Hardweird: Bleakwarrior Enters the Pith of Shadows and Other Tales of Cosmic Disorder

by Alistair Rennie

Praise for Rennie's BLEAKWARRIOR universe

"Transgressive and hard-edged" - Jeff VanderMeer, Nebula award winning author of the Southern Reach trilogy

"Flabbergasting Black Metal New Weird" - Edward Morris, author of the Blackguard series

"Death, violence, and inappropriate sex" - Neil Williamson, author of The Moon King

From Alistair Rennie, author of BleakWarrior and overseer of Ruptured World, comes a collection like no other...

Fantastical Meta-Warriors who defy the rules of linear existence; telepathic shape-shifting lifeforms from another planet; interdimensional time-travelling assassins; and eldritch gods as you’ve never seen them before. Experience all this and more in a masterful new collection of dark fiction that can only be described as HARDWEIRD.

Featuring BleakWarrior Enters the Pith of Shadows—the sequel novella to the acclaimed novel—and other weird tales of cosmic disorder, HARDWEIRD will take you to new heights of horror, wonder, weirdness, and beyond.

276 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 1, 2024

About the author

Alistair Rennie is the author of the novel "BleakWarrior" and has published works of weird fiction, dark fantasy and horror in a variety of anthologies and magazines, including "Weird Tales" magazine and the "New Weird" anthology. He is also known for his dark ambient music project, Ruptured World, and has released several albums with the renowned dark ambient record label, Cryo Chamber. He combines writng and music in his activities as the author and producer of the podcast "Hauntropy". He also holds a PhD in Literature from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Sonic Arts from the University of Glasgow. He is currently studying for a PhD in Music at the University of Aberdeen. In his other guises, he is a time-served painter and decorator and once worked as a web content editor for Ducati Motorcycles in Bologna, Italy.

Reviews

[Teodor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gosh, it's good to have Rennie back on the fiction beat. Hardweird continues a streak of glorious 'swords & debauchery' begun with Bleakwarrior while mixing it up with other genre experiments that display a varied palate of subject matter and style while always cleaving close the to Scottish purveyor of the in-yer-face strange's prevailing vibe and aesthetic.

This is pulp literature as both punk rock and opera; mashed together and forming itself right in front of your eyes like a Cronenbergian construction. It's raw and unhinged but equally marinated in a baroque prose that knows nothing of crudeness or facility.

Rennie is what genre fiction needs, and Hardweird is a feast for those attuned to his brand of the subversive and strange.

[Alex Budris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may be wrong, but as I see it, this leathery mutant of a story collection is a case of what the author wants to be reading simply not existing, so he is forced to write it himself. A literature of personal necessity. It is often in these cases that truly ambitious (dare I say visionary?) work is undertaken (though not always achieving realization) (this collection, though, totally ARRIVES -with muscle and great aplomb) -

These stories seem to scratch a very particular itch: There are no three star ratings so far. Some, like myself, see what the VanderMeers did in these aptly named tales of 'cosmic disorder' when they included one of them in their seminal 'The New Weird' anthology: Uncured and cutting-edge weird fiction. Others seem to deem the book gratuitous and juvenile. Well, if I've noticed anything it's that the average citizen wouldn't know Bad Ass if it proliferated tentacles with serrated tips and eviscerated him on his front lawn...

This is cyberpunk running on a quantum processor. It's as if this collection was written in the vicinity of a black hole, where space-time is affected in unexpected and unusual ways. It's a fresh, bold, and possibly inspired mutation of popular sword and sorcery, science fiction, and Lovecraftian horror tropes. It's 'Swords and Debauchery' (author's phrase); it's 'punk as fuck' (Scott Nicolay's); it's my new favorite book and is keeping company on my shelf alongside such luminaries as Laird Barron, Peter Watts, and Steve Erikson.

So, the final verdict is: Buy This Book! So the author gets paid, and is thus encouraged to continue to produce more of the Hard Stuff. This being a first collection, I have a feeling that Alistair Rennie is just warming up.

PS - ('Thanks' to the ever talented Scott Nicolay - Seeing that he had endorsed this book and penned the introduction was the reason I picked this one up to begin with. (Also Nicolay's Jean Ray translations are a necessary and long neglected contribution to English language genre fiction.))

PPS - (The only format that Goodreads acknowledges is on Kindle, but I happen to have a physical copy of the book, and thank god for it, because I refuse to read books off of a screen.)

[The Captain · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ahoy there mateys! After reading this short story collection, my strongest sentiment is that I expected more. More weird, more transgression, more wild and interesting prose. The introduction to the collection does a fantastic job of selling Rennie's writing as being on the cutting edge
of weird fiction, going so far as to say that this is a novel genus of the New Weird (referencing Jeff Vandermeer's statement, "I'd call him kind of 'Next Weird'"). Unfortunately, the work simply doesn't live up to such praise to me.

Some of the problems of the stories stem from Rennie's somewhat bland, workmanlike writing style. The initial story, "Il Duca di Cesena," tells the familiar tale of an insane and corrupt royal who has commissioned an otherworldly statue, which overwhelms all with its unnatural beauty. It's neither inventive nor weird, but it's told from a first-person perspective, and it could have generated some interest if that narration was creative in some way. It was not, and the story just plods to its expected conclusion.

Likewise, a later story about a robot becoming increasingly dissatisfied with its impossible task is the most affecting story in the collection. However, it still fails to connect because of very bland prose. I couldn't help but imagine the emotional gut punch that Iain M. Banks or Anne Leckie would have wrung from the same material. As it's written, events just happen to the robot; it becomes more frustrated and ultimately meets its untimely end. Just one thing after another.

There's a story where Captain Cook is the supernatural protector of the British Isles against the hordes of monsters that seek to destroy all humans living there. Pirates versus monsters? That sounds fun. Alas, it was not. Again, just kind of ho-hum from beginning to end. Predictability isn't the worst thing in the world, but most of these stories end exactly where you'd expect them to.

Many of the other stories seem to suffer from a genuinely juvenile perspective on sex and violence. All the stories set in the BleakWarrior world feature an almost edgelord-like teasing preoccupation with elements the author seems to view as transgressive. Mostly, those transgressive elements are sex and violence-related. There's nothing inherently wrong with writing about such topics (even when they're twisted together), especially when used to examine something interesting. Here, sex and violence aren't even presented for titillation; they're present so that the reader can think, "That was cool." After all, the collection features a story titled "TerrorSluts for Eternity Versus the Ungodheads of the Interdimensionals."

From the way Rennie was sold in the introduction, I was expecting the transgressiveness of Poppy Z Brite with the literary skill of Thomas Ligotti and the creative mindbending of Laird Barron. Hardweird is bland and often quite juvenile. If this is the next phase of the New Weird, I'll probably be taking a pass. I wouldn't recommend this collection to anyone. Arrrr!

I received a copy of this title from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Stevie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel so bad because this book is not for me. The cover looked really awesome, and I thought because I love horror books I would be a fan of this, but this book is difficult for me to finish.

I read the first and the second stories, the first one I decided to skip because it was complicated to imagine such a complex world in such a small story. I felt it needed more background.

The second story I thought I would really like, I hoped the story about the fountain was really cool, I even googled it and I was thinking all the horribles things this story was going to have... but it was so lackluster for me that I just decided to not finish the book.

[Maya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Blood Bound Books for providing me with the ARC.

Unfortunately this collection wasn’t for me. I love short stories but this one has a particular style and elements that are too off for me. You have to be familiar with the author’s works to appreciate these short stories. I didn’t like any of them; I found them disjoined and too weird without any substance to provide entertainment or satisfaction. It is an absolute horror fest, but for a very specific audience.

[tamiroquai · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunaley, this book wasn't really for me and it took me a long while to read. While I enjoy horror and vibes, most of the stories are building up to an atmosphere and shortly before you think you might grasp what's happening, it ends. I found this quite frustrating.

I expected more weirdness, more grotesque scenarios but ultimately got violence and sex - which is fine, but not what I hoped for.

I'd like to thank Blood Bound Books for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Dark Morag · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is a treasure chest of dark delights. Lots of weird within the weird. Highly recommended for those who like their weird amplified and raised up to volume 11, as Mr Nicolay says in his intro.