Duskmourn: House of Horror

by Mira Grant

Duskmourn: House of Horror
Chills and thrills await inside this terrifying story – horrific manifestations and nightmareish creatures will make your skin crawl and keep you looking over your shoulder. Who will survive and what will be left of them? Enter Duskmourn ... if you dare.

88 pages, ebook

Published August 1, 2024

About the author

Mira also writes as Seanan McGuire.

Born and raised in Northern California, Mira Grant has made a lifelong study of horror movies, horrible viruses, and the inevitable threat of the living dead. In college, she was voted Most Likely to Summon Something Horrible in the Cornfield, and was a founding member of the Horror Movie Sleep-Away Survival Camp, where her record for time survived in the Swamp Cannibals scenario remains unchallenged.

Mira lives in a crumbling farmhouse with an assortment of cats, horror movies, comics, and books about horrible diseases. When not writing, she splits her time between travel, auditing college virology courses, and watching more horror movies than is strictly good for you. Favorite vacation spots include Seattle, London, and a large haunted corn maze just outside of Huntsville, Alabama.

Mira sleeps with a machete under her bed, and highly suggests that you do the same.

Reviews

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mi historia favorita de los sets de Magic de 2024, diría. El nuevo plano es tremendo, con un pedazo de concepto de terror que se aprovecha a las mil maravillas gracias a las numerosas side stories que por suerte hemos podido tener esta vez. Además, el plantel de personajes de la trama principal me ha gustado mucho (Tyvar MVP). Pena de un final algo apresurado, pero como me queda claro que volveremos a Duskmourn eventualmente tampoco me molesta mucho.

[Parish · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a fairly disappointed by this story, to be honest. The characters weren't all that interesting, and I felt there were a lot of missed opportunities for cool horror stuff. Hardly any of the interesting things we see on the cards actually shows up in the story, and even the glimmers, which seem to me to be a big part of the set, don't really do anything. And at the very end, the gang just runs with their tails between their legs, and there is no satisfying resolution.

[MajesticalLion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magic hasn't put out a plane this cool since New Capenna. Conceptually, Duskmourn kicks ass. The story itself may not knock your socks off, but it's not irredeemably bad like Thunder Junction or Bloomburrow. It manages to just be a normal story in a really cool setting with some incredible side stories. Best package we've had in a while. And now, at last, Aetherdrift.

[Erica Naone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a game tie-in, so I'm evaluating this in that context. These stories accomplish the following:
* They make you excited to play the game, and especially the connected set
* They deepen the experience of playing the set, meaning you see cards and they're like old friends
* They connect to the broader world of the game and make you want to learn more about the lore
* They transcend the game and are good stories in their own right with poignant moments

This is an 80s horror set. The stories are not as gruesome as I feared they might be when I saw the Mira Grant pseudonym on them, but they are bleak and dark, and if you think about the implications of the stories, they get even darker. They are really well done. I wish there was more to read about this House that ate the world and the people in it. One thing the stories accomplished extremely well was giving me a sense of a world. The stories are enough to glimpse different aspects of the world and what happens there, but I wanted a lot more - which is the right way to feel about a game tie in.

My review includes both the six main stories and the side stories, and part of what I admire is how interconnected these are and how they each deepen the other. The final side story is a "choose your own adventure" style. The author also has "DVD extras" for each story on her blog, which I enjoyed reading.

This is overall as high quality as a game tie in gets - genuinely good stories with a lot of room for your imagination to inhabit the world as you play the game. This got me very excited about Magic The Gathering and I'm planning to read more of the lore.

[Peter Lowry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very creepy & grim, even for Magic!

[Derp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't particularly enthralled by the main story. McGuire was given a tricky assignment, being asked to write a horror story where she's not allowed to kill any of the named characters (plus she was asked to include too many characters), but the fateshifter tokens were a really silly way to solve that problem.
The side stories, however, ruled. My favorite was "Keep Them Alive".

[Matt Terpstra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Monster house if none of the characters were interesting