Adrian Collins's Blog, page 2

REVIEW: ALPHA by K.D. Marchesi

Pitched as ‘if Animorphs were spliced with Orphan Black and The Hunger Games’, ALPHA by K.D. Marchesi is a brutal survival sci-fi thriller with dangerously sharp teeth but a surprisingly warm, human heart. I mean, it’s got lots of genetic fuckery and scary shape-shifting horrors, but then it also offers some of the most heartwarming found family vibes and profound emotional journeys, and I absolutely love it for that.

ALPHA is one of those books that just sinks its teeth into you from the very first page and refuses to let go. We are thrown into the life of Caleb Murilo, a slightly spoiled but good-hearted young guy who wakes up on an isolated island in a body that feels increasingly monstrous to him and then has to learn how to survive amidst a group of unlikely allies who are all victims of his dad’s sick and dangerously ambitious experiment. And if that isn’t a strong hook, then I don’t know what is.

There are many, many things I love about ALPHA, but the thing I appreciate most about it is the fact that it’s so much more than just the thrilling survival adventure that it appears to be at first glance. Even without having read the raw, vulnerable author’s note in which Marchesi shares so bravely about how his personal transition journey is woven into the DNA of this book, you can tell that this story just comes straight from the heart. It’s queer down to its very bones without ever being overt in its themes and messages, and I think that only makes this story all the more powerful.

Like, you can totally come to ALPHA for the thrilling action, the gripping mysteries or the brutal body horrors, but I personally think those aspects only feel so gripping because the character work is so strong. Despite the fast pacing, Marchesi manages to get you deeply invested in these characters’ harrowing journeys by masterfully interweaving the internal and external conflicts, and I just had the best time seeing Caleb being an utter chaotic mess while trying to deal with all his inner turmoil as he attempts to figure out the mysteries of the island, its untrustworthy inhabitants, and his wildly changing body.

He is one of those main characters with a very strong voice and an even stronger will, which gets his impulsive, stubborn ass into some difficult yet undeniably amusing situations. And sure, at times he might come off a bit immature for his early 20s or the dialogue might feel a bit simple, but I think it fits with the new adult thriller vibe of the story. Also, I just can’t deny that I found Caleb to be effortlessly endearing, and it’s no surprise to me that he won the hearts of so many people on the island, even if they were reluctant to admit it at first.

The unexpected found family vibes are just so strong, with my favourite relationships being the precious lone (but not really lone) wolf/cub dynamic with Ethan, the touching mom-feels with my sapphic queens Ava & Aiel, the head-butting with Delia, and the simmering tension and teasing banter between Caleb and my snarky babe Argo (like, am I the only one who wants them to just kiss already?!?!). Especially when we start to peel back the layers of Caleb’s tragic family situation, childhood trauma, and daddy issues (who easily wins worst dad of the year award, no competition), it only becomes more touching to see him finding his own pack to support and comfort him in ways he never knew he needed.

ALPHA might be a brutal and heavy story, but it never feels emotionally draining because of the heart, (dark) humour, and hope that lie at its core. It does everything a good start to a new series should do, and I can’t wait to see what Marchesi has in store in the rest of The Alpha Cycle. It’s a wildly unique tale of self-discovery, of transition, of queerness, of community, of found family, of exploitation, and of rebellion, and I can’t recommend it highly enough to anyone who likes the sound of a fast-paced survival sci-fi that is as monstrous as it is human.

Thank you to the author for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. ALPHA is scheduled for release on November 20th, 2025. 

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INTERVIEW: with author Eric Malikyte

Eric Malikyte is the author of several of our favorite Cthulhu and cyberpunk novels. We recently enjoyed his latest occult horror novel, Cthulhu: Grimoire and jumped at the chance to sit down and chat with him more about Cthulhu: Grimoire, the Cthulhu mythos in general, and what is up next in the world of Eric Malikyte. 

[GdM] Hi Eric! Thank you so much for agreeing to chat with us. For readers who may not know, can you tell us a little more about Cthulhu: Grimoire ?

[EM] Cthulhu: Grimoire is a detective noir cosmic horror story that uses the trappings of both genres, plus some influences from other horror movements like analog horror, to ask the all-important question of…what would happen if Cthulhu got His hands on an AI, and how might that effect the already messed up world we live in?

It takes place in Los Angeles and the San Bernardino Valley right in the middle of a forest fire that paints everything in this sickly yellowish tone that gradually transforms as the cosmic horror unravels into a nightmare-scape that would make H.R. Giger proud. 

[GdM] What separates Cthulhu Grimoire from other examples of the Cthulhu mythos and horror fiction?

[EM] One thing I set out to do while writing Cthulhu: Grimoire was to take advantage of Cthulhu’s status as a public domain entity and really have fun with it. I’ve felt for a while that a lot of Lovecraftian horror feels like it’s got to honor the “canon” established by Lovecraft and his contemporaries. But part of the fun of a public domain IP like the Mythos is that it doesn’t have a set continuity. 

I love continuity and canon, but I feel like storytellers also must know when to let go of canon to do something new and fun (or in this case, new and terrifying). Where a lot of other amazing cosmic horror authors will create their own Lovecraftian entities and grimoires (I do this too), I wanted to take something familiar and transform it, while keeping to the elements that make Cthulhu and the Shoggoths so iconic. 

There’s something really cool about getting to play with a character as big as Cthulhu. And I really wanted to focus on making Him as terrifying as possible, to really lean into the subjective nature of his form, the idea that Cthulhu isn’t a physical being, that he’s both there and not there at the same time. Alive and dead. Dead and dreaming. I really wanted to lean into the idea that we don’t know what Cthulhu really looks like, that we project our assumptions on an unknowable entity.

[GdM] Is this a standalone project or does it link to some of your other works?

[EM] It can be enjoyed as a standalone, but it is a sequel. Readers do not have to have read Mind’s Horizon (the first book featuring the mad Doctor Weber/Webber and the OEI) to enjoy Cthulhu: Grimoire but reading the first book will give them additional context to a certain character and her relationship to this world’s version of Doctor Webber.  

All OEI Archives stories will be designed to be standalone stories, but they will still be connected, either by continuity in the form of the characters who made it out of Mind’s Horizon, or by OEI lore, but they are all being written so that they can be read in any order. In that way, it’s an anthology series. 

[GdM] Can you pitch its plot in thirty seconds or less?

While investigating a series of suicides at a for-profit art school, Detective Hunter and his unlikely ally, art student River Gonzales, stumble upon a computer virus that is driving people mad. All it takes is a single glance for it to fill your mind and bend you to its will. 

Detective Hunter and River must find a way to break the virus’ hold on the San Bernardino Valley and stop a looming apocalypse. 

But with the shadowy hand of a secret government agency and one Doctor Webber looming over them, can they?

[GdM] Who is the main character? River or Hunter? 

[EM] This story is just as much about River as it is Detective Hunter. They get equal “screen time” if you will, and their partnership and unlikely friendship is what drives the book. 

[GdM] What draws you to writing set in the Cthulhu Mythos?

[EM] I mean, there’s so much to it. It’s so much more than the tentacle monsters, though those are unique among other horror genres.

Cosmic horror as a genre is one of the few that doesn’t treat humanity like it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread and dares to unravel our assumption that we are the center of everything. But, even though he was a raving racist, there is just something so unique and fun about Lovecraft’s creations. I mean, there’s a reason why Cthulhu is everywhere (I mean, he’s a freaking plushy now…and now I just realized I don’t have a Cthulhu plushy, and I probably need to fix that), and even people who have never read a single Mythos story know who he is. 

But, also, despite Lovecraft’s reputation for having less than developed characters, the Mythos offers atmospheric storytelling that can, at times, make you feel like you’re spiraling into madness right alongside the narrator, and that’s pretty cool, I guess.

[GdM] Is it hard writing Cthulhu Mythos fiction set in the modern day?

[EM] Not really. There’s a subset of Lovecraftian horror fans that think it only works in the 1920s and 30s, but really, I think that’s a bit of a literal approach. While the universe certainly looked a lot smaller in Lovecraft’s day, and the sciences were just getting started, there’s still so much of this universe that we don’t understand. There is no theory of everything, so it’s not all that hard for us to worry that the unfeeling cosmos might be hiding some cosmic force of nature that could wipe us out in the blink of an eye. 

I’ve done a lot of science communication as part of my professional writing career, but simultaneously I’ve had many strange experiences in my life. Things I can’t explain. As a child, I saw the Hat Man lurking at the sliding glass door of my childhood home, I’ve felt the presence of things watching from the dark in many of the places I grew up, heard disembodied footsteps in many places that were described as “haunted” both during my time growing up in So Cal, and on the East Coast. I’ve experienced so many things that I can’t explain. And that’s part of the fun, right? We have so many mysteries to unravel as a species. 

Personally, cosmic horror is a very young genre, and there’s so much potential for stories set in all kinds of eras. I mean, I’ve got a bunch of Call of Cthulhu scenario books that take place all over different time periods and they all offer something unique. 

Author Eric Malikyte

[GdM] What makes the Mythos scary in this book?

[EM] I think it’s the idea that you can wake up one day and the people you thought you knew so well, whether they are family, friends, or spouses—people you love dearly—are suddenly be gone, absorbed into a cult. That there are people who have been lured into cults and have been transformed into worse versions of themselves. I think that’s something that people can really relate to, and it’s terrifying, because it’s real. 

[GdM] The book has a strong political context. Is that a good thing or a bad thing for a writer in 2025?

[EM] All the best stories are political in some way. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is about a fascist regime in America that burns books to prevent the proletariat from becoming too educated. 

1984 is terrifying and iconic. 

Cyberpunk as a genre is intensely anti-corporate and political. 

Robocop is one of the most iconic dystopian science fiction movies of all time and it’s one of the most anti-corporate things ever made. 

Alien centers around a bunch of working-class space truckers who are inevitably determined to be expendable by their employer. 

Even something like the Cthulhu Mythos is political. The idea that humanity’s obsession with exploring the unknown could one day cause its own destruction asks whether science as a whole is a double-edged sword? 

Like it or not, politics shapes our world, and your personal politics shapes your world view. To quote the legendary progressive rock band, Rush, “If you choose not to decide, You still have made a choice.”

There’s also an argument that this obsession we have in the West of remaining “non-political” has done a greater harm than good. Did our complacency and focus on civility politics only pave the way for the return of fascism? That’s a question we as a society and species have to ask ourselves for the sake of the world our children and their children will have to grow up in.

[GdM] Other than Cthulhu: Grimoire, what are some of your other works that our readers could go and find?

[EM] Obviously, there’s Mind’s Horizon, which is the precursor and the blueprint for the OEI Archives series. There’s the OEI Files series which is a great entry point into the OEI multiverse, the first of which is free everywhere ebooks are sold (It’s called In Its Shadow, by the way). 

There’s Echoes of Olympus Mons, which is a fusion of cyberpunk and cosmic horror. I’m working on two sequels to it that will expand the horrors the Corporate Confederacy is capable of committing.

And the Ego Trip is the first book in the Neo Rackham series, set about 60 years after Echoes of Olympus Mons. I’ll have two sequels to Ego Trip coming out next year in Bad Omens, and a 3rd book that needs to be titled. 

Then there’s Suleniar’s Enigma books 1 and 2. It’s a combo of dark fantasy, Lovecraftian horror, that was heavily inspired by shonen battle manga, off the wall JRPGs like Chrono Trigger, Tales of Symphonia, and Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber series. I’m still drafting the third book and mapping out books 4 and 5.

[GdM] The world of the indie writer seems to differ greatly from author to author. How has your experience as an indie author been so far?

[EM] I’ve apparently been authoring on “hard mode” as some of my friends have suggested. By writing in so many different genres, it makes marketing things a bit challenging. Maybe it’s the ADHD, maybe I’m just crazy, but I can’t really help where my creative energy wants to go. My hope is that if readers really enjoy what I’m offering, if they see the quality of it, they’ll be curious to look outside their genre preferences. But who knows?

But the most important thing about any creative project is the passion and love of the artform, and that’s not going anywhere for me. 

[GdM] Thank you so much for talking with us today Eric, hopefully you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have! One final question, what can we expect from you next?

[EM] Sequels to Ego Trip, Echoes of Olympus Mons, and Suleniar’s Enigma. I’m also working on drafting the next OEI Archives book, but it’s still in the early stages of writing and ideation.

I’m also working on a cyberpunk battle manga that serves as a loose sequel to Suleniar’s Enigma that will also have a tabletop RPG attached to it that is 90% done. The comic is also fairly far along in the creative process, but you can see some of the pages I’m working on on my Cara account.

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REVIEW: To Clutch a Razor by Veronica Roth

To Clutch a Razor is Veronica Roth’s second entry in the Curse Bearer series and picks up not long after the end of When Among Crows. There might be some spoilers for the first book in this review, so proceed with caution if you have yet to finish book one. Dymitr has been separated from his bone sword, a weapon of the Holy Order formed from half his soul, and is beginning to suffer from it. Baba Jaga proposes a solution and it would involve Dymitr not only turning his back on his past but hurting those he loves.

In an attempt to help Dymitr out of his impossible situation, Ala suggests he instead steals his family’s book of curses that he is sworn to keep and use it as a bargaining chip with the all-powerful witch. This sets in motion a return to his family home in Poland and a daring heist at his beloved uncle’s funeral, all while hoping nobody detects he is no longer a Knight.

Back in Poland, Ala and Dymitr run into Niko, who is on a mission to kill a dangerous Knight known as the Razor. Exposing more of Dymitr’s secrets and past, Niko discovers the Razor is a close family member to his newly-monstrous, almost-boyfriend. To Clutch a Razor places these characters each into their own difficult circumstances where they’re forced to choose between their own needs and those of others.

To Clutch a Razor has an overall darker feel to it than When Among Crows, as it challenges the reader to consider whether we can continue to love someone knowing they’re a terrible person, and whether that makes us as culpable as them. The Knights we see are all too often cruel and heartless, even though we know they’ve been indoctrinated over centuries to believe the lies they shroud themselves in. Can that ever excuse the zealotry they bring to torturing others?

“Screaming is for the first moments of pain, the shocking ones, the ones that happen before pain is so layered over itself that there’s no energy left to scream.”

With When Among Crows, I felt some aspects were a little rushed and that has largely been rectified in To Clutch a Razor. There is still a lot of room to grow these characters and the book continues in the feel of an origin story. All the good aspects of the first book remain, as well as bringing in some greater depth to Dymitr and the history of the Holy Order. It is still novella-length and offers a short, punchy journey into shadowy folklore and dark dealings.

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REVIEW: Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

In July of 2025, Chinese studio Leenzee Games released Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, a dark fantasy soulslike ARPG set in the dying days of the Ming dynasty. The players take up the role of Bai Wuchang, a pirate woman who returns home after a long absence to find her war-torn kingdom beset by a mysterious plague called the Feathering. The Feathering causes men to begin sprouting feathers, slowly transforming into birdlike monsters out of some avian cosmic horror nightmare. Wuchang almost immediately contracts this disease, loses her memory, but manages to maintain her humanity whilst still gaining the power of the avian monsters.

Wuchang Fallen: Feathers hits all the grimdark boxes: every single character, including Wuchang, is morally ambiguous if not outright evil. War is on all sides, with no clear heroes or villains. No matter the choices you make, lots of people, some of them innocent, will die. And, of course, there’s aforementioned horror elements.

While Wuchang: Fallen Feathers drew numerous comparisons to Dark Souls—which are fair comparisons—I actually found it in many ways more similar to FromSoft’s other beloved franchise, Bloodborne. Combat in Wuchang is fluid and faster than Dark Souls, which taken in conjunction with the spreading plague, hidden cosmic horror, and uncertain implication over what’s real and what’s a dream, it feels a helluva lot like Bloodborne but set in Ancient China.

Which, by the way, is not a bad thing. Bloodborne is a masterpiece, and Wuchang earned its place right alongside it as one my all-time favourite soulslikes.

Like any soulslikes, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers gameplay features punishing combat that rewards learning the environment and move sets of various enemies, especially the bosses. For all that, perhaps because of my build, I did not find it especially difficult as soulslikes go (except for Demon of Obsession, which was by far the hardest fight of the game).

Builds essentially consist of exploring down skill trees for any combination of five weapons, and a base tree that develops overall capabilities (like healing potion uses). You can respect at any shrine, a mechanic I find a mixed bag. On the one hand, I feel like cost-free respecing reduces the impact of choice on build, and build represents the primary player engagement mechanic in most RPGs. On the flipside, it does mean if you get stuck, you at least have options to change your mind.

Online, many say the game requires you to regularly respec to beat bosses. That mentality I actively dislike, as I feel it speaks of lazy design … but I didn’t actually find it true, either. I used a combination of longsword and dual swords, and it saw me through every encounter except one.

The five weapons give a variety of interesting gameplay, though I cannot say I found them all equally viable. Many claim axe is best, but the longsword whip is hella fun, and dual short swords eviscerate most humanoid enemies. Magic, from what I saw, is also a viable route, though I didn’t use it as much other than buffs. You can also enhance Wuchang’s Feathering abilities in this way.

It’s somewhat of a tradition for Dark Souls (and Bloodborne, Elden Ring, etc.) to make gamers work for the story as well as the game. If you just play through without paying attention, reading the snippets of lore, and putting pieces together like a puzzle, you wind up with richly atmospheric, challenging games that make very little sense. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, which wears its inspirations on its sleeve, plays into this, which means, it would be easy to play through and have no real idea what’s going on.

I actually kind of think it’s a bit of a shame, consider, like Dark Souls, it has some really, really rich lore. I’ll try to tackle it really briefly, with a bit of warning for spoilers, given, as mentioned, uncovering what the hell is going on is part of the experience.

While the setting is an alternate history of the end of the Ming Dynasty, a lot of the story revolves around the much older kingdom of ancient Shu (a real ancient kingdom in what is now Sichuan; Shu fell in 316 BCE). In the game, the people of ancient Shu discovered red mercury (cinnabar), a substance with alchemical properties that could allow them to strive for immortality.

One group in Shu, the Bo people, began attempting to use red mercury to such ends. As a side effect, it transformed them in monstrous avians. The Bo, in fact, worshipped avians before this, so there is some question about cause and effect here. The avian Bo had an ancient capital, from where they ruled as god-kings of such power they could bend time and space. Sometimes, however, though Bo mutated into monstrous akin to the Feather in Wuchang’s time. Regardless, red mercury, the source of transformation, became desired above all things.

And it had to be watered with human blood. People were sacrificed en masse to transform the lucky few into gods (or monsters if unfortunate). At some point, the Bo fought a terrible war against a mysterious enemy, and the kingdom of Shu vanished into the mists of history.

Almost 2000 years later (around 1640 CE), the Ming dynasty is collapsing. But alchemists, one more seeking immortality, have re-discovered red mercury, and started this whole mess over again.

If I had a main complaint about Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, it would be its trophy system was not necessarily well-thought out in terms of how players actually play. It’s a game that wants to reward exploration. Yet many quests can break simply by going to the wrong area out of order (though the game gives little warning this may happen). This locks one out of certain trophies for an entire playthrough, which is less than ideal.

A vast number of trophies are missable, which means, trophy hunters have no real choice but to frequently consult guides … or else make an absurd number of playthroughs when going for all trophies. I think a game should respect our time enough to acknowledge most of us don’t want to play a game 4-6 times all the way through to “complete” it.

These are minor gripes, of course, but something a certain subset of serious gamers do care about.

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REVIEW: The Strength of the Few by James Islington

Dazzlingly ambitious, jaw-droppingly epic, and with a rising tide of blood and fire, James Islington’s The Strength of the Few is the electrifying sequel to the acclaimed Will of the Many. I’m going to say a lot of words and get into the nitty gritty of the book, but to sum it up: this book is a banger. 

“You have to make them believe, my dear boy, whenever they see you step out onto that stage. Because it is faith that makes us cheer, and a triumph forgotten is no different to defeat.”

There are moments where a master of the craft is delivering their stand-out performance. Joe Abercrombie penning Age of Madness, Kendrick Lamar crafting To Pimp a Butterfly, Lebron James in the 2016 finals, Bruenor Battlehammer crafting Aegis-Fang, if you’ll allow the fictional example, and so on. These moments in time are fragile things, and they rode a knife’s edge on their path to glory. 

Islington is on that path. 

The Will of the Many was a proclamation that Islington was crafting something special, but The Strength of the Few is that bold, confident step down the path. Every twist and plot decision seems obvious in hindsight, but blew me away during the actual reading, which is the sign of a meticulously crafted plot with lots of confident foreshadowing. The prose, the dialogue, the world itself, is advanced level stuff. 

The Strength of the Few juggles three separate plot threads, and pretty evenly. I can’t go into the details without spoiling, but I call them Columns, Spirals, and Life. Spirals started out as my least favorite of the three, but by the end, I think it was my favorite. That story has a bit of a Malazan-esque storyline where things aren’t fully explained at first, and ultimately I think that helped the narrative. Life, on the other hand, holds your hand a bit, and I could have used with less of it. It’s all personal preference, and truly doesn’t matter because the way each story progresses and ends are all elite in their own way, but where Islington shines the hardest is his climaxes. Each story is a complete thing, full of twists and turns, and each one has a ticking time bomb that explodes. It’s three books in one, which means at least three “oh fuck” moments, and each one bangs. 

While The Will of the Many is more of a dark academia book, The Strength of the Few is where we’ve graduated. There’s still training montages and progression, but gone is the class days and school setting. Instead, we have three separate settings, all involving the same level of allying, politicking, and back-stabbing that Islington has shown advanced skills of. The advancement of plot, and of stakes, does Hierarchy a lot of credit and shows the real-world application of the things we’ve only speculated and guessed at. 

I have to make one more note on the plot, because it’s truly special. My jaw quite literally dropped twice, and The Strength of the Few is the closest I’ve been to crying at an SFF book since Erikson’s Toll the Hounds. Some say the mark of a truly great book is how much it makes you feel, and if that’s true, this is a phenomenal book. 

Putting my cards on the table, I am utterly shocked at the advancement of Islington’s prose. Reading his earlier work showed that he had ambition, knew how to craft a narrative, and that he was someone who could deliver on his promises, but his prose had never truly impressed me. The Will of the Many was an improvement to the “rather good” tier, which is where I figured Islington would peak, but good lord. The writing and voice and lyricism present in The Strength of the Few is actually incredible. I comfortably put The Strength of the Few in that elite, upper echelon of books from a prose perspective. 

The action and the magic system are well-crafted and very cool as always. There’s new tricks at work here and the resulting scenes are an awesome spectacle. Sometimes it’s John Wick-esque in its proximity to violence where you can feel characters’ breath, sweat, and blood, and at others it’s more Sanderson flavored in its spectacle and usage of magic systems to the fullest extent. Regardless of which approach Islington utilized, he deserves full marks. 

“We must suffer the hundred little deaths of self in order to protect this world. Not because what we do is good, but because good will no longer exist if we do not.”

While The Strength of the Few is an undeniable triumph, there are ever so small deficits in the middle third. It starts and ends incredibly strong, but the pacing in the middle feels slightly off. Chapters could have been cut and combined, and one of the three plot-lines (Life) that Islington juggles never fully dropped, but I did think it got close to the ground. 

I do have to make a quick note that if you liked The Will of the Many only because of the school setting, this one may not be for you. Aspects of that sub-genre that people like are present here, but we’re largely out of the school setting and into the real world. 

That said, those are small things that the endings utterly washed away, and this is easily a five star book. Hierarchy is becoming one of those series that will go down amidst the pantheon of SFF greats. 

To sum it up, The Strength of the Few is better in pretty much every way than its predecessor. The Will of the Many was a good book—a really, really good book—but The Strength of the Few is a great one. If you’re reading this review as either someone who enjoyed book one or was curious about the series as a whole, do not hesitate. Go to the bookstore, pick this up, and enjoy the journey. 

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REVIEW: Hazelthorn by C. G. Drews

Just when I thought I had somewhat recovered from the emotional rollercoaster that C.G. Drews put me through last year with their debut Don’t Let the Forest In, they are back to yet again tear my soul asunder with their newest botanical body horror Hazelthorn. It’s a hauntingly tragic tale of an orphan teen with missing memories who inherits a crumbling gothic manor with a carnivorous garden and has to solve a murder mystery together with his ex-best friend who tried to murder him seven years ago. And if that isn’t a killer premise, then I don’t know what is. 

“He is just a boy who was once buried alive on an estate full of monsters. And he doesn’t know what else about him is real.”

Now, Hazelthorn is one of those books where you’ll know from the very first chapter if it is going to be the right fit for you. Similarly to Andrew Joseph White or Cassandra Khaw, Drews has a very particular way with words that you are either going to love or hate, full of wild metaphors and tragically beautiful imagery that goes from lush and flowery to grotesque and disturbing to create an intensely visceral experience that is utterly breathtaking to me. Their ability to capture the feelings of mania, of anxiety, of rage, of obsession, of ‘what is wrong with me? why can’t I be normal?’ is honestly second to none, and I just live for the emotional turmoil of it all.

Then add to that our delightfully unreliable narrator Evander, who you just can’t help but root for even as he deeply loathes himself and makes you doubt anything and everything that you’re experiencing with him. My heart broke a little more for him with each new secret about his past that was unearthed, and I loved the brutally raw exploration of what dangerous things can happen when queerness, mental illness, and neurodivergence are misunderstood, shamed, and treated as something monstrous.

“This is what it is to be awake: pain that eats. He is a hollowed-out gourd of a boy-shaped thing, pawing at the soil as he drags himself away. He must get away. That’s all that matters.”

For me, the murder mystery investigation is actually the least thrilling and compelling aspect of Hazelthorn, especially because there is already more than enough mystery and tension woven into Evander’s inner journey and his intoxicating dynamic with Laurie, who is a beautifully complicated mess of a character in his own right. He absolutely captured my heart with his devilish charm and dangerously sharp tongue, and I really appreciated how his constant prickly banter with Evander offered some humour (albeit very dark humour) to counterbalance all depravity, desperation, and despair. These two broken, traumatized boys are just the epitome of hate to love romance to me, not even so much because their hate blooms to love, but more so because for a long while they hate the fact that they love each other, which was just beautifully twisted to me.

Also, the queer yearning is absolutely delicious, and the way that Drews captures Evander’s toxic obsession with Laurie made me feel things I didn’t even know I could feel. My words can never do Drews’ writing justice, so I will just let three of my favourite quotes speak for itself. Like, why say “He loves him.”, when you can say: “He really needs to pull apart the wicker cage of his ribs and see if he can find the reason he’s so obsessed with that boy hidden amidst the rot. He craves him. He thinks about him all the time.”
Or maybe this: “Laurie. He is wrecked with this terrible, gnawing need to splay Laurie out on the floorboards like a butterfly with broken wings and put pins through him to make him stay still as he takes him apart. Carefully, reverently. To think like this, to be consumed by this want, is ridiculous right now, when they are both hiding and hunted— but maybe they deserve this distraction. He has been locked in a room for seven years. He has been starved for this.” Or how about this: “He is gasoline poured into Evander’s open mouth of flame, and the worst part is how he likes the taste.”

If that all didn’t give it away, everything about Hazelthorn is incredibly intense and just a little bit unhinged, but that is exactly how I like it. You don’t have to come looking here for clear logic and neat answers, but if you are willing to just accept the wild weirdness of it all, then this book hits so damn hard. Between the hauntingly gothic atmosphere, the feverdream-like mental spirals, the toxic family drama and secrets, the deadly garden, the obsessive yearning, and the disturbing body horror, Hazelthorn is just one of those deeply unsettling stories that will make you go “what the actual fuck?!” with each turn of the page, and I love it all the more for that.

“He knows what it is to be buried alive, the feeling of dirt in his mouth and the quiet fitting around him like a well- tailored grave.”

I am just as obsessed with this dark genre-blendy gem of a book as Evander is with Laurie, and I am not ashamed to admit that I devoured it in a single day (or did it devour me?!). The ending might not have left me as shocked and hollowed out inside as Don’t Let the Forest In did, but I still think it’s a brutally bold conclusion that will haunt me in all its devastating beauty. Please do not let the YA label fool you, Hazelthorn is an unapologetically dark tale full of trauma, hurt, and rage, and isn’t afraid to strangle you with its twisted vines.

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REVIEW: Samhain Sorceries edited by D.M. Ritzlin

Samhain.  Halloween.  Both words evoke approaching winter, with discontented, angry spirits crossing over into ours – as well as mischief, mayhem and bloody murder.  Mix in some sword and sorcery, where adventure meets the darkness of the world, and you have Samhain Sorceries, a compelling collection of haunting short stories. 

My first experience with Celtic mythology came in the mid-1980s when I came across the Sidhe Trilogy, written by Kenneth C Flint.  Flint plundered Irish mythology to craft an entertaining series of books pitting the magic of the Sidhe against the fallen technology of the Firbolgs.  A traditional retelling of the Hero’s Journey, the Sidhe books did introduce me to the darker side of Celtic legends, particularly their doomladen atmosphere and sense that the best times are far, far in the past.

Couple this with an interest in horror and it is no surprise that I was drawn to Samhain Sorceries, the latest in a series of anthologies from DMR Books. The publisher has been a leading force in the revival of sword and sorcery, and marrying that genre with Samhain, where the walls between our world and the Otherside fades, is something to whet the appetite.

Samhain Sorceries opens somewhat uncertainly with “Night of the Burning Ghost”, by Australian author Keith Taylor, who would be well known to many readers from the 1980s with his Bard series of books.  While an entertaining read, “Night of the Burning Ghost” feels, in its writing, old fashioned and somewhat stilted. 

However, the collection then picks up immediately with “The Black Cat of Barrowburn”, by Reverend Joe Kelly.  Full of muscular prose and some exciting action, “The Black Cat of Barrowburn” features a more modern setting than the traditional ‘back in the mists of time’ typical of the genre, and it is all the better for it.  Our hero here is Conor O’Brien, hired by the son of a local lord to deal with the Black Cat, a creature that has slain all the men of the Ewer family of Barrowburn.  Kelly crafts an impressive story, that matches his lead character’s disdain for the landed gentry with a fierce inclination to fight against the dark forces of Halloween ranging across the landscape.  Kelly is a writer to watch.

Things become darker still in Tim Hanlon’s “The House of the Dark One”.  Aengus mac Conall ventures into a barrow on Samhain, seeking to free his year long vanished sister from the grip of the sinister Donn the Dark One.  This story leans more heavily into the horror, making great use of the bizarre imagery apparent in the magical realm within the barrow.  The resolution to the story feels slightly abrupt, but it more than makes up for itself with a rather stunning ending, where Hanlon makes good use of the ‘spend a night on the Otherside, and see how many years you’ve actually been away’ trope of Celtic myth.

Adrian Cole’s Omaran series from the late 1980s got me through a difficult period in my teenage years.  Dark, brooding, mournful, the Omaran books should be sought out by all readers of grimdark for their sheer inventiveness and atmosphere.  Cole is still writing, still producing top quality work, as is evidenced here in his story “The Hill of Breaking Bones”.  It is Samhain, a time when the walls between the mortal and magical realms have faded, and Cormorac, mourning the murder of his wife and children, is travelling to a ceremony to mark this darkest of nights.  He comes across the marauders who have invaded his homeland, and in the best traditions of the genre, he slaughters them out of hand.  While this story is perhaps a touch too long, it is replete with dark, horrific imagery, particularly the cursed spirits of previous invaders, condemned to be tied forever to the bogs and marshes where they fell.  Cormorac’s world is a place of darkness, of god’s gone but not forgotten, where death is but an arm’s length away, and the dead themselves stalk the land, forever.

I’m sad to say that I wasn’t much taken with Matthew Pungitore’s “The Tale of Marius the Avenging Imp”.  The conceit of this story is that Pungitore has translated an old text, itself a translation and palimpsest of an even older work.  While I can appreciate that Pungitore was going for a vastly different reading experience from the standard the genre has to offer, for me, it wasn’t a story that I enjoyed.  That said, its purplish prose and real sense of strangeness would definitely appeal to more refined tastes than my own.  The sort of story that a large glass of absinthe would help you appreciate!

The next story is more traditional fare.  “The Eye of Balor” by Owen G Tabard features Haakon the Red, a semi-retired former reaver in possession of a Stormbringer-ish sentient demonsword.  Lest you think this is a mere Elric flavoured story, Tabard has turned the tables somewhat in that his hero is more than reluctant to hack and slash his way across the landscape.  Haakon has had enough of the adventuring life, particularly partnered with a telepathic sword that endlessly seeks to have its need for blood slaked on anyone close at hand.  “The Eye of Balor” is good fun, and a worthy addition to the anthology.

It is Samhain, and on this darkest of nights, tribesmen gather to offer a sacrifice to the dark god Cromm Cruaich.  In return for raising an army of the dead, tribal leader Lubras offers the head of his eldest son, Aron.  And so it is done.  This dark and bloody deed opens Ethan Sabatella’s “The Tomb of Tigernmas”, a tale of revenge that goes savagely awry.  The writing is strong, at times lyrical, and he has a masterly grip on the pacing of the story.  Some of the sequences, such as the summoning of Cromm Cruaich, have a real horrific feel to them, and indeed, this marrying of sword and sorcery and horror is well handled.

The last two stories of Samhain Sorceries, “The Raid into Annwyn” by Harry Piper, and “The Barrow-King’s Bride”, by HR Lawrence, are the finest in the collection and bring it to an extremely satisfying conclusion.

“The Raid into Annwyn” is an epic in miniature, the tale of a band of desperadoes who challenge the forces of Annwyn to reclaim their dead lord, Maelgwyn, on the night of Samhain.  Piper does an excellent job of evoking the Celtic underworld – a place of muted sound and colours, where demons and other monsters stand ready to defend that terrible place.  While the action scenes are handled with aplomb, it is the metaphysical aspects of the story – there is no glory without honour, arrogance and power are as nothing in death, and even the mightiest in the end are mortal and must answer for their lives – that ring loudest in this tale.  The ending gave me chills, to be honest, evoking the revelation of what is really going on in Stephen King’s classic novel, Revival.  Piper is another writer to watch.

I absolutely loved “The Barrow-King’s Bride”.  The story features Captain Aidee and Tom Cornfield, two highwaymen prowling the Yorkish byways on All Hallow’s Eve.  They encounter a coach with a strange cargo – a researcher into the occult, and the comely young woman he has taken – not for himself – but as bride for an undead lord.  The writing in this story is vigorous, the plotting and pacing immaculate, and the characterisations of the two leads – the love-lorn Cornfield, and his wry, experienced companion Captain Aidee, are a delight to read.  A story like this deserves the satisfying ending it provides the reader.  Aidee has featured in an earlier story in Rahehell #1, and I, for one, will be searching out this tale – as should you.

Finally, special shoutout to cover artist Adam Burke whose brooding and atmospheric cover perfectly encapsulates the feel and tone of Samhain Sorceries.

Overall, Samhain Sorceries proves to be a more than satisfying read.  The writers, in the main, make excellent use of the broad range of Irish and Celtic history, geography and myth.  The marriage of sword and sorcery with the atmosphere and trappings of Samhain and Halloween is a strong one, and makes this book a compelling read and a must for everyone interested in this type of storytelling.

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REVIEW: The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is a sci-fi horror based on a short story, Who Goes There?, by John W. Campbell Jr that was published at the height of eldritch horror serialisations in the 1930s. Not to be confused with 1951’s film The Thing from Another World, Carpenter’s rendition has since become a cult classic from the VHS generation that can still be considered visceral nightmare fuel.

On its release, The Thing had some stiff competition in cinemas, going head-to-head with both E.T. and Blade Runner. It didn’t do well at the box office, despite impressing critics with its practical effects, it was perhaps a bit too much of a shock for audiences not used to such repugnant and bloody creatures at that point in cinema’s history. For the faint of heart, a search online for “The Thing board game miniatures” will give you a safe, plain-grey-plastic idea of the sort of monstrosities featured in the film.

The premise may sound familiar, given how many stories have riffed on those old Lovecraftian-era originals, but The Thing offers a level of bleak fatalism not often found in Hollywood movies. The film focuses on an isolated US Research base in Antarctica who unwittingly invite an aggressive, ancient alien into their camp and the ensuing decimation of everything and everyone. This is the one film where rescuing the cute doggo is absolutely the wrong decision.

The inhabitants descend into a paranoid turmoil as the virus-like alien consumes and then becomes their colleagues, hiding in plain sight as it tries to escape into the wider world. Kurt Russell’s ‘Mac’ MacReady is the camp’s helicopter pilot and only realistic way out. Not knowing who to trust – or who is still human – Mac refuses to evacuate anyone until they can be sure they aren’t giving The Thing a free ride too. 

The film swings from dense silence laden with tension, to high-stakes frenetic action throughout. The close, cramped environment adds to the fear as there is only a limited amount of hospitable space to run to, which is systematically eliminated as the film goes on. The sound design and practical effects are stand-out elements that make The Thing a horror classic ahead of its time.

Not only does The Thing continue to stand up after forty-three years but it offers something to new audiences in our current climate crisis. As the ice melts, the concerns of paleovirology are becoming more relevant and more realistic. While it represents an unlikely extreme, The Thing is perhaps not as far-fetched as it was at its inception. That a functionally extinct virus frozen for millennia could devastate the contemporary population is just one more fear to live with for modern audiences, and The Thing taps into that with unnerving prescience.

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REVIEW: The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale

Joe R. Lansdale is your favorite horror writer’s favorite horror writer. Widely anthologized and the recipient of no fewer than ten Bram Stoker Awards, it doesn’t feel accurate to characterize the prolific East Texas author as underrated, per se, but to this reader it has long felt like Lansdale should be much more of a household name, up there with Stephen King. Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard series of novels has received popular acclaim from crime fiction fans, but readers who are less plugged into the horror short fiction scene (as opposed to the novel market) are all too often unacquainted with his work. Tachyon Publications is attempting to rectify this injustice with The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale. This convenient volume packages 16 tales spanning the lengthy career of this “Champion Mojo Storyteller.” The stories gathered here are dark, occasionally crude, often bleakly humorous, frequently gross, and always offbeat.

The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale opens strongly with “The Folding Man.” Some teenagers out joyriding after a Halloween party encounter a big black automobile carrying a group of nuns. One of the boys decides to “moon” the nuns as a joke, and the sight of his bare buttocks immediately sends the nuns into a murderous rage. When their savage high-speed pursuit fails to eliminate all the teens, the nuns produce a bizarre mechanical man from the trunk of their car, dispatching it like the robot from The Terminator to hunt down the survivors. Relentlessly paced, filled with graphic violence, and operating by incomprehensible nightmare logic, “The Folding Man” sets the tone for the stories to follow. It lets the reader know that they are now in Lansdale’s world, in which a quirky, chance encounter can rapidly escalate into something horrific and fatal.

Weird Westerns are one subgenre in with Lansdale excels, perhaps due to his Texan background, and this volume includes a pair of them. In “The Hoodoo Man and the Midnight Train,” a gunsmith with some aptitude for folk magic and his apprentice are hired to retrieve the soul of an innocent woman condemned to an eternity as a passenger on a ghostly train guarded by a demonic duelist. The clever and methodical way in which the Hoodoo Man tackles this supernatural predicament feels like a satisfying blend of the early Witcher stories by Andrzej Sapkowski and the Silver John Appalachian folk horror tales by Manly Wade Wellman. “The Hungry Snow” is the second Weird Western, in which a wanderer known as the Reverend Jedidiah Mercer encounters a handful of bedraggled travelers stranded in the Rocky Mountains. Having exhausted their supplies, the hapless survivors have resorted to cannibalism. While the Reverend is understandably cautious around his hungry and desperate new acquaintances, the party as a whole face a greater threat: a prowling Wendigo lurking just beyond the campfire. Like “The Hoodoo Man and the Midnight Train,” “The Hungry Snow” features a level-headed and resourceful protagonist using their expertise and their wits to extract themselves from dire straits.

The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale also includes a pair of post-apocalyptic tales, each with an appropriately unconventional spin. “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back” chronicles the descent into madness of a scientist emerging from an underground shelter into the world he had a hand in destroying. Humanity is all but extinct, and the surface world has been claimed by bizarre, hostile wildlife, forcing the scientist and his estranged wife to shelter together in a lighthouse waiting for the inevitable. While it still feels a little overstuffed to me, like it has more than enough ideas to sustain two separate stories, “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back” was one of the more memorable stories from the George R. R. Martin-edited volume Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse (2015). The frequently anthologized novella “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folk” is another work of exceptional post-apocalyptic fiction. When a bounty hunter and his ruthless quarry are captured by religious zealots building an undead army, the two enemies must join forces to escape torture and death. Replete with a “Jesusland” theme park, sexy nuns, Mouseketeer ear hat-wearing zombies, and a dash of necrophilia, this story epitomizes Lansdale’s gonzo, deranged appeal.

The second novella collected in The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale is probably his most famous work, due to the well-received 2002 film adaptation by Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, The Beastmaster, etc.): “Bubba Ho-Tep.” Set in an East Texas retirement home, the story is told from the perspective of an elderly man who is either Elvis in his twilight years or an impersonator who has kept up the act so long that his original identity has become foggy. When their fellow residents begin dying under mysterious circumstances, Elvis teams up with a nearly victimized Black man convinced that he is former President John F. Kennedy. They soon learn that a resurrected Egyptian mummy prowls the halls of their old folks’ home looking for souls to devour. With a colorful cast of addled characters and Lansdale’s trademark wit, comedy is very much at the forefront of “Bubba Ho-Tep,” but he doesn’t neglect the horrific aspect of the premise. The reader is reminded that the retirement home residents are incredibly vulnerable, death at the hands of the mummy results in eternal torment, and outside assistance is not coming. The threat may be somewhat ridiculous, but it is a lethal one, nonetheless.

Regular, well-meaning folks in the wrong place at the wrong time are common horror protagonists, but Lansdale also relishes putting the reader in the shoes of the truly despicable. Callous, bigoted, deceitful, or just plain demented. Sometimes they get their just deserts, sometimes they don’t. “My Dead Dog Bobby” is a two-page piece of flash fiction about a young boy playing with his decomposing pet. Lansdale is sometimes lumped in with the old splatterpunk movement—a categorization that’s not always undeserved but also feels slightly reductive—and there’s plenty of grue in this story, but readers may find their initial revulsion for the narrator replaced by pity by the short’s end. “By Bizarre Hands” is a chilling character study of a psychopathic traveling preacher visiting a widow on Halloween with plans to molest the woman’s developmentally disabled daughter. And rather than let readers off easy with the relatively reassuring “Bubba Ho-Tep,” The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale instead concludes with one of the darkest stories in the book: “Night They Missed the Horror Show.” Two racist, idiotic high school boys attempt to kill a dull evening in their Podunk town by dragging the corpse of a dead dog behind their car. Later in the evening they encounter a pair of even crueler men and quickly find themselves in a desperate situation. In his introduction to the piece the author aptly describes it as “a story of the bad guys meeting some really bad guys.” Many of us have had the misfortune of encountering people that just seem “off” or somehow fundamentally broken inside, and Lansdale is uncommonly effective at portraying that sort of ominous individual on the page.

The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale is a worthy retrospective of a bona fide horror master’s extensive career. The folksy, the humorous, the gory, the gonzo, and the pitch-black elements of his body of work are all present and accounted for across this collection’s 16 entries. If you’re new to Lansdale, this is an excellent place to start. If you’re already acquainted with him, this volume likely includes your favorite Lansdale story alongside several less familiar treasures.

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REVIEW: A Sword of Gold and Ruin by Anna Smith Spark

To read A Sword of Gold and Ruin by Anna Smith Spark and its predecessor A Sword of Bronze and Ashes is to be transported in time. To go back to before phones and computers and mass print, to when books were prized possessions of churches and the lords and lairds of the land. To a time when we as people sat around a fire and listened to the aged as they told mystical stories of gods and warriors as a way of passing history and social mores to the next generation.

In A Sword of Gold and Ruin Kanda is trying to piece her family back together again. The sense of loss of control over her children and her helplessness to retain her connection with her daughters grows as she leads their family in search of Roven in the hopes of rebuilding the once shining beacon of hope. We experience the story in two timelines, with the contemporary timeline heavily favoured featuring Kanda and her family’s adventures in their search of the fabled city, and our insights into the Six of Roven (six gold-like warriors Kanda leads in battling monsters across the lands, set long in the past) showcasing why the city is no longer there.

Kanda’s three children and her relationship with them is the core–and most heart wrenching–part of this book. Children grow and push boundaries in rebellion and change and fail and want to have things from their parents, while a parent grows old and more frail and less energised, and their wants and needs change—sometimes at odds with their children’s. I don’t have children, but watching my own parents and my brother’s and friends’ children and interacting with them all as I age … for some reason this aspect of A Sword of Gold and Ruin just really landed with me at this stage of my life. I can’t imagine how heavily this will land with mothers watching their daughters sate their appetites for autonomy.

A Sword of Gold and Ruin retains the aetheric, dreamlike state of its predecessor, with myth and reality blending into the story’s delivery. I love the way this storytelling style delivers such a different reading experience to much of the modern dark fantasy market, and as I alluded to earlier, it takes you back to what feels like a bygone age. It’s heavy, dense at times, relies on a mature reader to flow with it at others, but when Smith Spark chooses to land a punch, it floors you. There are few authors out there who land emotional punches like Smith Spark does.

I say it every time I read one of Smith Spark’s books: this was an experience. I feel like I’ve read my way through a fever-dream. I am exhausted and fulfilled and happy and in need of a popcorn read after finishing A Sword of Gold and Ruin. This book will challenge you like few others, and I think it’d be a rare reader who wouldn’t enjoy the experience.

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