Ed Crocker (Author of Lightfall)

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Blood Drunk by Ben Shepherd	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
London-based paranormal urban fantasies are always fun. Whether it’s Ben Aaronovitch’s longstanding series Rivers of London or last year’s brilliant debut The Reaper by Jackson P. Brown, writers who know the capital and get the capital (something my ...more
Sep 23, 2026 09:37AM · 3 likes · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Her Bloody Vengeance by N.C. Scrimgeour (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
If there’s an equivalent of an author triathlon, it must be doing three genres in succession. In which case, all the medals go to N C Scrimgeour, because after an award-nominated sci-fi trilogy, followed by one of the best dark fantasy trilogies of t ...more
Sep 16, 2026 10:28AM · 3 likes · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Horror is constantly innovating, and so is Rachel Harrison. After an unprecedentedly outrageous five year run of “horror of the year” contenders, in Kiss Slay Replay she tackles her most structurally ambitious book yet: a time loop horror. As you’ll ...more
Sep 12, 2026 10:23AM · 1 like · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
From the very beginning of reading this utterly, deeply superb debut horror novel, I felt anxious, like the opening had been tailor-made for me to have a mild panic attack. Tamsin rocks up to her new house in a remote Scottish cottage, hoping for a f ...more
Aug 20, 2026 09:43AM · 2 likes · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Harbour of Hungry Ghosts (Chronicles of the Yiugwai Hunters, #1) by Eliza Chan (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Take a historical reality: Nineteenth-century Opium War-era Hong Kong, where the British have made a tenuous peace treaty with the Chinese whereby they own Hong Kong and get to sell their opium, a.k.a. the “drug dealers but with a royal navy” era of ...more
Aug 18, 2026 07:12AM · 4 likes · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing The Other (The Outsiders Sequence, #2) by Annie Neugebauer (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Last year’s creepy camping horror The Extra by Annie Neugebauer, in which 10 people go camping yet suddenly there’s 11 but everyone remembers everyone else (so who’s the extra?) was one of the year’s great horror exercises in lightning-strike superb ...more
Aug 13, 2026 08:33AM · 2 likes · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing The Harpy Knight (The Chaos Constellation, #2) by Sara Omer (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Last year’s The Gryphon King by Sara Omer was a wild feast for dark epic fantasy fans, a buffet tray of wonders served on a five-course meal of revolving horrors and delights alike. It was a blindingly original Southwest-Asian inspired world that inc ...more
Jul 29, 2026 11:16AM · 1 like · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing The Turn: A Novella by Rachel Feder	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The gothic, especially in the last ten years, has found itself evolving into so many modern variants that it has become the ultimate horror virus, one we all can’t wait to catch. Which is fitting because (stay with me as my tortured analogy bears fru ...more
Jul 14, 2026 06:39PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Turn by Rachel Feder. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Turn by Rachel Feder <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Atomic Coffin by Benedict Anning (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
What a tonally clever—and daring—book this is. Yes, on the one hand it’s pretty obvious this is a horror. The name, cover and blurb. But still, for the first half, or at least third, of this novel, you are lured into thinking we’re strictly in Cold W ...more
Jun 24, 2026 07:42AM · 4 likes · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing The Knight Watch by Thomas D. Lee (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
In the hands of an Arthurian expert like Lee, this gleefully revisionist take on Britain’s Round Table legends sings not just with authenticity but with the willingness to subvert the tropes that only an expert can get away with. It’s a rollicking ta ...more
Jun 22, 2026 03:21PM · 5 likes · like · see review

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

London-based paranormal urban fantasies are always fun. Whether it’s Ben Aaronovitch’s longstanding series Rivers of London or last year’s brilliant debut The Reaper by Jackson P. Brown, writers who know the capital and get the capital (something my London-based paranormal urban fantasies are always fun. Whether it’s Ben Aaronovitch’s longstanding series Rivers of London or last year’s brilliant debut The Reaper by Jackson P. Brown, writers who know the capital and get the capital (something my Andy Burnham-chips-and-gravy Manchester self can’t claim) is always interesting in the spec fic world. Well with Blood Drunk, debut author Ben Shepherd is following in these fine footsteps, but he’s brought a new vibe to the table. Imagine a particularly violent Guy Ritchie crime caper. Now make it more gritty, scuzzy, realistic—picture Gary Oldman’s character from Slow Horses sleeping on a couch after inhaling a takeaway and a bottle of booze. Then add a heady dash of Kingsman—the commoner being trained in a posh secret society. Then chuck in a bunch of vampire clans and the complex rules governing their society, as well as some deliciously dark magic, and you might get something like Blood Drunk. This book was so riotously, addictively entertaining that I read it in two sittings, the first one only interrupted by the need to sleep.

The plot begins with Freddie Burns, a young and green gangster who wants to inherit his uncle’s South London mini empire. But when a hit goes wrong, Freddie is the only survivor, and discovers two things: vampires are real and very present in London, and he’s got a type of magic that’s particularly good for beating the undead shit out of them. Next thing he knows he’s enrolled in a secret society that teaches him how to use his magic to sustain a tenuous vampire pact in the city, even as something big is coming down the line that threatens everything.

The first thing to point out is just how relentlessly, albeit grimly, entertaining this is. The reveal of London’s secretive system of vampire clans, covenants and rules is fun, and the nature of Freddie’s magic is gloriously dark and leads to some truly revolting sequences. I’m not going to reveal what his magic is—my rule is that if the blurb doesn’t mention it and it surprised me, I shouldn’t mention it myself—but trust me, it’s darker than a black hole at midnight. And then there’s the secretive magic training school Freddie is sent to, often feeling like a literary pisstake of those that have come before—imagine if a young James Bond or Harry Potter didn’t give a shit and spent his weekends belting people on the football terraces—but is also gleefully sinister. Thereafter, things get complex but no less fun, throwing in secretive vampire plots and other strange creatures of the night (wait till you meet the brutally sinister Resurrection Man).

But this isn’t just a fun vampire crime caper. The heart of the book, for all its scenes of underground club fights with gnomes, is the character of Freddie, who refuses to get with the programme and continues to drink himself into oblivion while rejecting any real help, like Danny Dyer in a spy film. As entertaining as this is at first, it soon starts to become a source of violence in itself, as I genuinely cared for him—his first person voice is strangely charismatic as much as it is booze-soaked—and his subtle character development (or at least the reader’s wish for it) makes the second half of the book, after the initial wave of fun and violence has crashed down, more grimly real as all the threads come together. Underneath the riotous fun is a character study of someone hurting, and the question of whether they can do something about that that doesn’t involve twenty drinks and a bloody face.

Oh and it’s worth mentioning the lack of speech marks. Yep, that’s right. There are none. This isn’t revolutionary—famously the likes of Cormac McCarthy saw no need for them—and recently the likes of Sally Rooney have been ditching them, but to do it for a debut takes some balls, and requires crystal clear clarity in prose and dialogue. It might be disorienting for some, but it’s a great way to throw you into the head of its character, and you’ll soon forget why you ever needed them in the first place.

Overall, Blood Drunk is a gloriously addictive South London vampire crime urban fantasy: throw Guy Ritchie, Kingsman and the secretive-but-scuzzy vibe of Slow Horses in a blender then chuck in nasty, dark magic and a secret vampire society and you have one of the most intensely entertaining reads of the year; a book so well written, it doesn’t even need speech marks. Drink it up, it’s bloody brilliant. ...more

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

Her Bloody Vengeance
by N.C. Scrimgeour (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

If there’s an equivalent of an author triathlon, it must be doing three genres in succession. In which case, all the medals go to N C Scrimgeour, because after an award-nominated sci-fi trilogy, followed by one of the best dark fantasy trilogies of t If there’s an equivalent of an author triathlon, it must be doing three genres in succession. In which case, all the medals go to N C Scrimgeour, because after an award-nominated sci-fi trilogy, followed by one of the best dark fantasy trilogies of the last decade, she’s now written a gothic horror vampire one-shot and for those still recovering from the emotional highs of her Sea of Souls Saga and wondering whether she can hack it down in the murky crypts of fright fic, then the answer is hell yes, literally in the case of the plot. Picture this: Imagine if the Bride from Kill Bill was a Witcher and then make it Dracula but add a dash of devilish Dante, and you’re not even close to how exceptional this short but blood-drainingly addictive entry into the horror genre is. Scrimgeour throws down every cliché in the book: a town plagued by monsters, a seemingly alive vampire mansion, and deals with the devil, but with prose this good and a monster hunter–vampire relationship this delightfully and subtly ambiguous and devastating, you remember why these clichés exist, and how superb Scrimgeour’s character work continues to be. This is her shortest book yet but I desperately didn’t want it to end; life, like a vampire, is a cruel thing.

The story centres on Alderose Mortimer, a grief-stricken monster hunter who roams villages completing Witcher-style contracts while hoping to one day get vengeance on the vampire who killed her groom on her wedding day. Her world is thrown upside down when, while hunting in the sleepy English village of Caelfeld, she gets an offer from another vampire, Lord Iestyn of the nearby Wreymoor Hall: if she helps him break the curse that has trapped him in his decrepit manor, he’ll help her hunt her husband’s murderer. But as the title of this book might suggest, vengeance comes with a catch; and as she grows closer to Iestyn, she risks losing her soul for the sake of her vengeance.

Now in her previous dark fantasy trilogy, Scrimgeour inventively utilised the creatures and myths of Scottish folklore. She does a similar trick here in this horror one-shot, but this time with the English kind; the story takes place in Shropshire (for the Americans: in the West Midlands, on the border with Wales) and Alderose encounters a number of creatures from English folklore as she helps the vampire break his curse for her own ends. This makes for a delicious real-folklore-meets-Witcher-side-quest concoction (if you’ve not heard of the Redcap, prepare to be disgusted). Another trait from her previous work is strong here: Scrimgeour’s capacity for devilish plot twists layered beneath plot twists that comes to the fore in the final act, which is a barrage of outrageous curtain reveals.

But the real star of this delicious vampire gothic is the relationship between Alderose and her temporary ally in her quest for vengeance, the trapped vampire lord Iestyn. Be warned, this isn’t a vampire trying to be good or a budding romance on the cards here; and to be clear I’m not even closing in on spoiler territory by admitting this as Scrimgeour has made this brutally clear in her book marketing: tragic gothic, no happy endings, etc. Instead, as these two grow closer, bonded by their hunger in different ways (respectively: to be free to feed, to kill the guy who ruined her wedding), Scrimgeour is interested in different questions than will they run off happily ever after, such as whether vengeance is worth it if you must ally with a monster; the cost to your soul; and, even more interestingly for me, the bonds that draw doomed people together and how this stretches beyond morality. Every scene between them is a joy, written in gloriously over-the-top gothic intensity that never falls into cliché thanks to the power of Scrimgeour’s good writing. Her fantasy trilogy was marked by the subtle character work of those scarred by vengeance and grief trying to relate to each other, and in the gothic genre, this works just as well: a reminder of the power of a tragic, raw, gothic.

Overall, full of gothic tragedy, brutality, and more grim, bloody truths than a Christmas family reunion, this utterly superb tale of a monster hunter’s pact with a vampire to seek her vengeance swaps hopeful romance for doomed desire and amorality and is all the more memorable for it. Scrimgeour’s deft jump from first-rate dark fantasy to pitch-perfect horror shows that in any genre, she is one of the must-read authors of the moment. ...more

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

Kiss Slay Replay
by Rachel Harrison

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Horror is constantly innovating, and so is Rachel Harrison. After an unprecedentedly outrageous five year run of “horror of the year” contenders, in Kiss Slay Replay she tackles her most structurally ambitious book yet: a time loop horror. As you’ll Horror is constantly innovating, and so is Rachel Harrison. After an unprecedentedly outrageous five year run of “horror of the year” contenders, in Kiss Slay Replay she tackles her most structurally ambitious book yet: a time loop horror. As you’ll see, we can’t talk about the time loop element that much, because to even try is to enter the spoiler zone and you need to read her take on it yourself, but we can say that as a reading experience it’s akin to going bungee jumping and realising as you leap off the bridge that they forgot to attach the cord. Groundhog Day this ain’t. But that’s not all that’s different about this one. As any Harrison fan knows, it’s offensively reductive to simply call her a modern feminist horror author, but it’s equally disingenuous to ignore the fact that it is true that her primary themes have been the rage and injustices of the female societal experience, peaking perhaps with last year’s relentless masterpiece Play Nice. But in Kiss Slay Replay, it feels like, with her time loop analogy, she is coming for all adults, with a side dish of horror reserved for Millennials. This time, no one is safe from Rachel Harrison, and the result is once again one of the horror events of the year.

Harrison’s time loop tornado begins with Willa, heading to the perfect wedding of one of her best friends. She’s not in the best frame of mind, still struggling with a difficult break up she initiated herself with her fiancé, who of course is also invited to the wedding, with his new date. At least Willa has her other closest friends there, along with a potential new romance in the groom’s best friend. But then a masked killer arrives to slasher the wedding up, and Willa discovers she’s not prime Final Girl material. And then she wakes up on the morning of the wedding again, and slowly realises she’s in time loop territory, and if she can’t figure out how to escape then she’ll find herself stuck in an eternal wedding, something that as a (uh, late) thirty-something who’s had quite enough of weddings at this point I felt immediately horrified by.

And the above, I’m afraid, is literally all I will tell you about the plot, because Harrison does… things with her take on a time loop, but you really do have to discover them yourself. Just remember the bungee jump analogy from the first paragraph, and add a side order of chaos and carnage and unpredictability. It never stops, the horror particularly keenly felt due to Harrison’s ability to instantly make us love characters with just a few lines of her inimitably brilliant dialogue and character skills.

Thankfully, this is Rachel Harrison, so even though I can’t say much about the plot, I can talk about how thematically brilliant it is. As I hinted earlier, in this one Harrison is coming for her broadest audience yet—all adults, particularly Millennials, and wields the time loop analogy as the perfect tool to do so. Haunted by the memory and guilt of the major relationship you ended, and the regret that maybe you made the wrong call and have to accept now that everyone’s lives are going well but yours? Uh oh. Feel like you’re always close to reuniting properly with your friendship group but never do? This book gon’ getcha. Stuck in a loop of anxiety and/or depression? Harrison knows. Chances are, this book will resonate with you like a perfectly designed auditorium… especially if you’re a Millennial (no offence Gen Z, but that time loop feel really kicks in in your thirties). It’s true that few have captured the modern female experience in horror as well as Rachel Harrison over the last decade. But she’s also the queen of Millennial malaise, and this book is a documentary of it, and, maybe, offers a route out of it—Harrison is here to heal, as much as she is to hurt.

Overall, we’re in broken record territory calling the new Rachel Harrison a contender for horror of the year, but with Kiss Slay Replay, here we are again: her astonishing take on a time loop horror is like being stuck on a rollercoaster to hell whose controls are jammed. But thematically she’s also speaking to her widest audience yet: if life keeps hitting you with those same old beats, then Harrison’s stunning Millennial analogy is coming for you. ...more

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

Home Sick
by Rhiannon Grist (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

From the very beginning of reading this utterly, deeply superb debut horror novel, I felt anxious, like the opening had been tailor-made for me to have a mild panic attack. Tamsin rocks up to her new house in a remote Scottish cottage, hoping for a f From the very beginning of reading this utterly, deeply superb debut horror novel, I felt anxious, like the opening had been tailor-made for me to have a mild panic attack. Tamsin rocks up to her new house in a remote Scottish cottage, hoping for a fresh, and very isolated, start after a mysterious incident at work which made her leave her job. But this detached hideaway cottage is actually a semi-detached, and she already has a neighbour. It’s an anxious start for empathetic introverts. Then it turns out that she’s not really done any research and nothing really works in the house. We hadn’t even had any horror yet and I was already more uneasy than a potato in a chip factory. And, frankly, this nerve-jangling never stops, transitioning smoothly from the awkward to the utterly sinister, as Tamsin briefly meets (but mostly hears through the thin walls) her strange neighbour, learns about the strange stories about the house from the seemingly hostile locals, and struggles to deal with her own prickly personality. It all creates this haunting Suspiria-like build up, with a keen sense of weirdness and humour, until the emotionally stirring ending where all of Tamsin’s psychological chickens come home to roost in this creepy cottage in the most terrifying but also emotionally redemptive of ways. Be unsettled, be very unsettled.

The first half, as Tamsin navigates meets the locales and tries to establish what her neighbour is up to, is often just as weird and funny and sweet as unsettling and uneasy. Grist is a very witty writer, and captures well oddity and surreality and just plain good Scottish humour. She’s also great at capturing the spirit of a minor character; the story of one local, who seems to be trying to help her, is an unexpectedly powerful scene. Grist is also good at the surreal; you’re never sure what part could be the product of a locally sourced mushroom trip or not.

But it’s the final third, based entirely in the creepy cottage, that makes this book. This is where psychological horror blends in with a specific kind of Scottish folklore horror, and it is in parts utterly, bed-wettingly terrifying, reminding me of some of the haunted house chills of say, Josh Malerman’s spine-tingling Incidents Around the House. Grist can turn your blood into ice in a moment, put it that way.

But this book is also about psychological redemption, and so it also reminded me of one of my favourite horror authors Rachel Harrison, who uses the supernatural events befalling her female leads to examine the trauma and injustices that have befallen them and whether they can escape the cycle of trauma they’re trapped in. Grist examines the injustices that have come Tamsin’s way, and turned her into someone so unable to function in society, and whether it is everyone else’s fault, or her fault, or whether there is a more healthy third alternative. The way Grist balances this terror and surreality with a potentially redemptive arc, as terrifying as it is heroic, is genuinely something to behold and surely one of the most emotionally powerful and clever denouements to a horror novel this year.

Overall, Home Sick is a strange, simmering, unsettling mix of psychological, folklore, and haunted house horror that yanks the anxiety dial up to 11 before leaving you with a final act that is so completely unhinged, utterly terrifying and so emotionally and redemptively explosive that it’s hard not to conclude it’s one of the must-read horror novels of the year ...more

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

Harbour of Hungry Ghosts (Chronicles of the Yiugwai Hunters, #1)
by Eliza Chan (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Take a historical reality: Nineteenth-century Opium War-era Hong Kong, where the British have made a tenuous peace treaty with the Chinese whereby they own Hong Kong and get to sell their opium, a.k.a. the “drug dealers but with a royal navy” era of Take a historical reality: Nineteenth-century Opium War-era Hong Kong, where the British have made a tenuous peace treaty with the Chinese whereby they own Hong Kong and get to sell their opium, a.k.a. the “drug dealers but with a royal navy” era of British colonialism. Then add a fictional love letter to Chinese martial arts films and the East Asian traditions of ghosts and monsters and those who hunt them. The result is Harbour of Hungry Ghosts, a fusion of history, action and both Chinese and Western myth that thrills in its detail and compels with its characters. Chan impressed with her electric debut duology Fathomfolk and Tideborn, but this new series is a feast of immersive worldbuilding; subtle, compelling characterisation; monster-fighting martial arts action; and imaginative ways of exploring the cultural and gender politics of East meets West that would sate even the hungriest of ghosts.

Plot wise, Kiamling is the latest in a line of monster hunters from the Au family, who serve the citizens of Hong Kong by dealing with monsters and upholding the traditions of blessing the dead. Family expectations are high; her grandmother rarely approves. But when said grandmother is kidnapped into the spirit world by a bizarre new creature, Kiamling must work out who’s behind these new incursions of Western monsters and finally prove herself worthy of the family name.

One of the many pleasures of this book is discovering the myths and lore of East Asian monsters and monster hunting. This is hardly the first spec fic book to tackle this in recent years, which has seen a welcome focus on different monster-hunting traditions from diaspora authors (“The Phoenix Hoard” trilogy by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle for example, and this year alone another Hong Kong-based ghost-hunting tale The Girl With a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean), but it still feels an enormously fresh world for those used to monster hunting of the Western kind. So out goes blood-feeding vampires stopped by crosses and garlic and in comes vampires that feed on qi (life energy) combatted with glutinous rice, fu talismans and swords made of charmed coins tied with string. Chan’s detailed, immersive writing doesn’t hold your hand but also never confuses. It will be a breathless new world for many, and Chan innovates; one brothel-set scene of patriarchy-challenging via female ghosts I found phenomenally creative. This sense of gender clash as well as East versus West culture clash is constantly woven throughout Chan’s subtle city-building.

As well as the fresh worldbuilding, simmering in the background is the clash between the more imperialist, ruthless British and the more conciliatory kind which will determine Hong Kong’s future, and exploding in the foreground is a series of thrilling martial art set pieces where monster-hunting tactics collide with bursts of qi energy, Chan’s take on the classic Wuxia genre vividly brought to life. These scenes are breathless, as martial arts mixes with bizarre, nightmarish panoramas of things from other worlds.

But as with Eliza Chan’s previous duology, it’s the central character’s arc that provides the beating heart of this story. Kiamling feels the pressure to live up to her family’s fearsome monster-hunting reputation but she overcompensates and pushes people away and is clearly in need of some fun. It’s that classic dilemma of living up to family standards while carving out your own identify and life that Chan mines so effectively, her gift for character subtlety shining through. Some of my favourite scenes involved her subtle developing relationship with Archie, an unusually kind British civil servant who is discriminated against himself for his lower class British northern roots and whose uncertainly in his own convictions balances nicely against the conviction in hers. Every scene between these two is a true delight—and as we find out more about his origins, Chan uses this dynamic to show how West and East are more similar than either realise, a small dash of hope in an otherwise brutal colonialist age and plotline. Chan’s characters feel achingly and modernly real, and their banter is just as vivid as the care you’ll come to feel for them, especially in a particularly emotionally raw ending that I may never recover from.

Overall, Harbour of Hungry Ghosts is a feast for the speculative senses: Buffy-style monster hunting meets East Asian mythology and thrilling martial arts set pieces, anchored by a genuinely moving tale of a woman trying to match up to her family’s legacy and a subtle analysis of the liminal space between East and West. Eliza Chan has offered us some exceptional delights here; eat them up pronto. ...more

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

The Other (The Outsiders Sequence, #2)
by Annie Neugebauer (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Last year’s creepy camping horror The Extra by Annie Neugebauer, in which 10 people go camping yet suddenly there’s 11 but everyone remembers everyone else (so who’s the extra?) was one of the year’s great horror exercises in lightning-strike superb Last year’s creepy camping horror The Extra by Annie Neugebauer, in which 10 people go camping yet suddenly there’s 11 but everyone remembers everyone else (so who’s the extra?) was one of the year’s great horror exercises in lightning-strike superb idea meets unbearable tension. In my review at the time I said it would make you more strung out than God’s washing line, which was an example of the dangers of using up your most dramatic analogies early because the sequel—or to use the correct terminology of the series, Book 2 in The Outsiders Sequences—is somehow even more tense. The Other is a clever return to the this world of camping oddities, because rather than try and wring the same tension from the same idea, it switches to a similar yet decidedly different scenario: a couple on a camping trip meet their identical doppelgängers, and if they don’t decide correctly who is who, then they’ll end up leaving the love of their life behind in the woods.

The couple in question are Elise and Logan, and they’ve come out on this hiking trip to partly resolve a key question: can they get over this big hurdle in their otherwise loving relationship—that one of them wants to have kids and the other, probably, doesn’t? And therein lies the genius of this novella, because while we’ve all seen variations of the “I’m the real one”/“No I am, pick me” in various SFF formats over the years, by bringing it down to the domestic, this book asks questions such as: how well do you know your partner really? (like a game show set in the most sinister circumstances possible) and can two couples facing off each other, one the true one, one the fake, actually be really great for couple’s therapy?

What also makes this one of the most nervy reads of the years is Neugebauer’s gift at making everything seem so decidedly unsettling. Small details such as smiles or tiny movements become microanalysed by the reader, and by switching between the POVs of Elise and Logan as they desperately try and work out which of the others is the man or woman they love, Neugebauer creates this intense form of empathy in the reader as they join them on their quest to test their own knowledge of their lover and struggle to make a choice which will define the rest of their life.

Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, this one has an ending that, if it doesn’t shock you to your very core or make you utter some mild or extreme form of cursing, you may well be clinically dead, or at least a doppelgänger yourself.

Overall, The Other continues the doppelgänger tension that made The Extra one of last year’s must-read nervy horrors, but switches the live-wire tension up to 11 and makes you really care for the central couple forced to guess their correct partner, making this book as devilishly stressful as walking on a tight rope over a ravine in gale force winds. Neugebauer’s done it again—and this one’s even better. ...more

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

The Harpy Knight (The Chaos Constellation, #2)
by Sara Omer (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Last year’s The Gryphon King by Sara Omer was a wild feast for dark epic fantasy fans, a buffet tray of wonders served on a five-course meal of revolving horrors and delights alike. It was a blindingly original Southwest-Asian inspired world that inc Last year’s The Gryphon King by Sara Omer was a wild feast for dark epic fantasy fans, a buffet tray of wonders served on a five-course meal of revolving horrors and delights alike. It was a blindingly original Southwest-Asian inspired world that incorporated the myths and histories of the Ottoman Court, Turko-Mongol traditions and even the pre-Islamic lore and faith of Mesopotamia (Omer does her prep, put it that way). It was a complex, heady mix of power plays and court politics, as lethal female warriors who rode man-eating pegasuses faced off against a divinely-inspired leader from the Red Steppes. And it was full of monsters, from the aforementioned murder horses to terrifying gryphons, strange djinn demons and more. Oh and it had a central sapphic frisson, with promises of a poly threesome, serving us up the beginnings of romance before hitting us with Omer’s characteristically intense and bitingly well written descriptions of the battlefield. And now we have the sequel. And I have simply three words to contrast nicely with the billion I’ve just vomited out: darker, delightful and, uh, devastating. This series is called the Chaos Constellation, kids: don’t say you weren’t warned.

Plot wise, with the Gryphon-marked would-be emperor of the world Bataar having mostly staked his claim over the kingdom of Dumakra, he has turned north, to the pagan lands of Aglea, where the traitor prince Nassar has allied with some northern lords. Meanwhile, to seal his alliance with Dumakra for good, he is to marry Nohra, the harpy knight who when she’s not busy flying the skies on winged murder horses is trying to work out how to kill her new invader despite being increasingly besotted with his wife. Meanwhile, greater supernatural forces are at work: Darya is a flame-on djinn (like a pre-Islamic Human Torch), Baatar himself is connected to a demonic sky god and there’s a ghoulish plague on the march.

The first things to say is that this is a dark book, and I mean even darker than the first, which was not exactly a ride at the fair. Things seem to go from bad to worse in this unwise northern excursion, and Omer does not shy away from some of the sufferings our key protagonists must endure. When you throw in the genuine moral ambiguity of most of the characters—our MMC Bataar could equally be described as a horrifyingly immoral monstrously powered warlord just as much as a would-be emperor who wants peace and justice—then we have a recipe for some real grimdark goings-on. There are some gut-wrenching scenes for certain characters which are genuinely hard to read, as well as one of the most entertainingly unexpected wedding night scenes you’ll ever read.

Omer’s worldbuilding skills are once again on display here as we spend most of the time in the pagan north where they worship the redying goddess who dies with the winter and is reborn in the spring (partly inspired, one would assume, by the Cailleach of Gaelic myth). It’s fun seeing a culture entirely removed from the Southwest Asian-inspired ones examined so far. And, to continue the theme of this series being an outrageously fun monsters’ bestiary, we get a new selection of creatures which are described just as vividly and horrifyingly as the first book (including one very disturbingly poignant take on a particularly famous chivalric monster).

But ultimately this book hits hardest when we’re doing two things: the bedroom or the battlefield. In the first, the focus continues on our central poly trio: Bataar, Nohra, soon to be his wife, and Qaira, already his wife. The steamy, tender scenes between the latter two are electrically written in their sensuality—I couldn’t help but wish that there’d been more of this and less of the endlessly grim war scenes, but maybe I’ve been reading too much romantasy recently.

As for the battle scenes, these are brutal, and Omer has this gift of kinetic, gruesomely realised prose that makes a field of war just a terrifying place to be. There’s zombies, multiple demons, barely-trained gryphons, murder horses and some tragically tense standoffs—reader, your heart will be in your mouth. And finally I should spare a word for Darya, the servant girl turned djinn/demon, who just wants a normal life but can’t stop being used as a tool thanks to her devastatingly useful habit of turning into a giant smoke demon. Her journey forms a key part of the book, and takes you places at the end you won’t see coming which make me salivate for the finale.

Overall, The Harpy Knight is somehow an even darker, bloodier, and more intense sequel, where the stakes are even higher and the moral ambiguity is even vaguer, all wrapped up in an astonishingly realised world of myth and history entwined with some of the most badass women in modern fantasy. Omer twists the vice on our central characters and their pain is red hot agony, but you can’t look away. As sequels go, this one is searingly sensational. ...more

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

The Turn: A Novella
by Rachel Feder

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

The gothic, especially in the last ten years, has found itself evolving into so many modern variants that it has become the ultimate horror virus, one we all can’t wait to catch. Which is fitting because (stay with me as my tortured analogy bears fru The gothic, especially in the last ten years, has found itself evolving into so many modern variants that it has become the ultimate horror virus, one we all can’t wait to catch. Which is fitting because (stay with me as my tortured analogy bears fruit) The Turn is set in a very real viral situation, specifically Covid-19. Feder, clearly a close literate student of the Gothic, has taken inspiration from the classic “governess hired to care for children, creepiness ensues” plotline, most famously rendered in Henry James’s iconic gothic The Turn of the Screw, and transported it to a home in the Rocky Mountains during the pandemic, where the new live-in nanny begins to suspect something is very wrong with the family. It’s a perfect claustrophobic setting for such an old trope, and Feder, with economic yet lyrical and unsettling prose, gives us a classic gothic potboiler mystery that, after asking for your patience, rewards it with an explosive, unhinged, twisty and macabre finale in the best fevered gothic tradition, and one that asks a question that resounds in the gothic both old and new: can you be trapped into motherhood or can you defy those who seek to control you and write your own story?

The plot centers around Baxter, a young writer and recent college graduate who accepts a live-in nanny position for an affluent professor’s family in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It’s already a setting fraught with unease, as we’re in the thick of the 2020 pandemic (the “real world” is mentioned but only hazily, the Biden-Trump election debates are in the background, but no one is ever named) but things start to become genuinely creepy when the mother starts acting strange, the father goes awol, and Baxter starts to develop worrying cuts and bruises on her body. After one night when she’s left completely alone with the baby, she must unravel the nightmarish puzzle of the deal she really entered into, and the sinister thing stalking her and her newfound family.

This a very quick read, a mere 130 or so pages, and it’s a novel of two halves. In the first half, we are in true dreamy, gothic puzzle land: nothing can be trusted, including memory or the senses, and as Baxter stumbles upon one enigma after another, Feder’s sparse but effective prose layering unease upon unease, I started to wonder where all these loose ends were going. And then the plot explodes in the second half denouement, and I was pleased as sinister-flavoured punch to discover that not only was every single question answered (a rare treat in GothicLand) but that I’d actually been reading something entirely different and more monstrous than I could have guessed. You might well see what’s coming (maybe the current heatwave has just melted my brain, like the pandemic melted my youth) but I certainly didn’t and the gonzo, slightly unhinged ending left me extremely satisfied, though some might wish for more exploration of it despite the small page count.

Thematically, this is meaty for its small length: examining the idea of motherhood, especially the involuntary kind, as either a trap forced on you by those who seek to control you or the making of you, and how the controller can find their power reflected back at them. As well as reinventing the classic governess gothic for a new age, I also saw a bit of Rachel Harrison feminist rage horror in there: reclaim your destiny from the monsters that control you, or forever hold your peace, that sort of thing. There was even the occasional witty deadpan line amongst the dripping unease that made me laugh out loud like a Harrison novel. On this basis, I hope we see much more of Feder.

Overall, The Turn is a short, sharp, deliciously written gothic potboiler that simmers along right up until the moment it explodes in your face; an excellent demonstration of how the classic gothic can teach us modern-day lessons about family, power dynamics and motherhood, and why it remains a terrible idea to ever accept a nanny position anywhere. ...more

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

Atomic Coffin
by Benedict Anning (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

What a tonally clever—and daring—book this is. Yes, on the one hand it’s pretty obvious this is a horror. The name, cover and blurb. But still, for the first half, or at least third, of this novel, you are lured into thinking we’re strictly in Cold W What a tonally clever—and daring—book this is. Yes, on the one hand it’s pretty obvious this is a horror. The name, cover and blurb. But still, for the first half, or at least third, of this novel, you are lured into thinking we’re strictly in Cold War thriller territory. 1984. Spies. Escape from East Berlin. A mission on a British submarine to investigate a Russian one. Anning locks in the realism, and doubles down on the Cold War tension. And then the horror comes, and the nature of the Russian submarine being tracked down becomes clear, and we are smoothly, with no turbulence, ushered into one of the great nightmarish endgames of the year, involving a fight against a genuinely terrifying and sinister foe in unbearably claustrophobic conditions, all enhanced by the inspired decision to have the protagonist be a woman with a controversial past stuck in a submarine full of men.

Plotwise, we begin in December 1984. Berlin Wall firmly in place, USSR still at its pesky zenith, you know the drill. British intelligence asset Heidi Sperling manages to escape East Berlin with some vital info: there’s a Soviet submarine that’s just been sitting at the bottom of the ocean between Scotland and Iceland for three years… silently. But it’s just sent out a message: it’s active. Sperling gets a lift from a nearby Royal Navy submarine the HMS Viking, and both her and the crew begin the voyage to track this submarine down. But when they get there, they will… probably wish they hadn’t, because something very bad and possibly supernatural is on that sub, and now the entire crew is in danger.

I mentioned earlier the smooth tonal combo of Cold War spy thriller and supernatural nightmare, and one way Anning really sells the genre mix of Atomic Coffin is the sheer realism of the setting of the British submarine that our protagonist has hopped a lift on. Anning has clearly done his research, and it shows. Not just in the claustrophobic nature of it and all the Cold War gadgetry which you’d expect, but in the surprising details I didn’t expect: a pizza night watching films that haven’t been released yet back in Britain, for example. And you thought the Cold War sub life was all work and no play. Anning’s hyper-realism is so crucial in selling what happens next, and it draws you into the believability of the nightmare at twenty thousand leagues under the sea (give or take).

Another neat trick Anning does is to make the protagonist a woman in a submarine of men, and then give said woman a troubled past. The Navy men aren’t overtly sexist to her, at least at first, but the more she tries to explain the nature of the threat they’ve encountered on the spooky abandoned Russian sub, the more she starts to become the “hysterical women” stereotype in their eyes. Sperling also has a controversial past (which I’ll leave you to find out) and is not doing great psychologically, and this has two functions: when all hell breaks loose it adds to the sense of vulnerability in our hero—the one person who gets the threat is breaking down herself—but when the officers find out that the hysterical women is also an “untrustworthy” hysterical woman, then suddenly misogyny becomes almost as much an issue as the nightmare on board the death sub.

But ultimately it’s the final third that elevates this into a must-read. The nature of the threat—which I am studiously refusing to divulge at all—is genuinely terrifying, partly in its nature and behaviour and effects, and partly just because facing it involves scenes of creeping through a dark abandoned submarine which are written with such nail-biting dread that you might find yourself down to the knuckle bone by the end. Anning plays with the narrative a little too, until the point where we’re not sure what to believe or not. It’s a hell of a finale.

Atomic Coffin, then, is brilliantly original must-read horror. Anning has fused a claustrophobic submarine-set Cold War thriller with a genuinely terrifying Event Horizon-style horror, and the result is tonally terrific, a nightmarish descent which will have you clinging to your armchair every single fathom. ...more

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

The Knight Watch
by Thomas D. Lee (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

In the hands of an Arthurian expert like Lee, this gleefully revisionist take on Britain’s Round Table legends sings not just with authenticity but with the willingness to subvert the tropes that only an expert can get away with. It’s a rollicking ta ...more

topics	posts	views	last activity
Crazy Challenge C...: Oscars Through the Years	832	142	Mar 22, 2021 08:45PM
Crazy Challenge C...: Carolyn's Flower Spell Out	39	17	Jun 01, 2023 08:18PM
Crazy Challenge C...: Carolyn's Gemstones Spell Out	42	18	Jun 01, 2024 06:50AM
SciFi and Fantasy...: Which new releases are you most looking forward to?	918	1507	Jan 25, 2025 09:43PM
Edelweiss & Netga...: * 2025 Book Reviews	759	64	Dec 31, 2025 03:50PM
Crazy Challenge C...: 100 Best Book Quotes - CLOSED TO NEW SIGN-UPS	461	143	Jan 10, 2026 08:27PM
Crazy Challenge C...: Astronauts Spell Challenge - CLOSED TO NEW SIGN-UPS	1627	152	Jan 13, 2026 06:58PM
Crazy Challenge C...: Old, Obsolete, and Obscure Words 3 - Clothing and Accessories	67	43	Jan 21, 2026 02:21PM

Ed Crocker’s Followers (290)

Ed’s Bookshelves

Ed’s Friends (63)

Ed Crocker

Goodreads Author

Learn more
Ask the Author

Popular Answered Questions

Combine Editions
Ed Crocker’s books

Series by Ed Crocker

Related News

rss
Ed’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — The Turn by Rachel Feder

Topics Mentioning This Author

recent posts
Ed’s Groups

Ed’s Friend Comments

	Lightfall (The Everlands Trilogy, #1) 3.48 avg rating — 1,649 ratings — published 2025 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Moonfall (The Everlands Trilogy #2) 4.12 avg rating — 138 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Book of Spores: A Fungal SFF Anthology by Adrian M. Gibson (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Ed Crocker (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Frasier Armitage (Goodreads Author) (Editor) 4.67 avg rating — 21 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Vespéral: Everlands Trilogy by Ed Crocker (Goodreads Author), Amandine Longeac (Narrator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Ed Crocker’s Followers (290)

Ed’s Bookshelves

Ed’s Friends (63)

Ed Crocker

Goodreads Author

Learn moreAsk the Author

Popular Answered Questions

Combine EditionsEd Crocker’s books

Series by Ed Crocker

Related News

rssEd’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — The Turn by Rachel Feder

Topics Mentioning This Author

recent postsEd’s Groups

Ed’s Friend Comments

Learn more
Ask the Author

Combine Editions
Ed Crocker’s books

rss
Ed’s Recent Updates

recent posts
Ed’s Groups