The Gate Theory

by Kaaron Warren

"We're all in pain. We try to keep the gates closed by falling in love, travelling, avoiding responsibility, getting drunk, taking drugs...anything to lose ourselves. But the dull ache remains in each of us. These stories are about the gates opening." The Gate Theory holds six tales by award-winning Australian author Kaaron Warren. Each story resonates with the pain of living.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories

124 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2013

About the author

I wanted to be a writer from a very young age, and wrote my first proper short story at 14. I also wrote a novel that year, called “Skin Deep”‘, which I really need to type up.

I started sending stories out when I was about 23, and sold my first one, “White Bed”", in 1993. Since then I’ve sold about 150 short stories, seven short story collections and six novels.

I’m an avid and broad reader but I also like reality TV so don’t always expect intelligent conversation from me.

Reviews

[Seb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kaaron Warren's collection "The Gate Theory" is a superb collection of horror stories that bend the genre towards existential experiences, more than gory descriptions. A succession of portraits of characters more or less in distress or looking for something beyond their daily life, the stories convey both a deep sense of oppression and of desperate humanity. It is a classic collections for all those who like meaningful horror, and not just a superficial distraction.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

My review is not of the five-story Kindle version, but the six-story print version. I read and enjoyed the author's The Grief Hole, despite its problems (long digression on a pop music star) that kept it to four stars. Enough so that I was up for trying another Warren book. I wanted to like this one as well, but really struggled with it.

1) "Purity" - Protagonist Therese is born to a neglectful mother who at first can't be clean, and then can't stop eating. Therese appears on her way to overcoming the adversities her mother's obsessions cause, which is what I thought the story was going to be about, when it abruptly shifts to Therese's new boyfriend and his grandfather. We then explore their odd issue for a while before bringing Therese's mother back into it with some point about purity. I didn't get this story. (2 stars)

2) "That Girl" - Tale of a haunting after a crime was committed. Not much happens, but it is mildly interesting to gradually get the protagonist's perspective in order to have the crime explained. (2 stars)

3) "Dead Sea Fruit" - Woman's fantasy about dealing with unfaithful Casanovas, I think. (2 stars)

4) "The History Thief" - This is the best and longest story in the book. Perhaps I appreciated it most because it was written in flawless Classic Weird style. The first story of the first Weird Tales, "The Dead Man's Tale" by Willard E. Hawkins, March 1923, (available here: http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/W...) dealt with the same theme: a person dies, but can't move on because they have unfinished business with this world. Every author who goes here has to work out how the protagonist can affect this world, who can know about it, and what the protagonist's mission is. If you've seen the movie "Ghost", you have seen another example of the subgenre. I loved the unexpected twists and turns of this story, a masterful contribution to that theme. (5 stars)

5) "The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall" - Something about hunting to acquire vampire dogs. I could make as much sense of this story as you can its title. The weakest of the book. (1 star)

6) "The Gate Theory" - If you make the mistake of holding someone's hand while they're dying, you hinder the transition. This was a ghost story, similar in theme to her The Grief Hole, but not as well fleshed out. I liked that it was concretely set in various Australian locales, and the characters were interesting, but the story was just too short to accomplish much. (3 stars)

Adding up the stars and dividing by six, I arrive at 2.5. I round up on the strength of the longest story.

[Gerry Huntman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the misfortune of only being exposed to Kaaron Warren's fiction for the last few years - I wish I followed her career from the start. She is a truly wonderful writer of the disturbing, and has evocative prose. The Gate Theory is not an original fiction anthology but collects some of her best work in the period 2005 to the present day, and they deserves a solid gathering in a single title. You could call it a 'best of' work except that I was blown away last year with her collection, Through Splintered Walls, where none of the stories represented are in this work. Nevertheless, there are definitely stories in this work that will blow you completely away.

All in all, most of Warren's work in The Gate Theory are reflective of her greatest strengths: the ability to disturb (to the degree of horrify) readers, and to taste, smell and feel what is being invoked in her stories. I will pick on several of the stories, although in passing I feel compelled to say that 'The History Thief' is the least of her stories in the collection, in the sense that it is the odd one out (it is in fact an excellent story). While all the other stories in the anthology are strong treatments of the dark, 'The History Thief' has less in-your-face prose and is more of a fantastical mystery.

'That Girl' is one of Warren's Fiji stories influenced by her stay in the island nation, although on a number of levels it could have been set in other places. Nevertheless Fiji's backdrop is vivid, incredibly so, and has the right mystery and association with older cultural ractices to springboard a backstory of horror experienced by a young woman. Warren paints a horrifying story of rape and cover-up, and for much of the story there is also a tangible fear of the supernatural; yet at the end, without lessening the throttle, we are exposed to what is the true horror - that of the subjugation of females in this society - and which can easily extend far beyond. A deep, well-written piece.

'Dead Sea Fruit' is my favourite story in the collection. It is a piece describing the personal horrors of anorexia in excruciating detail, iterating consistently through the length of the short and adding a tangible, bona fide supernatural dimension. The antagonist wasn't evil through-and-through, and the protagonist isn't a stable figure - she was entering the lion's den and the reader's tension-meter shot up with concern for her. The ending was a perfect closure, but with hardly any happiness for anyone. This story is soaked in death, and with one exception, was long and agonising.

'The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfalls' is a horror story, but of a highly unusual, perhaps Bizarro nature. Another Fijian short. I liked this story perhaps for less obvious reasons than some readers may usually expect. The idea of a world-treking business to find highly unusual breeds of dogs, often intertwined with the supernatural - and readily accepted by the protagonists - is novel, interesting, entertaining. The adventure to obtain a most unusual breed in Fiji, protected by a gigantic, old, and deadly canine is also very good reading. However, what I liked most was the protagonist, Rosie, a person who is an efficient, cool adventuress, and devoid of what we would understand to be human compassion, and who is, I believe, a sociopath. She is not likeable, and this is what intrigues me about the story as it leads the reader along with interest and yet there is little, if any, sympathy for her. Most stories fail with that basic structure but this one doesn't, and I think it's because of the Bizarro, weird storyline that raises the reader's eyebrows every few paragraphs.

I left a few stories out and leave it to you, the reader, to fully explore. Kaaron Warren is undoubtedly one of the world's leading short fiction horror writers, defined by her mastery of disturbing prose. You would do yourself a disservice to miss this work. Anyone who rates The Gate Theory below 4 stars out of 5 are either maniacally against the horror genre, or are trolls. I give it 5 out of 5, although if the scale was out of 10 I would give it 9, as Through Splintered Walls sets her benchmark for perfection.

[Alan Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of five very different stories, but all hallmarked with Kaaron Warren's special, disturbing touch. Seemingly normal people who are anything but and nightmare situations so fantastic, but so believable.

[Mihai Adascalitei · Rating 4 out of 5]

These days there seems to be an avalanche of new books and it is very often that I find myself in difficulty catching up with all of those I want to read. And the situation becomes more desperate when the books I wish to read one more time are taken into consideration. Fortunately, things are easier for the short fiction, with the proper incentive I can put together more readily the time and energy necessary for a returning to my favorite stories and authors. The most recent opportunity to read again and enjoy one of my favorite writers was when the newly founded Cohesion Press published Kaaron Warren’s collection of reprinted stories, “The Gate Theory”. A collection of five stories, all familiar already, but what better excuse to relive their magic than this collection could I find?

“Purity” – Unsatisfied by her personal life and the medium she lives in Therese joins Calum and Daniel, an unusual preacher and his grandson. It is a story that touches firmly the bizarre, but with an adequate effect. Kaaron Warren is proficient in creating the atmosphere of religious hypnosis and the image of a strange cult leader and his followers. The end is unsettling and amplifies the impression of grotesque and strangeness.

“That Girl” – The story’s main character comes to Fiji backed by the funding of a wealthy Australian woman in an attempt to improve the conditions in St. Martin’s, a psychiatric institute. While there she discovers a local legend and the connection one of patients, Malvika, shares with it. The atmosphere of the story is excellently captured and built, the fragments of conversations, the local myths and superstitions are all elements that set the general feeling. Although it is basically a ghost story “That Girl” is just more than that, the reality of a particular corner of a society, Fiji and St. Martin’s in this instance, the cruel face of human behavior and the chilling elements of supernatural are mixed perfectly to inflict dread and to leave the reader with a bitter-sweet aftertaste after reading it.

“Dead Sea Fruit” – Among the patients of the story’s heroine, a dentist, are the girls hospitalized in the anorexics ward. But when the legend of Ash Mouth Man they circulate seems to come to life the main character has some decisions to make. “Dead Sea Fruit” is a story with an extended sense of surrealism, the characters and the readers walk in a dreamlike state, but also on the thin line between right or wrong, reality or fiction. However, no matter on which side of these thin lines the action will take its course there is naturalness to it. And although the story heads to an obvious destination, while the reader expects the evident to take place Kaaron Warren delivers a final twist surprising and effective as a punch in the stomach.

“The History Thief” – Alvin died choking with a piece of meat, but when he wakes up as a ghost still anchored to earth he starts to discover things he didn’t experience in life. Until he finally finds the courage to interact with Mrs. Moffat, a former co-worker.

“Three days Alvin lay on the floor of his dusty lounge room before he realized he was no longer anchored to his body. He rose, enjoying the sense of lightness but also feeling deeply sad at the sight of his small, lonely corpse.”

But as it becomes clear quite early in the story not only Alvin’s corpse is small and lonely, his entire existence was defined by insignificance and solitude, as much of a ghost in life as he is in death. Quite early too I became sympathetic with his character, the mix of Alvin’s memories and present state inflicts an air of melancholy and sadness to the story, sense that does not leave the reader until the end. On the contrary, it will be enhanced by the end. “The History Thief” grows gradually with all the new experiences Alvin has, stealing the thoughts and feelings of others, finding a certain meaning for his existence in death more than in life and getting the courage to finally do some of the things he wanted to do create the perfect medium for the final turn of the story. Although this final twist is not as stunning as the one of “Dead Sea Fruit”, it is as efficient and potent as the previous one. And despite the release some of the characters get in the end I could not shake the feeling of deep sadness this unforgettable story leaves behind.

“The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfalls” – Rosie McDonald has a talent for getting rare dog breeds to her clients, but when the latest order is for the vampire dogs of Fiji she might have to pay a price for them as well. Another story with a profound sense of surreal, again the reader walks the thin line between reality and imaginary. The story moves fast accentuating the feeling of vertigo inflicted by the surrealist atmosphere. It is a story with a powerful character at its center, a character that has to take fast and dramatic decisions, feels the need to prove herself in face of preconceptions and unjust consideration of her skills, but in the end the rewards remain to prove their worth.

The subjects and the characters of these five stories are haunting. They will not leave the reader indifferent, producing a change to certain extents, and that is always a sign of quality in fiction. The stories stay with the reader long after they are finished, the characters are all memorable. As a matter of fact, although they might not have a name or you might know them as Therese or Alvin or even present themselves as Rosie McDonald but always they will feel real. They may very well be the stranger we pass on the street, the neighbor we salute on our way out or a family member. They are flawed and we might not like them a lot, some of them are selfish, some find interest in other people’s misery and tragedy, some seek an escape from their every day existence, some fortunes, some love, but every single one of them seem to be incarnated body and soul. So much so that the reader feels the need to look over the shoulder in case all these characters are in the same room. Or in the mirror in case the stories seem to talk a bit about ourselves.

At a first glance, the collection of these five stories seems to be disjointed, but “The Gate Theory” is a perfect example of Kaaron Warren’s accomplishment in converting different themes and subjects into dense and powerful fiction. Her stories have the tendency to insidiously crawl under the reader’s skin, slithering unnoticed until they find a place from where one is unable to shake them loose after reading.

[Martin Cosby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kaaron Warren is an award-winning Australian author, and The Gate Theory collects five of her short stories, all of which have been previously published. It was first released in late 2013, and was the first publication from Cohesion Press, an Australian publisher of dark fiction.

All of these tales are darkly disturbing, and in the very best of ways. Purity kicks off proceedings, and is a great introduction to Warren's labyrinthine powers of creativity. Therese is the unfortunate daughter of a slovenly mother; she does not doubt she is loved, but she lives in a "mud-slapped, filthy, stinking home – with its stacks of newspapers going back as far as she was born, spoons bent and burnt, food grown hard and crusty..." What's more, her elder brother lives in the basement; rarely emerging and pale from a lack of sunlight. When Therese manages a temporary escape from her situation by working in a supermarket, she meets a young man called Daniel and his grandfather Calum. Their fragrant cleanliness absorbs her. Eventually, she accepts their invitation to go to a party; but is she able to find a more permanent escape, and what's more, can she ever be truly cleansed?

Warren is clearly influenced deeply by her surroundings, and That Girl is set in Bali, where she lived for some time; its authenticity cuts like a knife. This story works on so many levels. On the surface, it tells about the origins of a local legend, brought to the protagonist's attention by the inmate of a mental hospital. Beneath lies that individual's own tale of terror; then, the reader is confronted with abuse and cover-up, blurred by both cultural practices and the casual discrimination against women. That Girl is a complex and perfectly-formed piece.

Dead Sea Fruit is concerned with anorexia and all its horrors. The protagonist is a dentist who often treats anorexic girls in a hospital ward. She finds out she can kiss her clients to experience their very essence. "Then I kissed a murderer; he tasted like vegetable waste. Like the crisper in my fridge smells when I've been too busy to empty it." She hears the girls on the ward speaking in hushed tones of the Ash Mouth Man, and of what happens if he is kissed. But has she met the Ash Mouth Man himself? There is a strong supernatural element to this tale, and the ending is beautifully incisive...

The History Thief adds a touch of humour to the mix, in what is the most conventionally supernatural tale here. Alvin realises he must be dead when he gazes at his own body "on the floor of his dusty lounge room". As what might be called a ghost, he finds he has no real substance; but that he can find the density he needs through contact with living beings. However, this means he has to steal their memories. Can he be trusted with the lives of others? This is an effective tale of alienation, with a satisfying twist at the end.

Lastly is my favourite piece, The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall. I often feel that a great title begets a great tale, and that's clearly the case here. The reader is taken on a bizarre journey with Rosie, who is paid to supply examples of rare dog breeds to clients. On this occasion, she is after four vampire dogs; she has to travel to the jungle on a remote island in Fiji to capture them, which is a risky process. Her journey is arduous, and compellingly told – Rosie herself is a very strong character, and she drives the story powerfully. The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall is very much a horror story, concluding with a supremely nihilistic message.

Kaaron Warren is without doubt one of the world's leading writers of dark fiction, and The Gate Theory showcases her talent perfectly. (If you need any more convincing, check out her other superb collection, Through Splintered Walls.) Her prose is powerful, her sense of place is evocative and her imagination knows no bounds. This is the kind of book that you will remember long after you finish reading the last story. The Gate Theory fully deserves the maximum of five stars.

[Paul Mannering · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable collection, Warren creates an intensity of character and scene that is both tragic, bizarre and intimate. We are taken on a very strange journey down five, very different pathways.

I honestly believe that there is nothing quite like this available anywhere. These are stories that challenge our pre-conceived definitions and ideas of what a story can be. This is a collection that should be read, studied and shared.

[Caroline Angel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kaaron shows us humanity from a different angle, her keen grasp of the disturbing facade of normality is quick, intelligent and well written. She has given us a collection of captivating and disturbing stories that will leave you breathless with their horror and their touch of the bizzare. A highly recommended read for lovers of well written, hauntingly creepy horror stories. Five out of five stars!

[Greg Chapman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kaaron Warren never disappoints. There's an unsettling poignancy to her writing that leaves you thinking about the places and characters long after you've finished reading.

[David Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Gate Theory by Kaaron Warren contains five stories having to do with gates opening in our lives. We try to hide the pain with various things but what happens when we can’t hide the pain anymore and the gates to our true selves open? This book also contains an introduction by Amanda J. Spedding who talks about learning how to write from Kaaron. Since I wasn’t familiar with Kaaron’s work I enjoyed the intro and it got me excited to read the stories that followed.

The first story in this collection is Purity which is about a girl named Therese who lives with her mother and brother and leads a depressing life. Her mother has a food addiction and the house is always a mess but Therese works hard at a grocery store and dreams of a better life. One day a preacher and his grandson come to the store to by fruit for purification and invite Therese to join the ceremony. She does and gets drawn into a religious cult that thinks laughter is the best medicine. This was an interesting story that gets into how people get brainwashed by cults and how sometimes anything can be better than what you have.

The next story is a supernatural tale called That Girl, it gets into a woman’s quest to improve conditions in a psychiatric institution and she stumbles across an urban legend. I liked how this story describes the island of Fiji and gets into its superstitions. The third story is called Dead Sea Fruit and also touches on the supernatural with the legend of the ash mouth man. The story here follows a female dentist as she visits girls hospitalized in an anorexic’s ward. This was an odd story that was entertaining and different.

The fourth story was the longest in the collection and my favorite called The History Thief. It follows a man named Alvin who has died and now lives as a ghost. He finds that if he touches someone he can become solid and people can see him but he causes the people that he touches to lose their minds and Alvin gets their memories in return. I loved how this story is told, you see that Alvin never had much of a life but now in death he has one but at the sacrifice of everyone he touches. I was wondering if the author was making a social commentary that most people live shallow lives and prefer to live vicariously through other people such as celebrities. This story also has a mystery to it that I enjoyed.

The last story is called The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfalls about a woman who finds rare dogs. The woman is given the task of heading to Fiji to find a rare vampire dog. Once again the author makes Fiji come to life and I loved how the main character is looked down at because she is doing a job that most of her clients think a man should be doing. She doesn’t let this stop her and shows a woman can do as well as a man. Several of the stories here get into the bizarre and at the same time have a good social commentary on such things as women’s roles in society. The Gate Theory is a good taste of Kaaron Warren’s work and shows that she is an excellent writer that can take an odd subject and make it interesting.

[Frank Errington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review Copy

The Gate Theory by Kaaron Warren is the first release from a new publisher of dark fiction. Based in Autralia, Cohesion Press, is the brainchild of writer and recent president of the Australian Horror Writer's Association (AHWA), Geoff Brown.

The Gate Theory is a collection of five shorts from the imaginative mind of Kaaron Warren, a well-known, award winning, Australian author. All of these stories have appeared elsewhere, but are collected here for the first time.

All of the stories are all disturbing, even if I don't fully understand all of them.

"Purity" Takes the saying, "laughter is the best medicine" to new heights. But, like any medication, if not administered correctly, it could be dangerous.

"That Girl" I hear the title and I automatically think of Marlo Thomas. After all, I am an American of a certain age. I would be rather surprized if Kaaron Warren has even heard of the '60s sitcom and that's just as well. Her story, set in Fiji, as are many of her tales, is a bit esoteric for my taste, but I do become lost in the words and in the story. But, is it a ghost story, the story of a missing girl, or something else?

"Dead Sea Fruit" The story of the Ash Mouth Man. A woman dentist kisses all of her "clients to learn their nature from the taste of their mouths. Virgins are salty, alcoholics sweert. Addicts taste like fake orange juice, the stuff you spoon into a glass then add water."

"The History Thief" The perfect title and a wonderful opening line. "Three days Alvin lay on the floor of his dusty lounge room before he realized he was no longer anchored to his body." For me, this was my favorite of the five stories in the collection. Original, wonderfully told, with a clever twist at the end.

"The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall" I will say this about Kaaron Warren, she certainly has an amazing imagination. All five stories take me to places I've never been before, places I've never even begun to imagine. Rosie McDonald specializes in aquiring hard to find dogs for her clients. This time it's the vampire dog, found only on the island of Viti Levu, in Fiji. The journey is dangerous and the task could prove deadly.

The Gate Theory is a fine introduction to Cohesion Press and, if you've not already discovered her writing, an excellent way to become familiar with Kaaron Warren. Currently available at Amazon.com and if you're a member of Amazon Prime, you can read it for FREE through the Kindle Lending Library.

Highly recommended.

[Dave Versace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I get the idea, reading the five stories in Kaaron Warren recent collection “The Gate Theory”, that Kaaron might not quite see the world the way other people do. In these stories in particular, she seems drawn to broken characters who don’t seem to know how - or perhaps whether - to fit in.

The stories often seem to be about one thing before wandering off in an unexpected direction like an easily distracted burglar going through linen closets instead of a safe. And stories that feel safe if a little strange at the outset take weird and usually unpleasant turns, leading away from examinations of the lives (or post-lives) of characters somewhere near the fringes of society and pushing into genuine darkness. Outright gore is not often more than hinted at, but the horror is always there, coming into sharp focus as the characters stray out beyond their depths.

In ‘Purity’, Therese lives in squalor with her mother and brother, neglected physically and emotionally, which leads her into the embrace of a group with some very unusual habits. ‘That Girl’ a Fijian ghost story, turns an unblinkingly critical eye from its white Australian cultural tourist protagonist to sinister undercurrents in the Fijian social order. ‘Dead Sea Fruit’ is a supremely creepy story that begins with the dental hygiene and shared mythologies of girls with eating disorders and gets more horrifying from there.

‘The History Thief’ is the only story in the collection whose supernatural element is evident from the beginning: protagonist Alvin death leads him to the discovery that he has not, as he thought, lived a particularly worthwhile life. He discovers he has the power to connect with people and make a meaningful difference, but dealing with people means dealing with their very nasty secrets. Finally ‘The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall’ returns to Fiji for a cryptozoological expedition that gets out of hand.

These are five extraordinary stories, though I will confess I didn’t particularly care for ‘Purity’. Warren’s prose is beautiful, imbuing the ordinary with grandeur and horror in equal parts. Her flawed characters never quite register the moments that seal their fates, and Warren is content to quietly watch them amble off into horror and doom.

Somehow I can even see her holding the door open for them.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

No review that I could give this phenomenal book of stories would do it justice. How have I never heard of Kaaron Warren? Her work is so haunting and beautiful - it’s horror for the thinking person. She pulls from the raw, disturbing parts of real life which are often scarier than anything that someone could make up. The magical elements she incorporates into the stories make the stories more interesting and allow her to go to places that I don’t see many authors go.

This was my first read of 2021 so I’m a bit behind in writing my review. I really have no words to describe how much I loved the stories and the above does feel inadequate. I guess I’ll end by telling you to read Kaaron Warren’s work ASAP!

[J. Ashley-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kaaron Warren’s 2015 collection, The Gate Theory, is a slim volume. I’m glad. Since I first read its five stories late last year, the images and the feelings they evoked have clung to me like a persistent dream. Or a haunting. Any more would have been too much.

One review quoted on the back of the collection describes Warren’s prose as “elliptical”. I wonder how long they searched to find that wonderfully specific word. It is the perfect adjective for prose that is both precise and ambiguous, concise and amorphous; we are led along clearly defined paths, with perfectly measured steps, and feel that we are in safe hands, yet outside the range of our narrow lens all is in shadow. And it is in the shadows that dreadful things lurk.

And there are dreadful things aplenty in these pages. From the humourless cult of laughter in Purity, to the revenge of the living ghost in That Girl, from the Ash Mouth Man that all the image-conscious girls want to kiss in Dead Sea Fruit, to the dead police janitor turned vigilante in The History Thief, from the descent into hell to steal the world's most dangerous rare breeds in Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall, to the ghoulish relationship at the heart of the title story, each of these tales embodies, in its own unique way, the things I love about Warren’s writing: the spare, vivid prose; the descent from a dark everyday to an even darker fantastic; and, above all, the skewed perspective of a narrator who is amoral at best, contaminating the reader with their toxic point of view.

The stories in this fine collection, capture the elusive quality of a dream: the strong, darkly surreal images, but also the resonant *feeling*. So often—in stories, as in dreams—the feeling dies away and only the image remains, a husk that has lost reference to its once-valuable contents. The power of Warren’s stories is to hold onto both simultaneously, giving us the image-feeling complex in all its potency, and nightmares all the more frightening for being only half glimpsed.

[Devin Madson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first time reading Kaaron Warren's work, and overall I really enjoyed it. While these short stories do not end with the bang I have grown accustomed to in short fiction, the insidious, creeping horror and surreal settings more than makes up for it. Warren's words are beautifully put together and not once was I drawn out of the narrative – these are stories that latch on and don't let go. Of the five, The History Thief was a definite favourite. Well worth reading! I recommend this to anyone interested in something a little ... off the beaten track. You won't forget what you have read, and previously normal things in your life will suddenly appear sinister.

[Lon Prater · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, wait, I finished this one at the beginning of Women in Horror Month, so it counts too! :) A compelling collection of otherworldly feeling stories that really zero in on a sense of displacement in the world for their horror. I'd read more of Kaaron Warren's unique take on horror and heartbreakingly tragic situations in a heartbeat.

[Geoff]

Not rating, as I am the publisher, but I needed to put it in to register on the Goodreads Challenge.

[Deborah Sheldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written and haunting tales.

[Stephen Ormsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange stuff

Kaaron Warren certainly has a marvellous style. These four stories are creepy and intense, not letting go until the final page. Well worth a read.