Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun is hard to describe. Ostensibly, it follows two young women fleeing their home in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to attend a week-long experimental noise festival held at the foot of an active volcano. Their experience is strange, frightening, and revelatory. But this book is so much more than a bad trip. Ojeda’s writing forces emotion on you. It’s brutal, and beautiful, it contorts your brain into a shape you didn’t know it could fit into. As the story progresses, the lines between reader and character blur, and you become part of the noise, the fear, the feeling, the cruelty, the obliteration.
Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda, (List Price: $20, Coffee House Press, 9781566897556, May 2026)
Reviewed by Charlie, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, VA