The Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud

Book Review

Sarah Deeming

A gargantuan spider once lived on the moon in a vast network of caves under a forest that covers most of the surface of the moon. It was worshipped as a god as its silk granted increased mental powers, and although the spider is long dead, its worshippers, known as Alabaster Scholars, still live there. When Veronica Brinkley is sent to the moon and the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy, she is hopeful for a successful treatment. After all, Dr Cull has a high success rate as one of the Alabaster Scholars working with him, sharing some of the precious silk from the long-dead spider to heal the rich of their mental illnesses.

But something is wrong with Barrowfield Home. Not everyone or everything is happy with Barrowfield Hall being above the moon spider’s lair, and Veronica might be the catalyst that sets rebellion in motion.

Wow, Crypt of the Moon Spider is an amazing ride. It is a short book, 88 pages long, so technically a novella, and it is a fantastically tight horror story blending well-used themes such as asylums and arachnids into something fresh and new. For such a small book, there is an amazing amount of world-building and mythology created around the spider and the powers it was believed to have. This is a really well-written story.

I’ll start with the setting, which is unique and immediately hooked me. In this alternate universe, the moon is covered with trees, and once supported life, albeit a giant spider worshipped as a god, it is now home to a mental asylum. An isolated location such as an asylum becomes a whole lot more cut off on the surface of the moon, surrounded by an impenetrable forest that is still covered in cobwebs years after the giant spider died. If you have an issue with spiders, your ick senses will already be tingling before the action has begun.

The pacing is fantastic. As this is a novella, there isn’t much time to let things build gradually, yet it’s not rushed or too slow. The tensions and suspicions grow naturally from Veronica’s location, isolation from all she knows, the secrets about the treatment she’ll be undertaking, and the furtiveness of the home’s staff. And when things go wrong, Ballingrud doesn’t hold back. The reader is treated to some of the most brutal, flesh-shivering descriptions of torture and body horror, but all within the context of the story. There is nothing gratuitous, which just makes what happens all the more horrifying.

Veronica is a sympathetic main character, trapped in melancholy and gaslighted by the people in her life. It is unclear how much of her melancholy is part of her natural make-up and how much is created by the people around her. She is robbed of all agency, and her husband makes the majority of her decisions for her, but she only regains them as events start unravelling at Barrowfield. The ending is sinister, completely changing her. Whether it is for the better or not, I’ll let you decide when you read it.

As a horror fan, The Crypt of the Moon Spider is everything I look for in a book, and I devoured it in a night, the perfect time for reading horror. I was also overjoyed to find this is the first book of an exciting new trilogy, and I can’t wait for the rest.