Head Full of Mountains

When Crospinal's ailing father finally dies, he is left utterly alone in the pen, surrounded by encroaching darkness. The machines that tended to him as a child have long ago vanished, and the apparitions that kept Crospinal company are now silenced. Struggling with congenital issues, outfitted in a threadbare uniform, he has little choice but to leave what was once his home, soon discovering that nothing in the outside world is how he had been told it would be. In his quest for meaning and understanding, and the contact of another, Crospinal learns truths about himself, about his father, and about the last bastion of humanity trapped with him at the end of time.

Publishers Weekly

“Where [Head Full of Mountains] stands out from its brethren is in the quality of Hayward’s (Filaria) prose, and the skill with which he carefully details each scene and each character, using well-worn set pieces with an energy and splendor that blinds readers to their essential familiarity.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[The Fecund’s Melancholy Daughter is] beautifully written and morally ambivalent, this complex tale will appeal to readers of Gene Wolfe and China Miéville.”

Alex Good, The Toronto Star

“Toronto’s Brent Hayward has a knack for creating incredibly lush alternative worlds and mythologies, and Head Full of Mountains may be his most complex and demanding work yet. . . . [The protagonist’s] journey suggests an allegory of human development progressing through different stages of life, but readers will probably come up with many other interpretations as well, perhaps seeing in it a nightmare of isolated and introverted consciousness, or the endgame of technologies that have left humanity behind. The result is one of the more different and difficult SF novels of the year, but also one of the most rewarding.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Hayward’s debut [Filaria] is a powerful, beautifully written dystopian tale. . . .”

Examiner.com

“. . . Filaria is simply one of the best books written in the last decade and is the best science fiction/fantasy book that I have read in a long time.”

Peter Watts, author of Starfish and Blindsight

“A disquieting, claustrophobic, compelling hybrid of China Miéville and J. G. Ballard. I first read Filaria almost two years ago: its subterranean imagery has been stuck in my midbrain ever since.”

About the Author

Brent Hayward’s fiction has appeared in several publications and anthologies, including Horizons SF, On Spec, ChiZine, the Tesseracts series, and Chilling Tales. In 2006, his story “Phallex Comes Out” was nominated for the StorySouth Million Writers Award as best online story of that year; it received an honourable mention. Filaria, his first novel, was published by ChiZine Publications in 2008 and has since garnered solid acclaim. Born in London, England, raised in Montreal, he currently lives in Toronto. He can be reached through his LiveJournal at: brenth.livejournal.com.

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