Review: A Cloud of Unknowing by Andrew Gillsmith

Written By Jake Theriault

In the 2023 fable The Mysteries, author Bill Watterson—a name I’m sure many of you will recognize as the philosopher/artist behind the transcendent Calvin and Hobbes—describes a world in which a fearful populace desperately seeks to understand the unseen powers that lurk in the woods: the eponymous “Mysteries”. One day, a knight returns from the woods with a captured Mystery in tow, which the knight hands over to the King’s wizards for study; study by which Watterson’s characters speculate “[the Mystery’s] powers might be thwarted”. Science confronts mysticism and conquers it, shifting the world of the fable into a new epoch in which the Mysteries are perceived as “surprisingly ordinary”.

Andrew Gillsmith’s A Cloud of Unknowing, the 2024 sequel to the fantastic Our Lady of the Artilects (which I reviewed earlier this year), stands then as a kind of sister tale to The Mysteries. The novels of what Gillsmith is calling “The Deserted Vineyard” series are firmly rooted in this exploration of the intersection of science and mysticism, and have become some of my favorite novels in the genre for that very reason…