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Puppet's Banquet
Married couple Celia and Martin are brutally attacked on their drive through the Irish countryside. The attack leaves Celia with a violent schism in her mind, seemingly existing in two places at once: one the “real” world, the other a howling maelstrom of abstract monstrosity.
Of her husband, there is no trace…until weeks later, when Martin is discovered in a hospital for rare and abnormal diseases, his body spliced together with that of an unknown woman.
And they are very pregnant.
PUPPET’S BANQUET is a “diseased Gothic”; a hallucinatory treatise on medical abuse; the systemic disease of colonialism and patriarchy; and the limits of human perception.
Of her husband, there is no trace…until weeks later, when Martin is discovered in a hospital for rare and abnormal diseases, his body spliced together with that of an unknown woman.
And they are very pregnant.
PUPPET’S BANQUET is a “diseased Gothic”; a hallucinatory treatise on medical abuse; the systemic disease of colonialism and patriarchy; and the limits of human perception.
116 pages, Paperback
First published May 14, 2025
1 person is currently reading
225 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
March 30, 2025
Puppet's Banquet is a body horror novella, written by Valkyrie Loughcrewe, and published by Tenebrous Press. An incredible piece about body autonomy which delves and embraces the absolute weirdness to deliver an experience of a novella, playing with the reader and the perception of the story.
A novella where we have a small skeleton of a plot which is used to dive into madness and gruesome scenes: a married couple on a drive that are attacked, setting in motion the catastrophic events for both of them. Martin's body is torn apart and reassembled, putting in the mix parts of a woman's body, becoming pregnant; and Celia's mind is broken into two, one of them tenuously attached to the reality while the other is lost in chaos and madness in a different dimension. Both of our couple eventually get into a hospital for rare conditions, starting a weirder arc that engulfs the reader.
Puppet's Banquet doesn't hold the reader's hand, challenging them to keep their mind fully into the madness; unapologetically gory, shocking the reader through gruesome images, and making it a delight if you are for hard horror. Despite being a relatively short novella, there's so much contained in this little book.
With Puppet's Banquet we have another excellent example of what Tenebrous Press offers to the reader, challenging books that are absolutely outstanding, usually on the weird side. If you are a fan of extreme horror, impossible images and a great allegory on autonomy, give this book a try.
A novella where we have a small skeleton of a plot which is used to dive into madness and gruesome scenes: a married couple on a drive that are attacked, setting in motion the catastrophic events for both of them. Martin's body is torn apart and reassembled, putting in the mix parts of a woman's body, becoming pregnant; and Celia's mind is broken into two, one of them tenuously attached to the reality while the other is lost in chaos and madness in a different dimension. Both of our couple eventually get into a hospital for rare conditions, starting a weirder arc that engulfs the reader.
Puppet's Banquet doesn't hold the reader's hand, challenging them to keep their mind fully into the madness; unapologetically gory, shocking the reader through gruesome images, and making it a delight if you are for hard horror. Despite being a relatively short novella, there's so much contained in this little book.
With Puppet's Banquet we have another excellent example of what Tenebrous Press offers to the reader, challenging books that are absolutely outstanding, usually on the weird side. If you are a fan of extreme horror, impossible images and a great allegory on autonomy, give this book a try.
June 1, 2025
This was bad frickin ass! Felt like something a young Laird Barron might have done. Highly recommend.
Read
February 19, 2025*Thank you for Tenebrous for sending me a digital ARC of this one!*
DNFing at 55%
Unfortunately this one just didn't work for me.
The opening was fantastic and I liked the initial accident and discovery of the husband. I also enjoyed when we got the first transcription inclusion from the doctor. But ultimately, this one veered too far away from the set up into weirdness/bizarro that I just couldn't jive with.
DNFing at 55%
Unfortunately this one just didn't work for me.
The opening was fantastic and I liked the initial accident and discovery of the husband. I also enjoyed when we got the first transcription inclusion from the doctor. But ultimately, this one veered too far away from the set up into weirdness/bizarro that I just couldn't jive with.
March 8, 2025
I was provided with a digital review copy of this title by The Publisher. All views and and opinions are my own.
-
Author Valkyrie Loughcrewe seems to enjoy playing with the reader, the same way a Cat might play with a small Rodent before going in for the kill. This isn't a statement to be taken lightly. After reading last years Decrepit Ritual Loughcrewe proved to me that they were very capable of writing vivid, layered tales that give the reader the sensation as if they are falling through a long night layered with expansive phantasmagoria. So yes, I was, shall we say, acclimated to a point in regards to what to expect from the author's abilities....But like the cat caging in the mouse with their paws, Val had yet to reveal everything...
If last years books had been akin to a 2000 piece jig-saw puzzle, Puppet's Banquet is a large scale 3 dimensional model made, from an array of slightly moist, perhaps pulsing Lego bricks. Pieces scattered Loughcrewe seems to have left the reader with a small portion already completed. Hours pass, pieces are put together and a scene reveals itself. Yet, just as we seems to have a grasp on what we are constructing, Valkyrie turns the mass of meaty bricks, setting what we had been viewing askew, revealing odd corners, and parts that are buzzing and oozing troubling substances. So the reader is forced to rush to add more pieces, even as the author continues to tip and turn, spin and flip this disturbing fleshy model. What started out as a detailed model of the Irish countryside, once the last piece is placed, is transformed in to something far grander, the scale of it all leaves us, the reader in shock.
Jarring shifts from the viewpoints of Celia and Martin, remove any grounding in reality, leaving the reader to question our senses at every page turn. All of this delivered with with imagery befitting Phil Tippet's film Mad God and the short films of the late Fred Stuhr. As you enter the world of Puppet's Banquet and suspend your disbelief, I challenge you to go one step further. As you begin to read, let go of any assumption of control, and allow your assumptions about reality to become malleable.
-
Author Valkyrie Loughcrewe seems to enjoy playing with the reader, the same way a Cat might play with a small Rodent before going in for the kill. This isn't a statement to be taken lightly. After reading last years Decrepit Ritual Loughcrewe proved to me that they were very capable of writing vivid, layered tales that give the reader the sensation as if they are falling through a long night layered with expansive phantasmagoria. So yes, I was, shall we say, acclimated to a point in regards to what to expect from the author's abilities....But like the cat caging in the mouse with their paws, Val had yet to reveal everything...
If last years books had been akin to a 2000 piece jig-saw puzzle, Puppet's Banquet is a large scale 3 dimensional model made, from an array of slightly moist, perhaps pulsing Lego bricks. Pieces scattered Loughcrewe seems to have left the reader with a small portion already completed. Hours pass, pieces are put together and a scene reveals itself. Yet, just as we seems to have a grasp on what we are constructing, Valkyrie turns the mass of meaty bricks, setting what we had been viewing askew, revealing odd corners, and parts that are buzzing and oozing troubling substances. So the reader is forced to rush to add more pieces, even as the author continues to tip and turn, spin and flip this disturbing fleshy model. What started out as a detailed model of the Irish countryside, once the last piece is placed, is transformed in to something far grander, the scale of it all leaves us, the reader in shock.
Jarring shifts from the viewpoints of Celia and Martin, remove any grounding in reality, leaving the reader to question our senses at every page turn. All of this delivered with with imagery befitting Phil Tippet's film Mad God and the short films of the late Fred Stuhr. As you enter the world of Puppet's Banquet and suspend your disbelief, I challenge you to go one step further. As you begin to read, let go of any assumption of control, and allow your assumptions about reality to become malleable.
February 21, 2025
Special thanks to Tenebrous Press for the ARC copy they provided.
It’s very rare for me to say, “I don’t like this book,” when said book is published by Tenebrous Press. But I will have to admit in this instance, I don’t like this book; yet I am giving Puppet’s Banquet a five star rating, nonetheless.
If you are still reading at this point, I’m sure you’re wondering, “What the heck?” (And probably with a stronger word than “heck” in there.) But let us be very sincere and frank here: it is very possible for a book to be good and not be something a particular reader likes.
Puppet’s Banquet IS good, I just don’t like it. It isn’t to my personal taste. And you know what? Who cares! My personal preference has no bearing on the work.
And the work is good. I haven’t read anything quite so disturbing or viscerally viscous in a long time. Puppet’s Banquet is a fever dream of the sort you don’t want to have. It gets under your skin like a splinter and festers there, spreading a twisted anxiety of a… disarranged kind. Given my current mindset and mental health, it just was not something I felt comfortable reading.
And that is okay! I’m in a place of seeking comfort and release in my reading time. Others may not be, and this book may be for them, or you. If you are looking for a wild, disconcerting ride this is definitely it. Come have a look, if you dare.
It’s very rare for me to say, “I don’t like this book,” when said book is published by Tenebrous Press. But I will have to admit in this instance, I don’t like this book; yet I am giving Puppet’s Banquet a five star rating, nonetheless.
If you are still reading at this point, I’m sure you’re wondering, “What the heck?” (And probably with a stronger word than “heck” in there.) But let us be very sincere and frank here: it is very possible for a book to be good and not be something a particular reader likes.
Puppet’s Banquet IS good, I just don’t like it. It isn’t to my personal taste. And you know what? Who cares! My personal preference has no bearing on the work.
And the work is good. I haven’t read anything quite so disturbing or viscerally viscous in a long time. Puppet’s Banquet is a fever dream of the sort you don’t want to have. It gets under your skin like a splinter and festers there, spreading a twisted anxiety of a… disarranged kind. Given my current mindset and mental health, it just was not something I felt comfortable reading.
And that is okay! I’m in a place of seeking comfort and release in my reading time. Others may not be, and this book may be for them, or you. If you are looking for a wild, disconcerting ride this is definitely it. Come have a look, if you dare.
June 18, 2025
This novella is so weird and I was very intrigued while reading it. It is about a married couple, Celia and Martin, and the attack on them while they are driving home. Celia ends up with a schism in her mind, and Martin's body is taken apart and then spliced with a woman's body and then impregnated. Themes in this novella include autonomy, abuse of power, and disability. This is my second time reading something by Valkyrie Loughcrewe and I am excited to read more.
March 2, 2025
Puppet’s Banquet is a howling, discordant mind-fuck of a novella. Valkyrie Loughcrewe is a rare talent, and this is writing as raw as flayed skin, as ornately decadent as a bad acid trip you can’t escape from, as repulsive as a dumpster filled with spoiled meat roasting in the sun.
I mean all of those descriptives as good things.
The bare bones of the plot—a married couple on a drive through the countryside are attacked, setting into motion a series of catastrophic events for both of them—doesn’t begin to describe the insanity contained within this slim volume. Martin’s body is torn apart and monstrously reassembled, spliced together with the body of a woman, and he is now pregnant. Celia’s mind is shattered in two, with one version of herself tenuously hanging on to the real world, and the other lost in a vortex of madness, chaos, and despair.
The two of them reunite in what seems to be a hospital for rare and unusual maladies. That’s when things get really weird.
This is the first work I’ve read by Loughcrewe, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I sometimes found myself snort laughing at their audacity, at their willingness to go places few authors would dare to follow. Puppet’s Banquet is gory, disgusting, overflowing with shocking imagery that will fry your eyeballs, and absolutely essential reading if you prefer your horror on the extreme side. Tenebrous Press, the publisher, has a real knack for putting out work that challenges the reader, and rewards them for accepting that challenge.
Shout out to the cover artist, Donna A. Black, and the interior illustrator, Trevor Henderson. They both do an excellent job of capturing the dark and twisted feel of the book.
Look for Puppet’s Banquet in May from Tenebrous Press. As long as you have a taste for the morbidly extreme, you won’t be disappointed.
I mean all of those descriptives as good things.
The bare bones of the plot—a married couple on a drive through the countryside are attacked, setting into motion a series of catastrophic events for both of them—doesn’t begin to describe the insanity contained within this slim volume. Martin’s body is torn apart and monstrously reassembled, spliced together with the body of a woman, and he is now pregnant. Celia’s mind is shattered in two, with one version of herself tenuously hanging on to the real world, and the other lost in a vortex of madness, chaos, and despair.
The two of them reunite in what seems to be a hospital for rare and unusual maladies. That’s when things get really weird.
This is the first work I’ve read by Loughcrewe, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I sometimes found myself snort laughing at their audacity, at their willingness to go places few authors would dare to follow. Puppet’s Banquet is gory, disgusting, overflowing with shocking imagery that will fry your eyeballs, and absolutely essential reading if you prefer your horror on the extreme side. Tenebrous Press, the publisher, has a real knack for putting out work that challenges the reader, and rewards them for accepting that challenge.
Shout out to the cover artist, Donna A. Black, and the interior illustrator, Trevor Henderson. They both do an excellent job of capturing the dark and twisted feel of the book.
Look for Puppet’s Banquet in May from Tenebrous Press. As long as you have a taste for the morbidly extreme, you won’t be disappointed.
June 17, 2025
Imagine if Eraserhead, Dead Ringers, and The Wicker Man had a grotesque ménage à trois and birthed a squirming, unholy novel about itself. That’s still not quite Puppet’s Banquet by Valkyrie Loughcrewe, but it’s damn close. This book is a feverish, trans-corporeal nightmare. A glitching Irish gothic descent so unhinged, so layered in existential dread and meaty horror, that I half-expected my copy to grow teeth and demand a blood sacrifice. This isn’t horror as metaphor. This is horror as an invasive species, burrowing into your veins, rewriting your DNA, and laughing while you scream. You don’t read this book. It fucking rewrites you.
Valkyrie Loughcrewe isn’t just some rando with a pen and a vendetta against sanity. She’s a literary alchemist who’s been brewing nightmares for years. Hailing from the misty bogs of Ireland, Loughcrewe’s work is steeped in the primal muck of Celtic mythology, Catholic guilt, and the kind of existential despair that only comes from staring too long into the Irish Sea. Her previous novel-in-verse, Crom Cruach, was a feral pagan howl, a text that felt like it was scratched into existence with peat, blood, and snakebone. It was raw, unapologetic, and so steeped in Ireland’s ancient spiritual rot that it practically smelled of damp earth.
But Puppet’s Banquet is Loughcrewe leveling up into something even more deranged. Where Crom Cruach was content to haunt your soul, this book wants your kidneys, your reproductive system, and your entire sense of self as a coherent entity. It’s no surprise she pulled this off. Loughcrewe’s background is a kaleidoscope of weird: a former performance artist who once staged a “ritual dismemberment” of a mannequin in a Dublin gallery, a folklore scholar who’s published essays on the intersection of Irish mythology and body horror, and a self-professed “lapsed Catholic” whose work drips with the trauma of institutional religion. She’s also got a knack for collaborating with other freaks—here, she’s teamed up with Daniel Rooney, whose original story forms the warped spine of this novella, and Tenebrous Press, a publisher that’s basically the literary equivalent of a haunted carnival. Together, they’ve created a book that’s pure horror ecstasy, a work so unsettling I was nervous to turn the page—not out of fear of what happens, but fear of what it means.
The story kicks off with Martin and Celia Campbell, a financially strapped Irish couple driving home from a family party that probably involved too much whiskey and passive-aggressive jabs about money. It’s all very relatable, until they hit a pale, ghostly woman with their SUV on a fog-choked road. From this mundane tragedy, shit spirals into a world of medical nightmares, reproductive terror, and ecological collapse faster than you can say “what the actual fuck.”
Martin gets snatched by Dr. Whitehead, a feral pseudo-scientist who makes Cronenberg’s mad doctors look like pediatricians. Whitehead turns Martin into a pregnant patchwork abomination—think Frankenstein meets Rosemary’s Baby, but with more oozing fluids. Meanwhile, Celia’s left to pick up the pieces, grappling with grief, guilt, and a reality that’s fracturing like a shattered mirror. Her psyche splinters, her body mutates, and she’s slowly absorbed into the same unknowable, organismal horror that devoured her husband. The birth at the center of this story? It’s not salvation. It’s assimilation. And it’s fucking terrifying.
You think you’ve got this figured out? You don’t. This plot that eats you.
If there’s a beating heart to Puppet’s Banquet, it’s the violation of bodily autonomy as a stand-in for every kind of decay—sociopolitical, ecological, personal. Loughcrewe dissects horror like a surgeon with a grudge. Pregnancy here isn’t sacred or miraculous. It’s fungal, capitalistic, a weaponized glitch in the human operating system. It’s a metaphor for how systems—family, medicine, religion, capitalism—invade and rewrite us until we’re no longer ourselves.
Celia’s descent is the book’s emotional core, and it’s full of tragic complexity. What starts as mental disintegration becomes metaphysical unmooring. Her name erased, her body hijacked, her agency stolen by institutions that claim to “help” but really just rebrand horror as salvation. There’s a gut-punch line where she describes the institute as a place that doesn’t cure horror, it commodifies it, like a startup trying to monetize the Antichrist. It’s bleak, it’s brilliant, and it hits like a fucking brick to the face.
The book’s also lousy with subtext: medical colonialism, Catholic trauma, the alienation of late-stage capitalism, and the ecological entrapment of flesh in the Anthropocene. But Loughcrewe doesn’t spoon-feed you these themes. They fester, rot, and pulse like the malformed fetus in Martin’s womb: unspeakable, unmanageable, and so alive it hurts.
Let’s not fuck around: Loughcrewe’s prose is a goddamn revelation. It slaps you, spits in your face, then apologizes with a kiss so tender it leaves you with lockjaw. She juggles theatrical second-person monologues, post-human stream-of-consciousness, and realistic dialogue that feels more surreal than the hallucinations. The structure is fractured but deliberate, with scenes introduced as “Slides” like some clinical presentation gone horribly wrong. The narrator? It’s not human. It’s a post-organic witness, gleefully dragging you into the collapse of meaning itself.
Tonal shifts are where Loughcrewe flexes hardest. One minute, you’re in gritty marital drama. The next, you’re in a Giger-esque birthing chamber that smells of rust and regret. Then, boom! You’re on an island that feels like Midsommar reimagined by the SCP Foundation. Somehow, it all coheres. This isn’t literary chaos; it’s designed psychological disintegration, and it’s executed with the precision of a serial killer.
Strengths
- Originality: You won’t read another book like this. It’s Antichrist meets The Fly meets Mother!, filtered through Irish post-Catholicism and biopunk eco-horror. It’s like someone weaponized “body horror” and dropped it on a sleepy Dublin suburb.
- Prose: Sharp, poetic, dense, and unrelenting. Not since Caitlín R. Kiernan have I read sentences so tuned to psychic rupture.
- Symbolic Density: This is a book of ideas, screamed into your spinal cord through imagery that never quits. Fetuses, fungi, bureaucratic gaslighting, memory distortion… it’s a delirious stew.
- Horror Impact: Several scenes left me physically uncomfortable, not from gore, but from existential fears so wrong you want to claw your eyes out. The “baby room” scene? Sweet Jesus, I need therapy.
- Thematic Ambition: This is about despair, powerlessness, and the meaty trap of being human in a collapsing world.
Critiques
- Narrative Coherence: Sometimes, the book pushes its fractured structure too far. The hallucination/reality boundaries blur so much that narrative stakes can feel like they’re drowning in weird soup.
- Pacing: Mid-book, some institutional chapters drag like a hungover Sunday. Loughcrewe’s clearly in love with the island’s aesthetic horror, but it can feel like we’re wading through dread without moving forward.
- Character Depth: Celia’s a tragic powerhouse, but Martin turns into more symbol than person in the second half. It’s arguably intentional, but it still stings given his early depth.
Puppet’s Banquet isn’t for everyone. Hell, it’s barely for anyone. This is weaponized weird horror—ambitious, sickening, beautiful, and completely uninterested in holding your hand. If you like your horror sharp, philosophically rabid, and delivered through the flesh-mangled lens of a fever dream, this might be your new liturgical text. If you prefer tidy arcs and characters you’d grab a pint with? Run. Run fast. And maybe say a prayer while you’re at it.
TL;DR: Puppet’s Banquet is a post-human, body-horror descent into reproductive madness and institutional gaslighting. It’s Rosemary’s Baby rewritten by Thomas Ligotti on psilocybin, staring into the Irish Sea. You won’t feel “good” when you finish, but you’ll feel changed.
Recommended for: People who thought Possession was too chill. Readers who want their horror to smell like hospital disinfectant, milk rot, and burnt skin.
Not recommended for: Book club moms looking for the next Verity. Anyone who says “I like horror, but not too weird.”
Valkyrie Loughcrewe isn’t just some rando with a pen and a vendetta against sanity. She’s a literary alchemist who’s been brewing nightmares for years. Hailing from the misty bogs of Ireland, Loughcrewe’s work is steeped in the primal muck of Celtic mythology, Catholic guilt, and the kind of existential despair that only comes from staring too long into the Irish Sea. Her previous novel-in-verse, Crom Cruach, was a feral pagan howl, a text that felt like it was scratched into existence with peat, blood, and snakebone. It was raw, unapologetic, and so steeped in Ireland’s ancient spiritual rot that it practically smelled of damp earth.
But Puppet’s Banquet is Loughcrewe leveling up into something even more deranged. Where Crom Cruach was content to haunt your soul, this book wants your kidneys, your reproductive system, and your entire sense of self as a coherent entity. It’s no surprise she pulled this off. Loughcrewe’s background is a kaleidoscope of weird: a former performance artist who once staged a “ritual dismemberment” of a mannequin in a Dublin gallery, a folklore scholar who’s published essays on the intersection of Irish mythology and body horror, and a self-professed “lapsed Catholic” whose work drips with the trauma of institutional religion. She’s also got a knack for collaborating with other freaks—here, she’s teamed up with Daniel Rooney, whose original story forms the warped spine of this novella, and Tenebrous Press, a publisher that’s basically the literary equivalent of a haunted carnival. Together, they’ve created a book that’s pure horror ecstasy, a work so unsettling I was nervous to turn the page—not out of fear of what happens, but fear of what it means.
The story kicks off with Martin and Celia Campbell, a financially strapped Irish couple driving home from a family party that probably involved too much whiskey and passive-aggressive jabs about money. It’s all very relatable, until they hit a pale, ghostly woman with their SUV on a fog-choked road. From this mundane tragedy, shit spirals into a world of medical nightmares, reproductive terror, and ecological collapse faster than you can say “what the actual fuck.”
Martin gets snatched by Dr. Whitehead, a feral pseudo-scientist who makes Cronenberg’s mad doctors look like pediatricians. Whitehead turns Martin into a pregnant patchwork abomination—think Frankenstein meets Rosemary’s Baby, but with more oozing fluids. Meanwhile, Celia’s left to pick up the pieces, grappling with grief, guilt, and a reality that’s fracturing like a shattered mirror. Her psyche splinters, her body mutates, and she’s slowly absorbed into the same unknowable, organismal horror that devoured her husband. The birth at the center of this story? It’s not salvation. It’s assimilation. And it’s fucking terrifying.
You think you’ve got this figured out? You don’t. This plot that eats you.
If there’s a beating heart to Puppet’s Banquet, it’s the violation of bodily autonomy as a stand-in for every kind of decay—sociopolitical, ecological, personal. Loughcrewe dissects horror like a surgeon with a grudge. Pregnancy here isn’t sacred or miraculous. It’s fungal, capitalistic, a weaponized glitch in the human operating system. It’s a metaphor for how systems—family, medicine, religion, capitalism—invade and rewrite us until we’re no longer ourselves.
Celia’s descent is the book’s emotional core, and it’s full of tragic complexity. What starts as mental disintegration becomes metaphysical unmooring. Her name erased, her body hijacked, her agency stolen by institutions that claim to “help” but really just rebrand horror as salvation. There’s a gut-punch line where she describes the institute as a place that doesn’t cure horror, it commodifies it, like a startup trying to monetize the Antichrist. It’s bleak, it’s brilliant, and it hits like a fucking brick to the face.
The book’s also lousy with subtext: medical colonialism, Catholic trauma, the alienation of late-stage capitalism, and the ecological entrapment of flesh in the Anthropocene. But Loughcrewe doesn’t spoon-feed you these themes. They fester, rot, and pulse like the malformed fetus in Martin’s womb: unspeakable, unmanageable, and so alive it hurts.
Let’s not fuck around: Loughcrewe’s prose is a goddamn revelation. It slaps you, spits in your face, then apologizes with a kiss so tender it leaves you with lockjaw. She juggles theatrical second-person monologues, post-human stream-of-consciousness, and realistic dialogue that feels more surreal than the hallucinations. The structure is fractured but deliberate, with scenes introduced as “Slides” like some clinical presentation gone horribly wrong. The narrator? It’s not human. It’s a post-organic witness, gleefully dragging you into the collapse of meaning itself.
Tonal shifts are where Loughcrewe flexes hardest. One minute, you’re in gritty marital drama. The next, you’re in a Giger-esque birthing chamber that smells of rust and regret. Then, boom! You’re on an island that feels like Midsommar reimagined by the SCP Foundation. Somehow, it all coheres. This isn’t literary chaos; it’s designed psychological disintegration, and it’s executed with the precision of a serial killer.
Strengths
- Originality: You won’t read another book like this. It’s Antichrist meets The Fly meets Mother!, filtered through Irish post-Catholicism and biopunk eco-horror. It’s like someone weaponized “body horror” and dropped it on a sleepy Dublin suburb.
- Prose: Sharp, poetic, dense, and unrelenting. Not since Caitlín R. Kiernan have I read sentences so tuned to psychic rupture.
- Symbolic Density: This is a book of ideas, screamed into your spinal cord through imagery that never quits. Fetuses, fungi, bureaucratic gaslighting, memory distortion… it’s a delirious stew.
- Horror Impact: Several scenes left me physically uncomfortable, not from gore, but from existential fears so wrong you want to claw your eyes out. The “baby room” scene? Sweet Jesus, I need therapy.
- Thematic Ambition: This is about despair, powerlessness, and the meaty trap of being human in a collapsing world.
Critiques
- Narrative Coherence: Sometimes, the book pushes its fractured structure too far. The hallucination/reality boundaries blur so much that narrative stakes can feel like they’re drowning in weird soup.
- Pacing: Mid-book, some institutional chapters drag like a hungover Sunday. Loughcrewe’s clearly in love with the island’s aesthetic horror, but it can feel like we’re wading through dread without moving forward.
- Character Depth: Celia’s a tragic powerhouse, but Martin turns into more symbol than person in the second half. It’s arguably intentional, but it still stings given his early depth.
Puppet’s Banquet isn’t for everyone. Hell, it’s barely for anyone. This is weaponized weird horror—ambitious, sickening, beautiful, and completely uninterested in holding your hand. If you like your horror sharp, philosophically rabid, and delivered through the flesh-mangled lens of a fever dream, this might be your new liturgical text. If you prefer tidy arcs and characters you’d grab a pint with? Run. Run fast. And maybe say a prayer while you’re at it.
TL;DR: Puppet’s Banquet is a post-human, body-horror descent into reproductive madness and institutional gaslighting. It’s Rosemary’s Baby rewritten by Thomas Ligotti on psilocybin, staring into the Irish Sea. You won’t feel “good” when you finish, but you’ll feel changed.
Recommended for: People who thought Possession was too chill. Readers who want their horror to smell like hospital disinfectant, milk rot, and burnt skin.
Not recommended for: Book club moms looking for the next Verity. Anyone who says “I like horror, but not too weird.”
June 8, 2025
Disclaimer: I received an e-arc of this book by the publisher Tenebrous Press.
In this Weird body horror novella, an abduction leaves a couple separated and, by the time they reunite, irreparably changed. The man has undergone medical experimentation, his body spliced together with that of an unknown woman, and he is pregnant with something he can not understand. The woman’s mind has split in two, existing partially in reality and partially in abstract terror. They have both been taken to the same hospital for rare conditions, but the treatment might make everything worse and soon things spiral into weirder and weirder places.
This novella explores bodily autonomy, body horror and medical trauma, wraps it into gore and surrealism and garnishes it with a lot of extreme horror imagery. While this book wasn’t easy to read, taking the reader on a wild ride with twists and turns and sometimes very strange scene changes, I enjoyed it a lot. The author’s writing style really shines when it comes to body horror and gore and the dissociative weirdness of trauma and I enjoyed following the dissection of the main characters’ minds and experiences. I really enjoyed the way the scene and POV changes worked in tandem to leave me guessing what is real and what is a hallucination.
Once again Tenebrous Press published another win for Weird horror with a capital W. While this story might not be for people who want a clear straightforward story or easy fleshed-out answers to everything, if you allow yourself to be taken captive by the story and follow with the twisting plot you will be rewarded by a world grander and more terrifying than you can imagine. I adored it!
TW: animal abuse, body horror, car accident, child abuse, colonialism, death, dissociation, eye trauma, forced birth, forced impregnation, gender/body dysphoria, gore, hallucinations, kidnapping, medical abuse, medical experimentation, murder, mutilation, pregnancy horror/trauma, restraints, implied sexual violence, suicide, torture, unreality, violence, suggested violence towards an infant
In this Weird body horror novella, an abduction leaves a couple separated and, by the time they reunite, irreparably changed. The man has undergone medical experimentation, his body spliced together with that of an unknown woman, and he is pregnant with something he can not understand. The woman’s mind has split in two, existing partially in reality and partially in abstract terror. They have both been taken to the same hospital for rare conditions, but the treatment might make everything worse and soon things spiral into weirder and weirder places.
This novella explores bodily autonomy, body horror and medical trauma, wraps it into gore and surrealism and garnishes it with a lot of extreme horror imagery. While this book wasn’t easy to read, taking the reader on a wild ride with twists and turns and sometimes very strange scene changes, I enjoyed it a lot. The author’s writing style really shines when it comes to body horror and gore and the dissociative weirdness of trauma and I enjoyed following the dissection of the main characters’ minds and experiences. I really enjoyed the way the scene and POV changes worked in tandem to leave me guessing what is real and what is a hallucination.
Once again Tenebrous Press published another win for Weird horror with a capital W. While this story might not be for people who want a clear straightforward story or easy fleshed-out answers to everything, if you allow yourself to be taken captive by the story and follow with the twisting plot you will be rewarded by a world grander and more terrifying than you can imagine. I adored it!
TW: animal abuse, body horror, car accident, child abuse, colonialism, death, dissociation, eye trauma, forced birth, forced impregnation, gender/body dysphoria, gore, hallucinations, kidnapping, medical abuse, medical experimentation, murder, mutilation, pregnancy horror/trauma, restraints, implied sexual violence, suicide, torture, unreality, violence, suggested violence towards an infant
July 30, 2025
Sometimes I end up admiring a book more than enjoying it, as is the case for this body horror novella. This is not the book to pick up casually if you prefer even semi-conventional plotting or comforting familiarity. Ostensibly the story of Celia and Martin, a presumably ordinary couple whose life descends into extraordinary terror and chaos after a car accident, this singular plot device is used as a jumping off point for increasingly frenzied hospital scenes of, yes, body horror that is not for the easily disturbed reader.
The greater purpose of this work seems to be an exploration of human perception and the nature of reality. The disjointed narrative seeks perhaps to put the reader into the same bewildered and disturbed state of mind as its characters. Whether that appeals to you or you find this an effective narrative style will, I think, vary wildly by readers' personal tastes. For me, while I typically enjoy experimental writing, I found it repetitive here, and I never connected enough with the main characters on even a surface level to feel invested in their fates. Martin and Celia remain ciphers throughout—puppets, in fact, of events wildly outside of their control, so again, maybe part of the point of the book, but it left me feeling alienated and indifferent.
There is no doubt that this is the product of a talented and original writer that I think will appeal most to those looking for a reading experience far off the beaten path and can appreciate the descent into madness and disorder that serves as a metaphor for as many themes as the reader cares to assign to this work of imagination. I must also mention the outstanding interior art by Trevor Henderson, which adds greatly to the haunted feel of the story. In every way, not your run of the mill reading experience if that's what you're looking for.
The greater purpose of this work seems to be an exploration of human perception and the nature of reality. The disjointed narrative seeks perhaps to put the reader into the same bewildered and disturbed state of mind as its characters. Whether that appeals to you or you find this an effective narrative style will, I think, vary wildly by readers' personal tastes. For me, while I typically enjoy experimental writing, I found it repetitive here, and I never connected enough with the main characters on even a surface level to feel invested in their fates. Martin and Celia remain ciphers throughout—puppets, in fact, of events wildly outside of their control, so again, maybe part of the point of the book, but it left me feeling alienated and indifferent.
There is no doubt that this is the product of a talented and original writer that I think will appeal most to those looking for a reading experience far off the beaten path and can appreciate the descent into madness and disorder that serves as a metaphor for as many themes as the reader cares to assign to this work of imagination. I must also mention the outstanding interior art by Trevor Henderson, which adds greatly to the haunted feel of the story. In every way, not your run of the mill reading experience if that's what you're looking for.
February 5, 2025
To say this book is weird would be understating the meaning of that word. And I mean that in the best possible way, of course. Weird is my jam and this story proudly displays it with a capital W.
This is a novella of medical horror mixed with some truly horrifying psychological terror. A married couple are attacked after accidentally hitting someone with their car. What happens next almost defies description. The husband turns up months later. He's been taken apart, stitched back together with a woman's body parts, his organs replaced, and he's pregnant with... something.
The wife lives half in this world and half in a nightmarish void, never knowing which, if either, are real. Both of them find themselves is a creepy hospital on an Irish island and this fever dream of a novella turns into horrific nightmare fuel. The author's writing style lends itself to put extremely disturbing images in your head as you read and it makes for a dreadful unsettling experience.
Pushing aside traditional narratives and fully embracing the bizarre and surreal, I highly recommend this book.
I received an ARC of this book through the publisher. This review is voluntary and is my own personal opinion.
This is a novella of medical horror mixed with some truly horrifying psychological terror. A married couple are attacked after accidentally hitting someone with their car. What happens next almost defies description. The husband turns up months later. He's been taken apart, stitched back together with a woman's body parts, his organs replaced, and he's pregnant with... something.
The wife lives half in this world and half in a nightmarish void, never knowing which, if either, are real. Both of them find themselves is a creepy hospital on an Irish island and this fever dream of a novella turns into horrific nightmare fuel. The author's writing style lends itself to put extremely disturbing images in your head as you read and it makes for a dreadful unsettling experience.
Pushing aside traditional narratives and fully embracing the bizarre and surreal, I highly recommend this book.
I received an ARC of this book through the publisher. This review is voluntary and is my own personal opinion.
March 31, 2025
Martin and Celia were brutally and violently attacked on the Irish countryside, leaving Celia seemingly living in two places at once inside her mind - the ‘real’ world and an unfathomable nightmare. Martin’s condition is unknown for weeks until he is discovered in a hospital for rare and abnormal diseases, his body spliced together with an unknown woman… and they’re pregnant. Told through a mostly Celia’s and Martin’s points of view, we are taken on a journey that feels like a complete fever dream through a journey of extreme medical abuse and the treatment of human beings like lab rats, but can we tell what is real and what isn’t?
In just over 100 pages, Valkyrie Loughcrewe was able to fit a level of disturbing insanity that you would find in a fully fledged novel, and I’m beyond impressed with this little novella. It was visceral, gory, and totally mind bending. Sometimes hard to follow, but that was kind of the point and I lived for it. Also, the illustrations by @trevorhenderson were incredible and really helped bring this nightmare to life.
Thank you so much to Tenebrous Press and Valkyrie Loughcrewe for this advanced copy! If you like horror, psychological horror, and/or body horror - grab a copy of Puppet’s Banquet this May!
In just over 100 pages, Valkyrie Loughcrewe was able to fit a level of disturbing insanity that you would find in a fully fledged novel, and I’m beyond impressed with this little novella. It was visceral, gory, and totally mind bending. Sometimes hard to follow, but that was kind of the point and I lived for it. Also, the illustrations by @trevorhenderson were incredible and really helped bring this nightmare to life.
Thank you so much to Tenebrous Press and Valkyrie Loughcrewe for this advanced copy! If you like horror, psychological horror, and/or body horror - grab a copy of Puppet’s Banquet this May!
December 22, 2025
2.5 stars
Reading Puppet's Banquet took more mental gymnastics than I was prepared for. In the end, I was left with a lot more questions and confusion than I generally like with the books I read.
That being said, I really enjoyed the layout of the book with the transcripts of recordings, intermittent commentary from someone not revealed until the end, and actual story. Parts did get a little confusing though trying to sort out what was happening and who was doing what.
I don't think I was the right audience for this. While definitely full of gore and horror, enough to make your hair curl in fright, I struggled to figure out what the book was telling me. There were places where I was extremely lost, and I'm still not sure that I fully understand everything that was going on.
Honestly, I think this would make a better video game to give me the visuals and extra context I couldn't get from just reading the story.
Reading Puppet's Banquet took more mental gymnastics than I was prepared for. In the end, I was left with a lot more questions and confusion than I generally like with the books I read.
That being said, I really enjoyed the layout of the book with the transcripts of recordings, intermittent commentary from someone not revealed until the end, and actual story. Parts did get a little confusing though trying to sort out what was happening and who was doing what.
I don't think I was the right audience for this. While definitely full of gore and horror, enough to make your hair curl in fright, I struggled to figure out what the book was telling me. There were places where I was extremely lost, and I'm still not sure that I fully understand everything that was going on.
Honestly, I think this would make a better video game to give me the visuals and extra context I couldn't get from just reading the story.
July 11, 2025
Puppet’s Banquet is a dark, gothic fantasy that’s as strange as it is imaginative. Loughcrewe’s world-building is genuinely impressive, full of eerie atmosphere and unsettling imagery - think crumbling manors, twisted puppetry and a constant sense of unease. The plot follows a cast of eccentric characters caught up in a mysterious, almost nightmarish feast, and there’s a real sense of originality throughout.
That said, the story can be a bit hard to follow at times, with prose that leans heavily into the lyrical and abstract. Some readers might find it a bit too much, especially if you prefer a more straightforward narrative. Still, if you enjoy books that are a bit off the beaten track and don’t mind getting lost in a surreal, haunting setting, Puppet’s Banquet is worth a look. Not for everyone, but definitely memorable.
That said, the story can be a bit hard to follow at times, with prose that leans heavily into the lyrical and abstract. Some readers might find it a bit too much, especially if you prefer a more straightforward narrative. Still, if you enjoy books that are a bit off the beaten track and don’t mind getting lost in a surreal, haunting setting, Puppet’s Banquet is worth a look. Not for everyone, but definitely memorable.
April 5, 2025
From its opening pages, Puppet's Banquet sucked me in with its weirdness. The less said about the plot the better. Opening this book is like finding a twisted, mangled mass of rotting flesh on the side of the road... some people might walk by it, but for those who spend the time prodding and poking at this twisted corpse, they'll find a work of true art. Every turn of the page is another staircase that leads deeper into a world of bizarrity and madness.
Like any true work of art, it's not going to be for everyone. If you need everything explained for you, you're not looking for art, you're looking for mainstream pap. Puppet's Banquet is a unique and horrifying vision told with through a thousand masterstrokes of artistry.
I would read more from this artist in the future.
Like any true work of art, it's not going to be for everyone. If you need everything explained for you, you're not looking for art, you're looking for mainstream pap. Puppet's Banquet is a unique and horrifying vision told with through a thousand masterstrokes of artistry.
I would read more from this artist in the future.
August 14, 2025
We like to use the term "fever dream" to describe horror and surrealism these days. And why not? It's an evocative term -- I've done it several times myself.
But there is no book released in the past five years that better encapsulates "fever dream" than Puppet's Banquet. Partially because a significant chunk of it *is a literal fever dream*.
Loughcrewe has created a cyclone of body horror and medical-grade fear with nods to Frankenstein, Akira, and Irish folklore. For 100 pages it overheats your brain and then explodes in a truly grotesque climax.
It was just wonderful.
But there is no book released in the past five years that better encapsulates "fever dream" than Puppet's Banquet. Partially because a significant chunk of it *is a literal fever dream*.
Loughcrewe has created a cyclone of body horror and medical-grade fear with nods to Frankenstein, Akira, and Irish folklore. For 100 pages it overheats your brain and then explodes in a truly grotesque climax.
It was just wonderful.
June 4, 2025
While visceral and very descriptive, enough to invoke some strong images in my head, I ultimately wasn't sure what the point of it was or if there was an underlying message, a warning, anything aside from body horror for the sake of it. And that's fine. Maybe I went in expecting more and I'm not the right audience. I'm not sure. I liked it overall, just kinda came away from it wondering what I missed.
February 11, 2025
Adored every page. Loughcrewe is one of my favourite authors everything they write goes so hard
February 14, 2025
weird and horrifying. great for fans of weird horror. not great for people who would like to know what the hell is happening (me).
Many thanks to Tenebrous Press for the ARC!
Many thanks to Tenebrous Press for the ARC!
March 22, 2025
Maybe I just didn't get it.
June 4, 2025
Nasty, nasty, nasty. A little confusing towards the end, maybe, but so creative and audaciously atrocious I don't care. This isn't even horror it's just how doctors actually are.
November 6, 2025
Spooktober read! This is some actual creepy shit. Not for the faint hearted. :)
November 28, 2025
deeply upsetting at points, and at all points completely disorienting. I think that effect lost me for certain stretches, but I am definitely checking out this author’s other works.
January 4, 2026
A great messed up body horror filled book with haunting illustrations and a creepy great collage cover. Nightmare Fuel indeed!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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