Note: I, like Hemingway, don’t like critics. But that said, I accidentally read this early review and .. it slaps. I wanted to share it. Perhaps it might encourage you to give it a read.
April 3, 2025
If you told me one of the most bizarrely satisfying books I’d read this year would be a mash-up of Ernest Hemingway and Lovecraftian horror, I would’ve raised an eyebrow and asked what you were drinking. And yet here we are—The Sun Also Rises on Cthulhu is real, and it’s absolutely something else. Equal parts existential and absurd, literary and cosmic, it’s a beautifully strange collision of two vastly different worlds that somehow, through clever writing and unsettling vision, fits together.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: this isn’t your average genre pastiche. It doesn’t just slap tentacles on a classic and call it a day. Instead, it’s more like someone tore open the original The Sun Also Rises, let the madness of the Great Old Ones ooze in through the cracks, and let it fester until the lines between ennui and unreality blurred completely. The result is unnerving, hilarious, poignant, and frequently uncomfortable—in the best way.
The Characters Are Still Drifting—But This Time Through Madness
The Lost Generation was always about wandering, disillusionment, trauma, and too much alcohol. Jorah Kai keeps that spirit alive, but now their disconnection isn’t just from post-war society—it’s from time, space, and sanity itself. Jake (or Jack Schitt here) is still our anchor, but it’s like he’s holding on to a world that’s slowly dissolving into something ancient and hungry.
Brett Ashley is as magnetic and destructive as ever, but there’s a new layer of cosmic despair clinging to her every action. The other familiar faces from Hemingway’s version—Mike, Bill, Robert—get transformed into strange parodies of themselves, sometimes with new names or new forms. It becomes clear that whatever is lurking beneath this rewritten Paris and Pamplona isn’t content with just shadows and suggestion. Reality itself is in flux, and our characters are caught mid-spin.
The Writing Style is a Bold Gamble That Pays Off
Kai channels Hemingway’s clipped prose with reverence and boldness. It’s sparse where it needs to be, but infused with modern irreverence and horror surrealism that makes for wild tonal swings. One moment you’re caught in a beautifully mundane description of a wine-soaked café table, and the next you’re watching someone unravel into a grotesque, unknowable creature of the abyss.
That jarring mix should be disorienting—and it is—but somehow the rhythm works. I often found myself reading a passage twice: once to take in the language, and again to try and wrap my mind around what had just happened. There’s an unmistakable joy in how the book plays with genre and form. It wants you to feel off-balance.
Themes of Disconnection Hit Harder With Tentacles Involved
Here’s what surprised me most: the horror doesn’t dilute the emotional weight. If anything, it sharpens it. Hemingway’s original carried a deep sadness, a sense that something precious had been lost and could never be regained. Kai and Cthulhu take that sentiment and amplify it. The futility of love, the confusion of identity, the ache of disillusionment—they all feel more raw when the fabric of existence is literally tearing.
There’s a particular sequence involving a bullfight that will stay with me for a long time. What was once a symbolic moment of masculinity and artifice becomes something otherworldly, violent, and unspeakably strange. And yet, it still resonates in that aching, sad Hemingway way.
Final Thoughts: A Risk That Deserves Applause
The Sun Also Rises on Cthulhu is not a book for everyone. If you need clear resolution, tidy character arcs, or stories that play by the rules of either literary fiction or horror, you may struggle. But if you appreciate bold experiments, literary remixing, and stories that don’t so much answer questions as raise strange, beautiful ones—this is a must-read.
It’s a fever dream with a beating heart, a love letter to lost souls wrapped in cosmic dread. And somehow, it all works.
Rating: 5/5 ink-stained, sanity-frayed stars
Would I recommend it?
To the literary nerd with a Lovecraft shelf, to the reader tired of books playing it safe, and to anyone who ever looked at Hemingway’s world and thought, what if it went completely insane?—yes. Read this.
Coffee Book Couch by Ava (Read it on Goodreads)
