desperation keeps you turning pages, wiping away tears, wondering if Ava will find her before the time runs out. You feel for all the desert spirits and their untold stories, told and untold; you rage at the ones who dragged them there and wrote their unhappy ending. This is not just a ghost story - it’s a story of love and loss, of fresh beginnings and cruel goodbyes, of all the things that can happen to one’s soul when it’s left to bleach in the unforgiving sun. And whether you see yourself more in Quinn’s grim stoicism or Ava’s fierce bravery, you can’t help but fall in love with them and the strength they find in one another. Both these young women are complex and complicated and breathtakingly whole, even as they struggle to keep their identities (and each other) from slipping away into the dust.
This novella is queer in both content and form, with vignettes that twist around each other to tug us through past, present, and future - sometimes all at the same time. This blurring of boundaries mirrors the murkiness of life & death across this desolate landscape: our heroines are both alive and not, here and vanished, remembered and foreshadowed. Robinson’s writing is endlessly dynamic, giving us everything from lush imagery to dripping horror to sweetly sharp melancholy for that trip we’ve never taken but often dreamed of, windows down to the scent of cactus blossoms, coyotes howling in the night, flickering neon and perpetual road signs promising whatever escape we need most - as long as we remember to stay away from the shadows.