Ed Crocker (Author of Lightfall)

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Trad Wife by Sarah Langan (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
The genius of horror fiction, and why it’s one of the most important ways we can try and understand the veritable smorgasbord of horrors we charitably call the 21st century, or its most recent depressing incarnation the 2020s, is that old horror sub ...more
2 hours, 38 min ago · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Neon Moon by Grace R. Reynolds (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 do I, nerd of the masked killer genre, want in a good slasher? Well first I’ll take an isolated location, with its own unique vibe, something a little bit different to what we’ve seen before. Then give me a terrifying killer obviously, and some ...more
23 hours, 23 min ago · 1 like · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Mortedant's Peril (The Trials of Irody Hasp, #1) by R.J. Barker (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’s the sign of a great fantasy writer? I’d wager one indicator, to make a completely unrelated steak metaphor, is taking the well-done and making it seem rare. Enter R J Barker, the revered fantasy author of, among others, the scintillatingly won ...more
May 02, 2026 10:11AM · 8 likes · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing I Know a Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours by Nat Cassidy (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
Some horror authors become the perfect scribes for a particular age. Enter Nat Cassidy whose work is full of existential inquiry and dread, people coping with fundamental change, reality falling apart, good old fashioned insanity and utter, utter, te ...more
Apr 26, 2026 09:14AM · 4 likes · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean (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
Sunyi Dean’s debut novel, The Book Eaters, came out four years ago to great acclaim, and now she has returned with a new effort, one whose narrative is more carefully constructed and surprising than a ten-tier wedding cake filled with bees. The Girl ...more
Apr 11, 2026 11:06AM · 11 likes · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing The Bone Door by Frances White (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
Certain philosophical questions come back time and time again to haunt us. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If an ancient ship has all its wooden parts replaced one by one over time, is it still the ...more
Mar 31, 2026 08:18AM · 17 likes · like · see review
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing The Hive by Ronald Malfi (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
Dread. Pure, lingering, dread, the kind that covers your skin no matter how many times you shower. Do you feel it? If you do then I apologise, because it’s probably emanating from me like existential body odour after having finishing this big brick o ...more
Mar 27, 2026 08:23AM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Hive by Ronald Malfi. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Hive by Ronald Malfi <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo (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
There’s a curious but wonderful skill that not all authors possess and it’s this: to create, in just a small novella’s worth of words, a dark speculative world of uniqueness and distinction, with characters whose emotional journeys and traumas leave ...more
Mar 19, 2026 12:07PM · 4 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing Cold Snap (Frost Bite, #2) by Angela Sylvaine (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 2004’s wildly fun Frost Bite, horror author Angela Sylvaine took us back to the nineties, also known in my own head as my childhood, and gave us a small town nostalgic action horror comedy very much in the Tremors/Gremlins mold (but make it more s ...more
Mar 16, 2026 12:57PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Cold Snap by Angela Sylvaine. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Cold Snap by Angela Sylvaine <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing The Revenant of Surolifia by Florence Chien (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
Full review to come nearer release, but this is how you do political fantasy—there’s more double crossings, twists, intrigue and scheming here than a series of Traitors. It’s a wildly fun and unapologetically complex look at the different ways to sav ...more
Mar 02, 2026 05:48PM · 5 likes · like · see review

Ed Crocker rated a book it was amazing

Trad Wife
by Sarah Langan (Goodreads Author)

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The genius of horror fiction, and why it’s one of the most important ways we can try and understand the veritable smorgasbord of horrors we charitably call the 21st century, or its most recent depressing incarnation the 2020s, is that old horror sub The genius of horror fiction, and why it’s one of the most important ways we can try and understand the veritable smorgasbord of horrors we charitably call the 21st century, or its most recent depressing incarnation the 2020s, is that old horror sub genres that have existed for centuries can be called into action to explain strange new and worrying phenomena. One example is how the old Cosmic Horror traditions of Lovecraft or Chambers are being used to explore the rise of AI and new tech—the old terrifying gods, meet the new annoying gods. Another is the new Trad Wife sub-genre boom in horror, and the perfect vehicle of Gothic horror to explore it. The Trad Wife boom is a trend largely enacted on social media whereby women promote more traditional gender roles, often focusing on homemaking, cooking, Christianity and submission to their husbands. With Trad Wife, Sarah Langan has used Gothic horror’s strong history of examining the patriarchal control over women to create an instant classic. If you think this is a satire, then think again, though: Langan’s not here to make fun of trad wives, she’s here to take on the system itself, and how women can’t win in it, and to do so she’s given us one of the most original, unhinged finales in a horror you’ll read this year. Buckle in, people, this one gets mad and I couldn’t look away.

The plot of Trad Wife revolves around two seemingly opposing forces. In the one corner we have journalist Jenny Kaplan, who, despite a hit article about her experiences with her mentally unwell ex and her abortion, is now seeing her career on the slide after some incel-toxic pushback. In the other corner, we have Mia Wright, a hugely successful trad wife and mother of seven (with another on the way) whose videos about her life on the seeming pastoral bliss of Black Swan Farm have made her an icon. Jenny sees Mia as her path back to journalism success, especially after she suspects that she may be a complete fraud. But things quickly don’t turn out that simple, as something is very, very wrong on the farm—the children aren’t acting right, there’s a strange lingering stench, and rumours of ancient witchcraft, and Jenny’s decision to stay the whole week may turn out to be a very, very bad one indeed.

First off, this an utterly, utterly creepy book, that in the best traditions of the Gothic begins with subtle signs of unease and ultimately descends into demented chaos. From the moment Jenny arrives on Black Swan Farm, Langan seeds in sinister clues of what might be wrong, whether it be the strange cherry-flavoured lip balm that cures Jenny’s curiously dry lips when she wakes in the morning or the strange facial tics of Mia the trad wife, or the bizarre illnesses that suddenly beset the animals. Langan manages to sustain this bizarre dichotomy of Jenny’s submersion in the normal daily routine of farm life even though nothing at all seems to make sense for so long, it felt like I was going a little mad. Which turned out to be excellent preparation for the final act, which is completely bonkers, and owes just as much to the Cosmic as to the Gothic, and had my jaw dropped beneath my floorboards as the real masterplan is revealed.

This was also a fascinating book as it didn’t go anywhere near where I thought it would thematically. There was a very easy open path to satire. Everything about the trad wife lifestyle feels hypocritical: The patronising husband, the financial books-cooking, the social media performances. But Langan’s not here to take the easy route of attacking the trad wife at the centre of it. She’s here to attack the power systems behind it that means that women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Feminist hero Jenny and internet icon Mia are both trapped in their own ways, and Langan suggests that the culture wars that society wants us to fall into might not be the best way to approach this, and instead examines how women must instead achieve power in their own imperfect ways. It all makes for a finale as thematically fascinating as it is utterly, gloriously demented.

A compelling take on the trad wife phenomenon that eschews the easy satirical takedown and goes instead for the gothic horror potboiler approach that is pro-women but anti-system, the unhinged, terrifying finale of Trad Wife is one of the true horror experiences of the summer that are you simply not prepared for. ...more

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Neon Moon
by Grace R. Reynolds (Goodreads Author)

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What do I, nerd of the masked killer genre, want in a good slasher? Well first I’ll take an isolated location, with its own unique vibe, something a little bit different to what we’ve seen before. Then give me a terrifying killer obviously, and some What do I, nerd of the masked killer genre, want in a good slasher? Well first I’ll take an isolated location, with its own unique vibe, something a little bit different to what we’ve seen before. Then give me a terrifying killer obviously, and some brutally twisted kills, all from the victim’s POVs to make it that much more poignant. Then, make me care: give me a small cast of friends, and let me root for them. And then, of course, there’s the Final Girl—the haunted past, the dreams up in the air, and a killer come to change her life for good. Mix it all up well enough, and you’ve got a damned good slasher, and in Neon Moon, Grace R. Reynolds has the secret sauce because her debut novella is set at a legendary Texan country music bar where the whisky-swilling and rhinestone-flashing denizens are about to meet a killer set to ruin their honky-tonking good night. And crucially, this book isn’t just a successful rendition of everything I said above, but something with a lyrical beauty all of its own. This is a great slasher, and a big statement from Reynolds.

Plot wise, Darlene is bartender at the famous Teegarden Saloon. She’s also an abuse survivor. And one fateful night, during a busy night at the Saloon, both her, her regulars, the visiting country band and the drunk bridal party will have to contend with a hatchet-wielding maniac who’s descended on the Teegarden to make it a night to remember.

Character wise, I was instantly impressed by Reynolds’ ability to, in the short confines of a novella, quickly make you care about both the barstaff and the barflys at the Teegarden, thanks to her skill with natural dialogue and her ability to get you to care about a character in just a couple of pages. There’s a sense of Texan goodwill here, that sense of found family that’s separate from the religion or more divisive culture some might associate with the South (I may be projecting here—as ever, the reader’s prerogative, I’m afraid—but there’s a feel of a more progressive Texas in this book, of the welcome stereotype-challenging kind). And there’s also a new addition to the “animal companion” library in the form of an opossum (Google it, fellow Brits) which I think makes this my first opossum-centric story, though hopefully not my last. The story, though, belongs to Darlene, and the way Reynolds writes her throughout and ties her story of abuse to the plot without making it define her puts you under no illusion that whether or not she survives the night, she has more than earned her Final Girl status.

But alongside the great character work is a great killer, and I winced at the horrific brutal deaths from the insane hatchet-wielding maniac stalking the Teegarden, all described from the victim’s POVs, many of whom go out with poignant heroism or even a little bit of poetry. I was reminded in this sense of the great work of Brian McAuley’s recent slashers; but Reynolds has an art all of her own here, at the same time brutally and vividly described yet also enhanced by the poetic prose she can clearly pull off. Indeed, there’s a certain dreamlike quality to the whole thing, even as the insane climax hits, like this is all taking place in a honky-tonk nightmare in some sleeper’s mind as they drift off under a Texan moon.

Overall, with a truly horrific killer to remember and characters you’ll come to root for in the unique setting of a Texas honky-tonk saloon, Reynolds gives us some Southern slasher charm with lyrical prose all steeped in a whisky-soaked nightmare of Survivor revenge and Texan grit. An innovative slasher that made me stop my table dancing long enough to take note of an exciting new horror voice. ...more

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Mortedant's Peril (The Trials of Irody Hasp, #1)
by R.J. Barker (Goodreads Author)

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What’s the sign of a great fantasy writer? I’d wager one indicator, to make a completely unrelated steak metaphor, is taking the well-done and making it seem rare. Enter R J Barker, the revered fantasy author of, among others, the scintillatingly won What’s the sign of a great fantasy writer? I’d wager one indicator, to make a completely unrelated steak metaphor, is taking the well-done and making it seem rare. Enter R J Barker, the revered fantasy author of, among others, the scintillatingly wonderful trilogies The Tide Child and The Forsaken, whose new book, Mortedant’s Peril, an epic fantasy murder mystery with a protagonist who can reads the minds of the dead, presents us with a scenario that we have seen many times before. A dystopian city, arranged in many tiers, with the poor on the bottom and the rich on the top, with a conspiracy at its heart, full of strange and barely understood magic, and a put-upon much-maligned protagonist with the odds against them and a pair of reluctant allies, who must fight the system to get to the truth in a frantic race against time. It’s a well-trodden fantasy path. But, and here’s the thing, Barker makes it seem like it’s the first time I’ve ever read a fantasy like this. His characters are so compelling, and his world is so intriguing, and his writing is so witty yet deeply, subtly emotional when you least expect it, that it feels like he’s just invented the fantasy city genre from scratch. This is one of the fantasies of the summer.

The plot revolves around Irody Hasp—who is a Mortedant, one of the three key groups in the strange multi-tiered city of Elbay vying for power over it. Mortedants read the minds of the recently dead—maybe to pass on their last thoughts to the bereaved, maybe to try and gleam some vital information. It’s often a thankless job, and he is a particularly unthanked member of it. But when he reads the corpse of a seemingly low level records keeper, Irody’s assistant is then killed, and he’s blamed for it. Now he has four days to clear his name, find out the connection, and uncover a conspiracy that threatens the city who wants him dead.

Barker is a deeply wonderful worldbuilder, one of modern fantasy’s very finest, and in this book he is a wonderful city-builder. Elbay is a fascinating place full of Mortedants, who we have covered, the Worshipful, who believe an ominously-named deity the Howling God lies beneath the city sleeping, and, perhaps most fascinatingly of all, we have the Spurriers, who use chemicals and sacrificed animals to create bizarre spirit creations which fill the city, whether as carriages or weapons or for all manner of eerie uses. When you add in the pylons atop the city which regularly discharge energy across the wastes that surround the city—get your timing wrong and get caught outside the gates and you are very literally toast—and the sinister castle at the top of the city which may or may not contain its mythical ruler, you get a wondrous mix of imagination and dystopian detail. But for all the wacky ideas, it’s Barker’s Pratchett-like care for the ordinary people who must suffer through these strange locales that make this feel as grounded as it is surreal.

But, perhaps even more than a gifted worldbuilder (and a gifted storyteller, the plot is addictive, propulsive, compelling, based around the classic “few days till your execution” trope and as twisty and carefully layered as you could want from a murder mystery) Barker has that Robin Hobb gift of unexpected, nuanced and briefly heartbreaking character moments. Irody Hasp starts off as a seemingly selfish grump. Then, in that classic comedy set up, he’s reluctantly paired with a non-human and deeply fascinating “sea people” species—the classic immigrant who the protagonist learns is more than simply the xenophobia they attract—who must guard them during their murder investigations, as well as the sister of his murdered young assistant, who wants a job and revenge. Cue much dry wit and subtle deadpan as Hasp suffers from being lumbered with them. But every time you’re settled in for the comedy, Barker throws in random nuggets of unexpected poignancy, made the more powerful for their brevity and the character work he’s put in, and our slow realisation that Irody Hasp is becoming much, much more than the impression we were initially given. It is splendidly nuanced fantasy writing that few can pull off.

Overall, Mortedant’s Peril is a perfect mix of the wit of Pratchett, the city building of Scott Lynch and the unexpected emotional gut punches of Robin Hobb. Barker takes that most common of fantasy tropes, a magic city with a conspiracy at it heart and, fittingly for a tale of a man who reads the dead, breathes new life into it. A deeply wonderful fantasy that made me fall in love with the genre all over again. ...more

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I Know a Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours
by Nat Cassidy (Goodreads Author)

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Some horror authors become the perfect scribes for a particular age. Enter Nat Cassidy whose work is full of existential inquiry and dread, people coping with fundamental change, reality falling apart, good old fashioned insanity and utter, utter, te Some horror authors become the perfect scribes for a particular age. Enter Nat Cassidy whose work is full of existential inquiry and dread, people coping with fundamental change, reality falling apart, good old fashioned insanity and utter, utter, terror… and if that isn’t the best description of the 2020s then I’ll be damned if I know what is. But with I Know a Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours, Cassidy has heard the pleas of our uncertain lives, and answered our call, and decided to take us on a nice pleasant jaunt to some new places. There’s just two problems. One, these places—whether a castle, a bathroom at a gas station, several bars, or even the 1960s—aren’t going to be the relaxing breaks from reality that you’d hoped. Two, Cassidy isn’t just interested in static locations, he’s interested in the change that happens in them and what’s left of us after, and the journey he’ll take you on to find out is innovative, terrifying and occasionally unhinged. It’s a devil’s bargain reading Cassidy, as you don’t know where’ll you end up. But, as this astonishing collection of twelve shorts and one novella proves, it’s one of the best bargains you can make in modern horror fiction.

There are some genuinely terrifying and gruesome tales—Cassidy is obsessed with psychopaths and they find themselves in fine form here, whether they be horrifying puppeteers, creepy Christmas-obsessed boys or deceived husbands. Another theme of his, the terror of being a parent, is tackled in the instant-classic tale “Generation”, where a couple must contend with something very wrong happening to their unborn baby. And in the second of two “Meet Cute” tales that bookend the shorts, both of which take place in a bar with a creepy twist, Cassidy examines the privacy-less, sexually exposed nature of the dating age and the strange psychosis of the lonely male, and offers no easy answers.

Cassidy, who as a playwright as well as an author has form with, uh, switching form, experiments a little in this collection, too. “A Fruiting Body” is a performance piece, prefaced by a suggestion that you round up some friends to take turns reading it; I recruited the many voices in my head to read this, so hopefully that counts (“Macabre Ed” says YES). One of the best stories in the collection, “Laughlines”, is in epistolary style, but a series of emails instead of the Dracula-style series of letters and diaries. It’s an utterly terrifying tale of a woman trying to reconnect with her biological father by visiting his family’s ancestral castle, and the feeling of unease that slowly starts to infuse her emails from said castle is as pure an experience of dread as you’ll read all year, with a killer last line that rewards the attention-paying reader.

Perhaps the best story though is the instant short fiction classic Run For Your Life—which comes across as a feral combination of the Beatle-themed comedy film Yesterday and the Stephen King time-travel thriller 11/22/63—in which a musician obsessed with the Beatles travels back in time and gets the chance to become them before they do. What happens next cannot be predicted except by Nostradamus on psychedelics, and it’s the small, astonishingly well-thought-out details of this new alternate timeline, at first fascinating and eventually ominous, that make this story. But even amongst the dark twists, this story almost feels reassuring, like Cassidy is telling us that even amidst great change, some things are eternal and will always be so.

As well as the shorts we also get the novella Rest Stop, in which a guy in a band stops off at a strangely empty gas station and makes the very bad decision to use the rest room there, where some truly awful things happen. I read this a couple of years ago when it was released on its own, but it was a pleasure to read again, not just for the sublime terror of what the poor guy discovers in that bathroom and the events that befall them subsequently, but for the theme of how a person changes when their life and their reality collapses all around them. Cassidy examined this brutally and memorably in last year’s When the Wolf Comes Home, and that theme is once again resonant in this collection. Cassidy gets playful and Cassidy gets deep, and if you can spare a moment from your unhinged screaming then it pays to try and get into his head.

I Know a Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours is an utter triumph. Nat Cassidy knows a place, and he’ll take you there, but you won’t be the same when you return. This collection, perfect for our uncertain times, is unhinged and frequently genius, and the line between the two, as in all the best zeitgeist-defining horror, is non-existent. ...more

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The Girl with a Thousand Faces
by Sunyi Dean (Goodreads Author)

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Sunyi Dean’s debut novel, The Book Eaters, came out four years ago to great acclaim, and now she has returned with a new effort, one whose narrative is more carefully constructed and surprising than a ten-tier wedding cake filled with bees. The Girl Sunyi Dean’s debut novel, The Book Eaters, came out four years ago to great acclaim, and now she has returned with a new effort, one whose narrative is more carefully constructed and surprising than a ten-tier wedding cake filled with bees. The Girl with a Thousand Faces has a similar gothic supernatural feel to her acclaimed debut, but this sophomore effort of angry spirits and historical injustice and ghost cats and Hong Kong history feels like an author switching up through the gears. Whether through its complex narrative, assured voice, creative reinterpretation of East Asian ghost lore or searing sense of rage and injustice that runs through it like (appropriately enough for a book that briefly features the Hiroshima bomb) the heat of a thousand suns, Dean has built something here that requires much of the reader and gives it back to them in factors of ten, including a Catriona Ward-style narrative-altering twist and a redemptive character arc as unflinchingly brutal as it is yearningly hopeful. This is a remarkable book.

The plot of The Girl with a Thousand Faces takes place generally in an alternate world where everyone knows ghosts are real and frequently among us, and specifically in Hong Kong. In 1975 Hong Kong, middle-aged woman Mercy Chan has never left Kowloon Walled City, a dangerous slum district where ghosts congregate, tied to the world of the living by the injustices perpetrated on them when they belonged to it. Mercy is a ghost talker, someone who gets rid of spirits for her local triad through the novel idea of talking with them rather than simply exorcizing them. But a powerful new spirit is causing havoc in Kowloon, and if she doesn’t stop it her home might be threatened. But she has no memory of her life before 1942 and the horrors of the Second World War, and if she is to defeat the ghost, she must reckon with her forgotten past and her connection to the spirit’s feelings of injustice.

This is an interesting book for a number of reasons. First, it considers the horrors of history, focused on Hong Kong and a particular grim wartime era but analogous to the historical horrors perpetrated on the underclasses in general and women in particular, and then elides these with Dean’s interpretation of East Asian ghost folklore and myth. This is a world where ghosts are everywhere and play a large part in historical events—at one point Dean briefly steps out of the seriousness of her narrative to have a bit of fun imagining how ghosts would have influenced famous events throughout history [wait till you see Henry VIII’s fate]—but the key point is that they normally come back for vengeance, and this idea of the angry spirits of the forgotten gives the book its beating thematic heart.

Unsurprisingly then, the tone is grim and horrific throughout, mixing personal family tragedy with growing unease, dark folklore, generational secrets, and occasionally out and out action horror (ghost slasher on a submarine? Yes, please), yet so much of Dean’s writing is also laced with the beauty of place, both urban and idyllic, and the strong familiarity of home. The benefit of having an author with some of the most lyrical, sophisticated prose in speculative fiction is that even in continual despair there is great beauty.

Thematically, The Girl with a Thousand Faces is strong, too, based around a complex duality: on the one hand, the concept of a burning vengeance for the victims of atrocities, and whether that can justify or permit subsequent bloodshed; on the other, Mercy Chan’s method of listening to what the victims really want and seeking true justice for them. Dean asks whether the victim can ever get the perpetrator to understand the pain that was done to them, and how and if they can keep their soul while doing so. It’s not hard to see real-world analogies of how to address historical injustices even as we struggle to deal with our present-day ones.

And then there’s the question of where home is, and loyalty to a place that seems hopeless. At one point, one character asks another why they have not left the chaotic Kowloon; how could they, comes the reply, give up on their home? Throw in Dean’s continuing interest in the understandable monstrosities of motherhood and you have quite the thematic soup.

It is also a complicated book, in the most complimentary sense. The labyrinthine story of Mercy Chan takes you to many places, few of them expected. There are more timelines and time jumps than a boxset of Doctor Who, and at one point it suddenly switches from third person to second person voice for a large section, which is a notoriously difficult voice to pull off, all the more intriguing for its rarity, yet here comes across so smooth and beguiling that you’ll wonder what you ever did without it. And if you try and predict how this timeline puzzle box will come together you will flounder, which is as it should be, because you cannot predict the key twist, and when it comes it will give you an all-body shock treatment of the thousand-volt variety. If you surrender to the story and let the careful layers of the narrative unstitch themselves before your eyes, then you will be absorbed, and crucially, never confused.

In summary, The Girl with a Thousand Faces is a book strident in its ambition narratively, thematically, and tonally; a non-stop ride of horror and humanity that seeks to honour the forgotten even as it takes your breath away with one of the best twists of the year. As multifaceted as its titular avenging spirit, this towering edifice of carefully constructed speculative fiction mastery confirms Dean as one of the genre’s true artisans. ...more

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The Bone Door
by Frances White (Goodreads Author)

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Certain philosophical questions come back time and time again to haunt us. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If an ancient ship has all its wooden parts replaced one by one over time, is it still the Certain philosophical questions come back time and time again to haunt us. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If an ancient ship has all its wooden parts replaced one by one over time, is it still the same ship? And, of course, if a book is a puzzle box wrapped in a mystery where even explaining the plot is almost a spoiler, how can we review said book? I’ll leave the first two to Google, but as for the third, the answer is, of course, emotions and vibes and possible expletives, and given the extreme emotional toll that The Bone Door from Frances White—out on May 12 from Penguin Michael Joseph (UK) and Hanover Square Press (US)—took on me, I am ready for all three. This is White’s second book, after her excellent debut Voyage of the Damned. That book was a fantasy murder mystery; this book is a fantasy horror mystery—there is murder in it for sure, but there is more horror, and young children, and the confluence of the two is a daring mix. But boy does it work; this is a contender for my favourite book of the year, and if I’m able to explain why in the next four paragraphs then that is one more philosophical riddle solved.

What can we say about the plot of The Bone Door then? A boy called Hop wakes up in a maze, with no memory of his life before or how he got there. To get out of the maze he has to get through the Bone Door, but to get to that ominously named aperture, he must get through a series of other doors in several strange realms, completing tasks before the time runs out. Along the way he comes across other children, equally amnesiac, who will help him, and may be more connected to him and the land than any of them realise. And that is all you’re getting I’m afraid; vagueness is your friend.

So if I can’t talk about plot, let’s talk about tone. The obvious talking point about this book is that the characters are all kids, and yet it is unrelentingly, deeply dark in its plotline and the history to the eventual world we discover. The trigger warnings alone—amputation, sexual abuse, self harm, grief, the list goes on—seem almost incompatible with the early chapters, featuring the irrepressibly cheerful and good natured protagonist Hop, who bounces around like a Duracell bunny and just wants to help everyone. But what White has realised is that it is not just eminently possible to balance such dark themes in a horror fantasy with a cast of kids, but incredibly fitting. Hop’s relentless good nature faced with such horrors—along with White’s gift for witty dialogue—is our lifeboat in such choppy waters, and allows us to cling to the important messages she has to impart without drowning.

We can also talk about theme. Certain themes recur from White’s debut—dealing with trauma and low self-esteem, and how love can overcome a history of violence. But this feels like White is playing on an even wider scope thematically, as not only do we consider the consequences of toxic positivity as well as, separately, low self-esteem and trauma, but we are also, through a breathtakingly ambitious multi-timeline plot that somehow works, asked to consider the harm that generational trauma can bring, and how attempts to end harm beget more harm, and the ways in which friendship and love can seek to end this toxic cycle. It is ambitious, but White is playing for keeps here, and for me, it worked, spectacularly so.

Finally, let me mention, in the most non-spoiler way I can, the endgame. The last fifth of this book is a series of exquisite twists, almost endless in nature, that reveal the plot to be as carefully constructed and labyrinthine as the maze Hop found himself in. It should not by all rights be workable to have about ten twists in a row and have them all hit as hard as a cement boxing glove, but White manages it, and I spent these last few pages in a sort of narrative-driven trance, amazed by the revelations. And, at the risk of mixing metaphors, my trance was also a river of tears, because the emotional beats, made less saccharine and more real by all the horrors before us, are utterly devastating. The bit that really made me cry probably won’t be the bit that you think made me cry, but the key takeaway here is that if you’re not leaking at a rate of knots from both eyeholes at the denouement then you may have had your heart stolen by a raccoon—I’d check that out.

Overall, The Bone Door is a remarkably ambitious fantasy horror that delves its hand into that perilous box labelled “children + trauma” to produce one of the most emotionally stirring and powerfully messaged books of recent times, replete with a stunningly well executed, twisty, multi-layered plot and an emotional finale that destroys and nourishes in equal measure. This book is an enema of the emotions, and frankly a true speculative fiction classic in the making. ...more

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The Hive
by Ronald Malfi (Goodreads Author)

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Dread. Pure, lingering, dread, the kind that covers your skin no matter how many times you shower. Do you feel it? If you do then I apologise, because it’s probably emanating from me like existential body odour after having finishing this big brick o Dread. Pure, lingering, dread, the kind that covers your skin no matter how many times you shower. Do you feel it? If you do then I apologise, because it’s probably emanating from me like existential body odour after having finishing this big brick of a book that asks a simple question: what if you take an essentially absurd concept, and make it utterly horrific in a continually disquieting (and ultimately very loud) way? In this book, something bad comes to a community and changes the people there. Not unusual in a horror, you might think—but the thing about Malfi is you don’t know what to expect. He does his own thing and goes his own way and that has, especially recently, produced one of horror’s golden runs of quality (Come With Me, Small Town Horror, Senseless, etc). The Hive is no exception, although it’s different from his other books and demands a little patience; it’s a Weird Horror hiding in a big name doorstopper. But god, I simply couldn’t put it down until I’d uncovered its disturbing puzzle box answers.

The plot, in as much as we can say about it without revealing the nightmare logic puzzle, concerns the residents of Mariner’s Cove, a quiet suburban neighbourhood on the Maryland coast of Chesapeake Bay. One night, after a massive storm, a series of random objects wash up. A chair. A door. A colander. The list goes on. There seems no pattern to these objects, but one unifying factor; those who possess them don’t want to give them up and quickly make it their life’s mission to uncover their secrets. And the only person who seems to be noticing this is a young boy with a strange set of powers.

If that sounds like an odd plot device—buddy, why are you obsessed with those coat hangars you found on the beach—then that’s very much on purpose, because part of the joy of this book is wondering where an earth this is going. One memorable series of chapters involves a retired heart surgeon wondering why he can’t stop thinking about an actual door that’s now sitting in his garage. Even though you might think you know where this is going by a good way in, the way it goes is completely unforeseeable, until one moment where the strange objects all come together and what you had begun to suspect might have been Malfi making some kind of absurdist statement turns into one of the greatest “aha” moments you’ll have in a book this year.

Along the way, you’ll be distracted from the insane puzzle by the utter, utter dread that just doesn’t let up. Some horror authors have a running metre of dread, where they dial it down, only to rise it back up. Malfi doesn’t. This book is about 750 pages long, but it’s all done at the maximum level of teeth-jangling, nerve-shredding unease. Some of it’s supernatural related; hints of the strange forces controlling the residents. The rest is simple terror: a man standing outside a child’s home. Knocking. And knocking.

Characterisation is another of Malfi’s talents, and though this is a large-cast book, so no character gets a truly detailed arc, the vignettes we get are as electric as you’d expect from him. When we first meet the alcoholic uncle of the Shining-style boy with odd powers, we get a rollercoaster few pages describing his doomed early career as a radio celebrity, and it’s so good, a wickedly and darkly entertaining short story of its own (I wish we’d had more of him). And the villainous Stinger (nominative determinism at its finest as you’ll see) is one of the creepiest villains of recent times, almost as horrific for his cult leader subtlety as his more obvious evils.

And while some authors might have hammered home the central message about conformity here—there are parallels to our digital screen time age of compulsion and addiction and a reluctance to question these—Malfi lets the plot and the dread do the talking, and leaves us to ask ourselves how we would fare if the Hive came to town.

Like Stranger Things meets Needful Things but with a whole host of dreadful things you cannot even imagine, The Hive is a puzzle box, slowburn nightmare of a community gone weird whose endless disquieting horror keeps you in a frozen state of lingering unease all the way to its apocalyptic finale. More proof that Malfi is a modern-day horror master—this book may warn of the dangers of conformity, but you must conform just enough to read this. ...more

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Cabaret in Flames
by Hache Pueyo (Goodreads Author)

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There’s a curious but wonderful skill that not all authors possess and it’s this: to create, in just a small novella’s worth of words, a dark speculative world of uniqueness and distinction, with characters whose emotional journeys and traumas leave There’s a curious but wonderful skill that not all authors possess and it’s this: to create, in just a small novella’s worth of words, a dark speculative world of uniqueness and distinction, with characters whose emotional journeys and traumas leave a real imprint on you despite being in your company for the fifth of a time of an epic fantasy doorstopper. It’s a trick that requires every sentence to be important, that means less has to be more, that means some things can’t be described in full as long as they are felt in full. In Cabaret In Flames, (out now from Titan in the UK and Tor in the States), Hache Pueyo, in introducing a monster-filled Brazil within which is crafted a tender love story and a tale of trauma and forgiveness, demonstrates such mastery of this trick that I felt a real sense of awe at its conclusion. Oh, and she introduces a new race of creatures, that, despite fulfilling many of the thematic tropes of vampires, felt like the most original new breed of paranormal race I’ve read for a good while. This novella is a sumptuous achievement, and I desperately need more from this author.

The plot of Cabaret in Flames revolves around Ariadne, who lives in an alternate Brazil, a politically chaotic one, where death squads under an ailing president live side by side with a race of long-living, human-flesh-eating monsters called guls, who we’ll come back to. Some years ago Ariadne lost her limbs to one particular gul, and was given incredible prosthetic ones, as good as the real thing, by genius Erik Yurkov, who rescued her, and trained her in the art of healing the race that attacked her… but has now disappeared. When an old friend of his, Quaint—who is a gul himself—knocks on her door seeking Erik, the quest to find out what became of their mutual friend leads to a conspiracy at the dark heart of this Brazil, and the eponymous club Cabaré in Rio de Janeiro, yet even more importantly to the start of, perhaps, something real between these two wounded souls.

Now if that sounds like a lot of plot for a tiny novella, I refer you to the trick I referred to earlier. Pueyo sensibly confines this novella mainly to the relationship between Quaint and Ariadne and their shared past. First, Quaint. Let’s talk about the guls. They live centuries, they feed on humans. Some choose to do that in good ways, some very much not. We’re in vampire territory, right? Well, yes and no. Guls feed on flesh, not blood, and there are a myriad of fascinating other psychological, cultural, moral and physiological traits that Pueyo goes into detail about which make this species feel utterly unique.

But even when turning to the philosophical and existential tropes familiar to vampires, Pueyo finds new ground here. Yes, Quaint himself has been pained by the realities of forming acquaintances over the centuries. Very Interview with the Vampire, or, for a more modern comparison, the superlative existentialist vampire novella Our Own Unique Affliction by Scott J Moses. But Pueyo also studies the idea of how time can seem different to a long-living race (you say “I’ll see you soon” to a human and then are nonplussed why they’re annoyed when you rock up a decade later)—and how friendships can evolve and die and turn to love and back— in fresh ways I haven’t seen before.

Then there is Ariadne, whose story has multiple facets to it: triumph over disability, but also severe emotional trauma due to a horrific past that is carefully unwrapped over the novella’s short length, and her bravery in facing up to it again—as well as how friends can be bad people but still your friend. But it’s her burgeoning relationship with Quaint, a man who belongs to the race who ate her, that is the beating emotional heart of this story. Pueyo’s expressive, vivid, yet minimalist prose ensures none of the complex backstory and hints at Brazil’s political chaos gets in the way of this budding new thing between two wounded, careful, people—and the result is simply wonderful.

Overall, Cabaret in Flames would be a remarkable novella simply for introducing a new race of monsters that gives vampires a run for their money; but Hache Pueyo has also given us, in just a few pages, a vivid, horror-filled dark fantasy world in an alternate Brazil with a subtle, beautiful tale of romance, forgiveness and healing at its centre. Sometimes less is more, and this novella is everything. ...more

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Cold Snap (Frost Bite, #2)
by Angela Sylvaine (Goodreads Author)

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In 2004’s wildly fun Frost Bite, horror author Angela Sylvaine took us back to the nineties, also known in my own head as my childhood, and gave us a small town nostalgic action horror comedy very much in the Tremors/Gremlins mold (but make it more s In 2004’s wildly fun Frost Bite, horror author Angela Sylvaine took us back to the nineties, also known in my own head as my childhood, and gave us a small town nostalgic action horror comedy very much in the Tremors/Gremlins mold (but make it more sci-fi). The action was fun and deftly choreographed, the meteor worms taking over rodents (and increasingly larger creatures) was creepy and gross in equal measure and Sylvaine’s gift of writing character was reflected in the nicely drawn dynamic of Realene, the nineteen year old with dreams of leaving her small North Dakotan town, and her best friend Nate, who’d rather she didn’t. Now she’s back with the sequel, Cold Snap, out from Dark Matter Ink March 17, and I’m pleased to report that it continues the fun of the original but throws in more twists and, reflecting the darker matter of Sylvaine’s short stories, goes quite dark on its reflections on grief and loss. It’s a hell of sequel, and you’d have to be an amnesiac meteor worm victim to miss out on this series.

Plot wise, we’re no longer in the small town of Demise, North Dakota but a bit of the ways up north in Winnipeg, Canada. Realene’s best bud Nate now has a girlfriend, and they’ve gone up there for spring break (which also happens near Canadian lakes as well as on coastal American beaches, this book taught me) But it seems the meteor worms might be back, and Realene in rescue mode decides to go after them, and find out what exactly the military’s involvement in this new outbreak is—and why her town’s religious cult is back in the mix.

Sylvaine’s gift for engrossing you in her young characters’ travails is immediately on show in this enormously addictive sequel which I ate up in a couple of sittings; the dynamic of the best friends having to navigate one of them being in a relationship (Nate’s cheerleader-type gf over-eagerly trying to make friends with a sceptical Realene provides a lot of the early comedy) is deftly done, and all the new characters we meet in this sequel leave a mark even with small page time. Sylvaine also cleverly avoids the trap of these kinds of alien action horror sequels of simply rehashing the original; without spoiling anything, the threat in this one is of a very different nature, and features more conspiratorial twists then monster mayhem (though there are still worms aplenty, fear not). This feels like a sequel that expands the lore, not merely tries to rebake it. But it still features the kind of kinetic action set-pieces that made the original extremely readable.

However, it’s the darker focus on grief and loss that gives this sequel an extra edge. Both Realene and Nate, who at this point are down to one parent between them, are forced to contend with more loss while trying to get over their previous loss, and it’s these underlying themes of how to use the found family of the present to recover from the pain of the past that makes this more thoughtful than your average space critter action fest. Sylvaine (who is no stranger to going dark as witnessed in her outstanding collection The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls) is good at lulling you into an entertained state then hitting you with a dark twist or devastating death or feeling of loss, and it makes this a spiky as well as a moreish read.

Overall, Cold Snap is not just the sequel that fans of the nostalgic, 90s-set action comedy horror original were hoping for, but a darker, twistier ride, proving that Sylvaine is willing to feed you emotional damage with your meteor worms. An enormously fun and heartfelt horror series. ...more

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The Revenant of Surolifia
by Florence Chien (Goodreads Author)

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Full review to come nearer release, but this is how you do political fantasy—there’s more double crossings, twists, intrigue and scheming here than a series of Traitors. It’s a wildly fun and unapologetically complex look at the different ways to sav ...more

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