Lyle is a young man who hates his life in the State of Salt, a cultural and literal desert. He vandalizes a state icon, then swallows a poison pill that transports him not to death, but to a liminal realm-blue, watery, and wholly alien. He's rescued and shepherded by henchmen of the Polyp, god of the oceanic world they call "heaven." A series of encounters unfolds between Lyle and the monstrous, seductive god, who gradually reveals his grandeur and...