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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Christopher Moore is an American writer of absurdist fiction. He grew up in Mansfield, OH, and attended Ohio State University and Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, CA.

Moore's novels typically involve conflicted everyman characters suddenly struggling through supernatural or extraordinary circumstances. Inheriting a humanism from his love of John Steinbeck and a sense of the absurd from Kurt Vonnegut, Moore is a best-selling author with major cult status.

Publisher: William Morrow (May 13, 2025) Length: 400 pages Formats: audiobook, ebook, paperback

Anima Rising is a wild, weird, and twisty ride through 1911 Vienna, filled with artists, mad scientists, Freud jokes, and a croissant-eating demon dog. To my vast surprise, it all works.

Let’s start with a confession - I DNFed this book the first time. The opening chapters were just too much, wall-to-wall jokes, constant banter, and a chaotic energy that felt like it was trying too hard to be funny. But I’m glad I came back and gave it another shot, because once it settles down, this book is incredibly fun and creative. 

The story kicks off in Vienna, 1911, with Gustav Klimt finding a naked woman floating in the canal. Naturally, instead of calling for help, he sketches her. The woman turns out to be alive, feral, and amnesiac. Klimt brings her home. What follows includes Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, a bunch of misbehaving artists, the literal Bride of Frankenstein, and a croissant-obsessed demon dog named Geoff. Yup.

As Judith (that’s how Klimt called her) starts to recover her memory with help from Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and a bit of hypnosis, she recalls a chilling past involving Victor Frankenstein, his creature, and the Arctic. We discover her backstory slowly, and it’s extremely well done. She’s a character with trauma, rage, and an engaging personality. Her friendship with Klimt’s model Wally is the highlight of the book. Wally is great too, by the way. Full of street smarts and charm. 

This book is stuffed to the brim with historical characters, gothic horror references, psychological theories, and absurd comedy. Freud is obsessed with penises. Jung is all about archetypes. Alma Mahler, Egon Schiele, and even a young Hitler wander through the story. And yet, Moore somehow keeps everything coherent and even gives depth to almost all characters. 

Now, Anima Rising gets dark. There’s sexual violence in Judith’s backstory, and while Moore handles it with more sensitivity than you might expect from such a wacky book, it’s still heavy stuff. The same goes for animal death, but it’s not gratuitously graphic.

That said, the humor lands most of the time. Geoff the demon dog steals every scene. And the dialogue is packed with ridiculous, sometimes brilliant exchanges. The pacing dips a bit here and there, and the humor can be a little much early on. But once the story finds its groove, it’s all hilarious and oddly moving. 

If you like your historical fiction with monsters, Freud jokes, dad jokes, and demon dogs, Anima Rising is for you. It’s chaotic, clever, and creative. Once I gave it a second chance, I didn’t want to put it down.