I finally got myself together enough to complete January on Halloween.
Litrouke is a personal friend and I’ve been fascinated by the unique concepts of interaction put forth in previous works - the pictogram interface of 10pm was quite novel and made a great impression.
January tells the story of a post zombie apocalypse over a year - stay with me - there’s almost zero of the typical “fending off zombies in combat” normally expected as this story is placed well-after the typical horror movie panic and well-into its inevitable aftermath - scavenging and gathering and moving and eventually planting - so it is survival horror. The Walking Dead did a bit of this as the zombies became mostly an environmental hazard instead of a direct threat and that narrative was more “humans are the scariest monsters.” January touches on concerns with the concept that we ourself can be our own worst enemy - how much of this can we handle? Is it worth it to even dare to hope for things to look up? Would it be better to just sit down and let the crows feast on your feet or do you move forward and keep trying even if it is delaying the inevitable?
January is clearly informed by the isolationism of the COVID pandemic, and much of the chilly horror comes more from horrible events that become everyday experiences that people take for granted - such as how we might politely ignore a homeless person on the way to work: this community is steeled to ignore a zombie who catches her head in a closing subway door and has her scalp torn off, stepping over the remains like it’s just more discarded trash on the train platform.
It’s known that the undead in this do retain a bit of their humanity and are something to be avoided for safety but have their brains eroded to the point where a horror planted against a plate window is ignored because “they forget how doors work.” One particularly aggressive specimen is actually frightened off by an unloaded gun and the threat of it with the protagonist shouting bang at them to remind them of what will happen.
Zombie Apocalypse is, of course, a trope done to death (har!), but what makes this work is extremely competent writing. The unbelievable situation is threaded with enough recognizable detail of everyday life as to be both realistic and uncanny, which is one of the most effective ways to lodge horror prose in the mind of the reader.
January is called out in a preface as “dynamic fiction” which for IF purposes usually signifies a mostly linear story with limited choices and agency for the reader. This is true, but not in a bad way - January is a stellar example of ergodic literature which is a narrative that isn’t quite “interactive” but does require more participation from the reader than just going line by line turning pages in order - House of Leaves is the most prominent example of an ergodic novel most people are familiar with. January isn’t the reader’s story to make choices in. The narrative is episodic by calendar date that serves almost as a table of contents and moving forward or back gives the reader chances to jump around and affect how they experience the narrative rather than directly participate. In many cases a date on the calendar will turn red which signifies an update…there’s more of the story or more perspective that can be gained by going back and reading that episode again.
The structure actually has a lot in common with Emily Short’s Bee with its yearly, cyclical nature and low choice density. (Bee was faithfully reconstructed and can be experienced thanks to the great efforts of Autumn Chen @cchennnn .)
(EDIT: I’m now reading other reviews and I have to say I liked the illustrations especially because the specific purpose they served: Usually you read an episode and get an illustration at the end of one significant moment. When traveling back to revisit the episode you are shown the illustration first which reminds you “oh, this is that part…”)
I may have just been in the perfect mindset for this even though I wasn’t ready and it did hit me hard - I had to initially stop because it was too much when I realized that a cat was a significant character and we all know the “beloved pet” trope in this world where nothing good seems like it’s going to happen. There was one scene where I did have to quit out and walk outside and get myself together, but that was only because of my personal headspace at the moment and the details of the event in question rang so true that it obliterated me - the writing is good.
But I was really glad that January isn’t just out to make you feel bad and trigger depression or squick without a purpose. It is a complete work that is both grounded, visceral, and epic and has things to say about the cyclical nature of life, death, change, and mortality. There are different interpretations of the events and the structure that make it heady fodder for discussion if you can stomach the premise from the outset.