Book 27 for my 2025 goal of 30 books for the year! As is now default for me, my link to the book is through my bookshop dot org affiliate account.

Chuck Tingle honestly has yet to disappoint in even the slightest. His latest book, Lucky Day, just came out in August and I finally got around to reading it this week, and it is another fantastic novel of weird fiction.

Four years earlier, the world was rocked by what became known as the Low-Probability Event: a tragedy in which eight million people died within a few hours by exceedingly unlikely coincidences. Vera, once a statistics and probability professor with an optimistic future, was traumatized by the events of the LPE and now barely lives at all, isolating herself at home and surviving primarily on ramen noodles. The LPE was so random, cruel and pointless that it has shaken Vera’s very sense of purpose in life.

Then Special Agent Layne of the Low-Probability Event Commission visits her, seeking her help. The Commission has found a seeming connection between the LPE and the Great Britannica Hotel, a Las Vegas casino that manages to turn a profit despite actually having games that favor the guests to win. Vera had studied the casino herself before the world tragedy, and Layne wants her input in pushing the investigation further.

As the two dig deeper, they find that there are more improbable events happening, and even events that go against the known laws of physics. The very survival of the world may hinge upon whether they can uncover the secret of the Great Britannica and put an end to it…

It was a bit harder for me to get invested in reading this novel than Tingle’s other works, but that was more of an issue with me than the book. Lucky Day is, at its heart, a story about trauma and finding meaning in life after unthinkable tragedy occurs; this actually hit me hard personally, as someone who has had a lot of rough spots in life lately. Vera’s sadness and self-inflicted suffering reminded me very much of my own struggles. Like all of Tingle’s books, however, Lucky Day has a point and a purpose behind all the horror, and I actually found myself tearing up a little when I was reading the finale and the denouement of the story.

(I should also note that early on there is an animal death, though this too serves a purpose to the story and even, in the end, a meaningful one.)

Tingle’s books are filled with ideas and commentary on modern times; Lucky Day also takes a timely look at unaccountably powerful government agencies, in the form of the LPEC, who throughout the book are ostensibly the good guys. Tingle asks the age-old question in a democracy: how much freedom should we be willing to sacrifice in order to ensure our safety?

This is also a novel of “queer horror,” as the protagonists are LGBT and this informs their personalities and their actions throughout the book. Unlike Tingle’s previous two novels, Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays, however, it is not the centerpiece of the story and conflict.

One thing I like a lot about Tingle’s novels is that they tend to have an inevitable optimistic slant to them, even though they are pure horror along the way. Lucky Day has perhaps the most gruesome scenes of any of his books yet, as people die in bizarrely improbable “Final Destination”-esque ways. None of it is excessive, however, and Tingle manages to find a balance where the gruesomeness is not completely unpalatable or sadistic.

For my money, Chuck Tingle really stands out as one of the most significant horror authors of his time, bringing novel frights together with thought-provoking concepts. Lucky Day continues his impressive horror output and again I can’t wait to see what he does next.