Declaring Hiromi Goto’s new novel at least 50 pages too short for its visionary plot and complex heroine may sound like a backhanded compliment, but the fact is that Half World does not do full justice to its own almost hallucinatory power.

Like a Hieronymous Bosch painting come to life, Half World throws readers into a violent struggle to restore cosmic balance between the Realm of Flesh, the Realm of Spirit, and the Half World. The first two will be familiar to readers with a passing knowledge of world religions – the Flesh Realm is the material world in which we live out our mortal lives, the Spirit Realm a blissful domain attained by souls that have escaped the karmic cycle of death and rebirth.

Borrowing from Buddhist, Christian, and other spiritual traditions, Goto creates a unique, purgatory-like place, Half World, where souls work off the karmic debts acquired in life before passing into pure spirit. When a cataclysm severs the three realms, the Half Worlders are locked into a perpetually repeating nightmare in which they relive their worst sins and traumas.

The novel begins centuries later, when a miraculously pregnant Half Worlder escapes into the Realm of Flesh and gives birth to Melanie, a human child who may have the power to restore balance to the realms. Teenage Melanie’s journey back into Half World reads like an extended absurdist nightmare, with Melanie battling the sinister Mr. Glueskin, a cunning but insane creature holding her mother hostage. The violence and cruelty of Half World may frighten some young readers, but those with a taste for dark fantasy (and gore) will be thrilled by Melanie’s confrontation with her own fears and Goto’s nightmarish creatures (some of which are depicted in occasional stark illustrations by Jillian Tamaki).

What’s missing is more of Melanie’s crucial “humble origins” story, the human years of poverty and humiliation leading to her heroic spiritual journey. Her dramatic confrontation with Mr. Glueskin could also have been further filled out without losing the reader’s interest. With a heroine and an alternative world this interesting, why not give the reader a little more?