The Color of Blood

by Mona Kabbani

LOVE, LUST, ART, AND BLOOD.Void's greatest fear is being seen as a monster, not an artist. He revels in his fame but hides his greatest his success is attributed to his uncanny ability to see the color of a person's soul. This color not only infects a person's aura but their anatomy, turning their insides into dazzling pigment. Void targets those with the rarest colors and drains their blood for his paint. None know of his secret and he has found solace in the solitude of his life. That is until he meets an unprecedented muse who is more than happy to bleed for him."The Color of Blood sees Kabbani dip her toes into extreme horror, then submerge herself fully in its gore and depravity. This horror novella is highly original, shocking, and disturbingly erotic. One should need no further proof that she is a rising star in the world of horror fiction." — Kristopher Triana, author of Gone to See the River ManThe Color of Blood is the cosmic, psychological horror novel from Mona Kabbani.Slated for publication on February 24th, 2024, the Snow Moon.About the AuthorMona Kabbani is a horror fan, writer, and reviewer obsessed with psychology and the human condition. She emulates the conflict of the good versus the bad and all of the in between in her work while providing an entertainingly horrifying experience. She is the author of The Bell Chime, which won the award for Best Horror Novella of 2020 from LoHF, Vanilla, and For You. She is a Lebanese immigrant living the dream in New York City where much of her writing is inspired. You can follow her on Instagram and TikTok @moralityinhorror for more and sign up for her mailing list on her website, www.moralityinhorror.com.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Short Stories, Novella, Thriller, Horror Thriller, Dark

186 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 24, 2024

About the author

Mona Kabbani is a horror fan, writer, and reviewer obsessed with psychology and the human condition. She emulates the conflict of the good versus the bad and all of the in between in her work while providing an entertainingly horrifying experience. She is the author of The Bell Chime, which won the award for Best Horror Novella of 2020 from LoHF, Vanilla, and For You. She is a Lebanese immigrant living the dream in New York City where much of her writing is inspired. You can follow her on Instagram and TikTok @moralityinhorror for more and sign up for her mailing list on her website, www.moralityinhorror.com.

Reviews

[Peter Topside · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. The runaway star of this experience was the writing quality. Top of the line, all the way. The content was nothing necessarily groundbreaking. An artist who is obsessed with his work and uses victims in his installations and exhibits has been done to death in the horror realm. There were some interesting plot points, mostly involving Zahra, but everything just felt like it was kept surface-level. I really wanted a deeper dive into our lead, Void, but understand how the author most likely wanted us to stay with his monotonous mindset centered around his art. But, in doing so, there was a lot of repetition, many instances of certain ideas being dragged out, and it didn't strike me as being particularly extreme. A good amount of body horror, but nothing that struck me as it was advertised, i.e. disturbing or shocking. Still a decent horror story, but I would taper expectations a bit.

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I picked up this book, I hoped for something as stylistically interesting as The Bell Chime but this one is much less stylized. The male lead left me cold, didn't care about his progression or his ideas he just came across as something of an edgy nothing burger but I think that was part of the point but it made it hard to care about the story.

[Sidney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ehh. I liked the concept but felt it could have been executed better overall. The writing is great but I found it a little repetitive in some parts & this really felt more like a chaotic romance more than a horror novella.

I just wanted more horror from this. Interesting read but not for me. Maybe if you're into more romance I can see why people like this but I'm not so booooo

2.5 rounded up.

[DaniPhantom · Rating 2 out of 5]

The MC felt like if a mansplainer decided to murder people and paint with their blood, and then have kinky sex with an insane girl

[Matthew Mercer · Rating 5 out of 5]

There have been less than a handful of times where a book has blown me away on this level—so much so that it makes me feel bad as an author for not recognizing certain aspects of storytelling as possible prior to reading it.

I had no clue going into this book that it would be such an emotional masterpiece with such great use of symbolism throughout. I was promised a gory erotic thriller, and while that remained true, I was also given so much more. I'd like to think that I could come away from this book with either inspiration to do better, or having learned a thing or two about proper use of metaphor for my own stories, but I'm moreso left in awe at just how well done this was, and doubtful that I could create anything even close.

I had never heard of this book or author prior to it being a monthly read in one of my book clubs, and I'm dissappointed in myself for not having found it sooner.

[Kassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novella was brilliant and unique. Void, our narrator is himself very unique. A being unlike others, he spends his life dredged in his art. He lives only for his art and foraging for the right color. One day while foraging for the perfect color he gets himself into something he could never have imagined…He ends up falling for his new color palette and learns a hard lesson along the way.

The authors storytelling is like watching a love story every single time even when it’s not meant to be a love story. It’s like watching a sunset or the feeling you get when you see the person you love do something they love. The way she writes is very enjoyable and I will be reading even more of her works soon.

[LauraLee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. I was really surprised and disappointed when I realized the protagonist/narrator was a male character, as I was hoping this was an exploration of female violence/sexuality/creativity. It wasn’t a bad book per se, however it didn’t connect with me, and the male voice at the center seemed a bit cliche.

[Jason A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

My gawd, my gawd,my gawd, another 5 star banger! I absolutely loved this book. Top tier writing from an amazing author! The story had me hooked from the get-go and wouldn't relent until I was finished. Bloody, erotic, and downright horrifying and yet sad and heartwrenching.

[Brooklyn Attic Books]

What an excellent and tasteful extreme horror...yes, that's right, I said tasteful. I am in-love with Mona Kabbani's writing style. It's severely under-appreciated in the indie horror book community. I feel like everyone should get a taste of her books. If you haven't yet, read one of her books. She is absolutely fantastic. But this book...it's genre-bending. It's sexy. It's smutty. It's gorey. It's a shrine to originality.

My first extreme horror I actually enjoyed. Thank you!

[Mel Walker · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF - started strong then around 20% it started going downhill so DNF and moving on

[freyttsie · Rating 3 out of 5]

kept thinking this story might reach a little deeper but it never did — really compelling writing but fell flat plot-wise

[Lauren McGuirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This. Was. Amazing. You all know I like dark, weird stuff and this book falls right into that category. And it’s under 200 pages!

Thank you Stellah for recommending it!

It was dark, gory, toxic, disturbing, and I devoured it. I still don’t quite know what Void is, but I feel like that makes it better. I highly recommend this to all my friends who like weird messed up stories. You know who you are.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭:
Psychological horror
Gore
Toxic love
Under 200 pages

Available on KU

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author has me on a roller coaster of kind of disliking the story to becoming quite fond of it's uniqueness and memorable characters with even more memorable plots.

I initially felt lukewarm to the story-especially when Zahra seemed to be a manic-pixie dream girl at first...then of course you read on and this wonderfully groteque relation buds. I also grew to really like Zahra when she explained her lifestory to Void.

I also do like that the story revolves around art, as I do art myself . (Not to this degree of course and not with the same mediums of course hehe).


I didn't find this to be an extreme horror read, it has some brutality for sure, but I found it to be mild and important for story and character progression-so it wasn't pointless and tasteless.

I will be reading more for sure. Amazing work queen.

4.25☆

[Joseph Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Void is an artist that can see peoples vibrant auras. He loves the colors and puts those colors on canvas. All he has to do is kill and use their blood.

Then void sees the must beautiful color in Zarah. He must have that color, but if he falls in love?

Beauty lies within the eyes but so does horror!

[KD · Rating 5 out of 5]

My last read of 2024 could not have been any better. Intense, violent, deliciously erotic, and perhaps even cataclysmic, I could not look away from this book. Kabbani’s writing is so beautiful that every single word is a pleasure to read, even (or especially?) when the subject matter is so gruesome. 5 stars!

[Ruby · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my head I kept imagining the obsesses filled Psycho with all the beauty and poetic tendencies of Perfume. A tragic love story for someone that cannot help being a monster but instead, wants to be seen as an artist.

[Alex Olson · Rating 5 out of 5]

body horror, art, toxic relationship, and a god complex (loved it)

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was batshit insane and i loved every second of it

[Courtney · Rating 1 out of 5]

Imagine Perfume rewritten as an Anne Rice x X-Men fanfic, but way less interesting.

Void, our unsubtle Jean-Baptiste Grenouille+Patrick Bateman, is a man devoid (heh heh get it) of color, but can see the colors of other people in what he calls 'auras'. These auras seem tethered to their holders through the blood and the flesh as, unlike our poor Jean-Baptiste, what this artist is after maintains much of its potency after death. In other ways they float around their owners like a spirit, as Zahra's does while they're spinning in teacups at the pier.

Zahra, our little Wolverine manic-pixie-minx, recognizes this spark in Void and offers herself up as a sacrifice for him. It can't hurt her after all, she heals almost instantly, but she makes him promise that he won't go a-murderin' anyone else while she's willing to give the milk away for free. He agrees.

What follows is the most mundane sex-fueled blood painting montage that has probably ever been put to page. At one point he loses the tip of his hand-carved palate knife in her sternum, a moment they both shrug off. Soon it comes pushing back up to the surface and in a bizarre moment where Void says he wants to cut her open but doesn't want to hurt her (where it's been FIRMLY established that cutting her does, actually, hurt, she just likes it, so here there is literally no difference), Void slices her open medically instead of sexually and when he reaches inside her to retrieve the knife, he finds himself lost in an Uzumaki-style spiraling snail universe that is the depth of her aura.

The domestics do as domestics do, they fight, he kills someone else, she kills herself in a jealous rage, at the near total destruction of her body she comes back together as someone else with a different aura, boo hoo the book's over.

I'm not name-dropping IP's like I have a quota to meet for fun. It's because it's how the book reads. One can argue that there are no original ideas, but the job of the artist is to take an existing idea and to reshape it, re-explore it, to mold it to their needs. Ironic, then, that this novel is about an artist when the entire thing was put together like the author had to jam three separate puzzles into a frame in fifteen minutes with the help of a rusty x-acto knife. I can see the edges of every inspirational character, the demarcation lines where she falls into one story, climbs out of another. The theming is nonexistent, the writing isn't bad, but it isn't good. If I wanted to read American Psycho, or Perfume, or Uzumaki, or Queen of the Damned, or Xmen I would, I don't need this book to give me a charcuterie.

[Eve L. Fell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool Concept

3/5 ⭐️

‼️SPOILERS‼️
Void is a strange fellow who sees people’s auras and colors of their blood. He kills people to use their blood as paint for his works of art.

He meets his match in a woman but not all is what it appears to be. He is able to straight decimate her without killing her. He loves that he can reach in her body and she doesn’t die. She is addicting to him. But will she stay?

I’ll be honest didn’t enjoy this book like I thought I would. I found myself pretty bored a couple times and I think maybe the art revolved content wasn’t for me. I didn’t like how a lot of questions weren’t answered by the end. What the hell is she? An alien? What is he? A vampire? I think that it was written well and I would like to read more from the author but this particular book wasn’t my jive.

[Lucy Lofstrand · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I would recognize you by your laugh, your smell, the way you breathe, and even if I’d lost all sense of sight I’d know you by the rhythm your footsteps make to accompany the music your existence creates in my head. I know you and I have loved you not by the absence of your flaws but by the presence of your darkness.”

UGHHH could not put this book down. I found it on my kindle recommended and I usually try to stay away from gory books but I really enjoyed this one.

[Lily Goffinet · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first started this book, I thought it was reaching too hard to be different and absurd, but the more I delved into this novel, I realized how metaphorical this twisted romance was between Void and Zahra, Void and his art, and Void and himself. May a man never lust for me as Void does Zahra, he can stay an empty shell craving my profound inner work while I reach for the stars.

[noelleinomicon (Mia Ballard's version) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I certainly didn't HATE this book, I just don't think I'm the right audience for it! It felt closer to a dark romance than it did horror. The scenes of gore were captivating though and the concept is great, although ultimately it kind of felt like it went nowhere. A solid read though and I would love to read more by this author!

[Olivia Owens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay. I was wanting it to be more of thriller/horror and in some ways it ways it was, but it truly was just a romance novel. The book is super short so I wanted to at least finish it but it wasn’t what I was expecting.

[neve · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was insanely graphic but also so poignant and raw. both characters had their flaws exploited but always remained human even if they weren’t explicitly depicted as human.

it was randomly recommended to me by kindle unlimited and i couldn’t stop reading. so wild.

i think i will sit and simmer in the aftermath 🐌

[elli ⛧ yourspookymom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written and a captivating story. I love a dreadful end, too! Very poetic and I enjoyed the idea quite a bit! Excited to read more from Kabbani!

[Liz Gutierrez · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing was perfection! This book, despite the gruesome artistic nature of Void, actually kind of pulled at my heartstrings. Such a tragic love story. Really enjoyed it, a weird and wild ride.

[Skylar Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was going to be a 3 star review from me but the ending bumped it up to 4

[Merlfoy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked it better at first glance until a girl who can't die came in the decor, that kind of made it dull, like the rest of the plot line actually. The horror was underwhelming as the sex.

[Kaitlyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED THIS. Beautiful story, beautiful writing. Chefs kiss