ARTEFACTUM is a novel based around a simple premise: what if possession of an image of a god gave the owner access to the wispy spirit world governed by that god? J. E. Tobal’s novel is a mélange of fantastical imagery and horror tropes that takes readers on a ride by turns fantastical and nightmarish to explore the endless depths of the human psyche. The most impressive aspect of the novel is the complete and convincing world-building. Tobal is a master of misdirection, implying at first that the discovery is known only to two of the protagonists, Samael Cattan (around whom the story pivots; the unusual spelling is intentional) and Una Owens. However, the reader gradually comes to realize that not only have others accessed the same method of entering other realities, but that government agents – humorless Men in Black types with “intercosmic security concerns” – are seeking to police movement between realities. The narrative possibilities are endless, and Tobal exploits them to the full, creating an engaging, absorbing story with high stakes and several surprising twists.

The novel’s main character is, to put it mildly, unpleasant. Samuel Cattan begins starts off as a dissolute but harmless human being, one with a voracious appetite for sex and who leans into chat-up lines at every opportunity. Within a few pages he is in a relationship with Una, anther libertine, and they chance to enter an alternate reality in which any number of sexual fantasies can be played out. But when a now estranged Una dies and Sam longs for her back, he reasons that if an idol of an Aboriginal sex goddess can take him to, as the author has it, “the sexual multiverse,” then an idol of a deity devoted to death can take him to wherever Una found herself after dying. The catch is that he has to kill to activate the idol’s powers, and this he does. At first, he tries to kill small animals to “activate” the idol, before realizing only a human life will do, and shortly Tobal has him seeking out elderly victims in hospices and the like. Ultimately, this sequence of events gets him committed to a mental hospital, amongst other things. We are told that Sam is “ruined inside” by his actions, that he is “mortified” by them. But “a large part” of Sam is also “okay with what he had done”. He certainly gets over it swiftly. Before a third of the novel is over he has fallen into bed with another woman, Hazel, who has a dreamcatcher that allows her to enter the world of dreams, and another relationship follows with barely a look back at his murder spree. With one bound, Jack was free of qualms – and, so it seems, any sense of rectitude.

Now, there is a very good reason for Sam’s lack of moral compass that becomes clear later in the novel, such that the very idea of him being a murderer is beside the point. (To say any more would be to spoiler potential readers.) Insofar as this is true, Sam’s unpleasantness is necessary; early on in the book, Sam states that he knows he is “a piece of shit and a monster in a hundred ways”. But in the interim, the reader has to spend time with a man who has so few redeeming qualities that it is difficult to root or care for him. Tobal senses the incongruity, and is careful to put Sam through the wringer. Whether or not one views this as a feature or a bug depends on one’s own sensibilities. The moral of the story Tobal lays bare after yet another killing, one so hideous in outline that it puts Sam’s early efforts in the shade: “We all are what we are.” ARTEFACTUM takes that idea, and exploits it to its furthest extreme.

An odious protagonist, remarkably imaginative flights of fancy, and superlative world-building characterize J.E. Tobal’s ARTEFACTUM.

~Craig Jones for IndieReader