Title: Little Horn: Stories

Author: Gemma Files

Release date: October 14th, 2025

Welcome to a mild rebrand/relaunch to my reviews. I was chatting with someone else recently on IG about ‘branding’ and such and figured I’d try to see if this little tweak from ‘Book Review’ to ‘Stred Reviews’ can help get more eyes on the books I share with my reviews! We’ll see!

First up, is ‘Little Horn: Stories’ by Canadian Master, Gemma Files.

It’s funny, because Gemma’s novel ‘Experimental Film,’ was a book I initially DNF’d, but then returned to try it once again and absolutely loved it. I had a lot of fun with her ‘A Book of Tongues’ novel, so when I saw she had a new short story collection coming, I decided I’d buy that and make it my next read from her.

Safe to say, Gemma’s a pro at long fiction and the short stuff, because each of these stories is nuanced, layered and bleak.

What I liked: Featuring fourteen stories – ranging from some shorter, quick reads to novelette length, Gemma weaves us through tales that all work to really grab your spine and crush it between bloody knuckles. Even some stories that begin a little bit on the brighter side soon turn black and grow blacker with each additional word added. It made for a heavy, heavy experience reading through these. I think the last time a collection was really this devoid of anything resembling a smile was ‘The Nameless Dark’ by T.E. Grau.

From the starting block, the first story sets us up nicely. ‘The Sanguintalist’ follows a necromancer on an investigation. This one just might be the story with ‘the most fun’ as it covers urban fantasy and horror equally. From that point on, its all bleakly downhill.

My favorite stories were;

– ‘Only Children’ – This was a very subtle story, but also blindingly horrendous. It follows a woman, now a mother, who as a child was the only one of her friends who didn’t go missing after they went to a specific place in their town. Stories of the boogeyman have remained over centuries, and Files highlights those, while also keeping it within the walls of what this story is telling. The woman seemingly managed to snap a photo of the boogeyman and so she educates her own son, about what to look for, as she believes the thing may come for him. Though, there may also be, other, more sinister motives behind her actions.

This would’ve been my favorite story of the collection if it wasn’t for one other one that absolutely hit every note for me, but I’ll discuss that one shortly. This story felt like an entire film wrapped up in five-thousand words and was dripping in palpable tension.

– ‘Hagstone’ – one of a handful of epistolary/mixed media stories within this collection, ‘Hagstone’ follows a woman analyzing and transferring old movie reels for what she believes is a job simply to have the film re-released as a limited Blu-ray. Told through emails between herself and a colleague as well as text and phone transcriptions and a few essay parts, we see this woman and her colleague uncover the true reasons and layered elements to why the film was even made and what it was trying to accomplish.

It was a slow-burn escalation as one character descends into madness and the story itself with absolutely remind readers of ‘Experimental Film’ on a number of levels. I think, for me personally, this one worked even more, or was heightened that much more, because of what I’d previously read with ‘Experimental Film.’

– ‘Little Horn’ – unabashed religious horror. I’ll actually leave it at that. It’s the final story in the collection and it easily caught me off guard and made me happy to see it wasn’t a throw away track at the end of an album. Unflinching.

– ‘Poor Butcher-Bird’ – if you know me, you know I do love me some brutal cult fiction and this one morphs from what seems like a straight ahead cult initiation story into something involving another subgenre and turns the story that much more bloody and sinister. A woman meets up with a cult she seemingly wants to join. It’s from there that she herself fakes them out, in order to be joined by her own ‘master.’ I’d be curious to know how many buckets of fake blood would need to be used if this story was to ever be filmed, because Gemma had no qualms with eviscerating everyone.

And now, time for my favorite story of the entire collection – and I need to add that this might be one of the best short stories you’ll ever read. It’s one of the best short stories I’ve ever read, that’s for certain.

‘Echo Chamber.’

– ‘Echo Chamber’ – another epistolary based story, we follow a woman on an obsessive hunt for an mp3 file of a lost song. A former film star became an Avant Garde artist and musician. Urban legend has it that they only performed this specific song one time, at their final show ever, deep in a set of caves. During the show, every attendee blacked out, coming back while dancing and the musician was gone, never to be seen again.

Within the story, we learn of a single episode of an old entertainment-style show that obtained a copy of the song and played it, but the episode either never aired, or was only aired once and was destroyed, depending on whom you believe. Additionally, the host suffered a mental breakdown after hearing the song within the performance.

It all leads us to an intricate look at plagues, songs that become popular or are created around plague times and as each new section is shared – whether an email back and forth or DM transcription or text messages between people – the creep factor goes up exponentially. It was such an unsettling read and one that I’ll be thinking about for a long, long time.

What I didn’t like: While I did really enjoy every story, I will say – as always is the case – I struggle a lot with epistolary storytelling and this collection had a number of stories that utilize that method of storytelling. It’s a mode of storytelling that’ll often keep me at a distance or completely turn me off of what’s happening. In this case of the collection, two such stories really connected with me, which I was very happy with.

Why you should buy this: Gemma is easily one of the best writers out there currently, creating stories with depth, dread and layered sociopolitical commentary. Her writing is sublime and the way she tells her stories, you can decide to just enjoy the story itself, or, you can spend time making notes and looking deeper within the subtext that resides between each and every word.

This collection is a must read for all dark fiction lovers and I’d make the case that this one should be read just so you can experience ‘Echo Chamber’ in all of its glory.

Absolutely loved this collection.