Feast of the Pale Leviathan

by John Chrostek

A man falls asleep on a river raft tube and drifts out to sea, where he is found and devoured by a titan of unbelievable size. But rather than death, what Owen finds inside is a community of fellow survivors carving out a life amidst the flotsam and flesh of the impossible Leviathan.

There seems to be no hope of escape until another devoured soul arrives, kickstarting a chain of events that reveals to the survivors that their damnable fates are tied to a mysterious cult that lives in deathless splendor in the ivory halls of New Atlantis.

For readers who enjoy cosmic horror, nautical adventure, and all who feel trapped in the belly of the beast, Feast of the Pale Leviathan may be your next beloved literary journey.

Genres: Horror

298 pages, Paperback

Published August 26, 2025

Reviews

[Chris Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brimming with heart, adventure, and imagination, Feast of the Pale Leviathan is the best cosmic horror epic I've read in quite some time. John Chrostek clearly put so much thought and love into the world-building here, while always keeping a careful eye on the characters and relationships fleshing out his strange, violent, incomprehensible universe. I never once knew, page-by-page, where it was all heading, making it one of the most enjoyable reads of 2025 for me. Great, great stuff.

[David Brehmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Louis Stevenson by way of Lovecraft and John Carpenter. John Chrostek has spun a riveting and thoughtful adventure by skillfully balancing a host of contradictions. The acrobatic prose is richly detailed but never needlessly verbose. The plotting is economical but never sparse or vague. The universe is surreal but never arbitrary. The characters are undoubtedly exaggerated but deeply and genuinely human. The story is apocalyptically grand and wildly far-fetched but also immediately and obviously relevant. Chrostek's ability to keep it all spinning is frequently breathtaking, meting out details and backstory at exactly the right pace and always allowing the reader to still do a bit of work in connecting the ingeniously placed dots. A fascinating and addictive page-turner that begins with the main character swallowed by a colossal, elemental god/beast and ends up as powerful and honest rumination on societal dynamics, elite hierarchies, generational trauma, and greed. A biblically-scaled parable that takes time to explain the deathless civilization inside the Leviathan have a chore rotation and the recruiters for the shadowy globe-spanning cabal also have to fiddle with the HDMI cable without ever seeming like a digression or slackening the novel's momentum. I felt mildly dissatisfied with the ending only because I wanted to spend more time in its vividly realized world. An exciting and enlightening ride.

[Seán · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great setup that goes even further than expected - lots of great ideas in here, possibly too many to give enough time to in this relatively short novel. Things sometimes move too quickly, but there is a lot to be said for keeping the plot as tight as it is, considering all that is going on. An excellent first book that delivers on the setup.

[Harry Barrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Sheldon Birnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly wild ride!

[Danny Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of blurbing Feast and here's what I had to say--

"Feast of the Pale Leviathan begins as Jonah and the Whale by way of the weird and explodes
into something even greater–cosmic, biblical in scale and nature. A sensory delight that feels as
human as it does hallucinatory. Chrostek offers the strange in spades, among humor and
mystery and so much life. Feast is a thrilling and welcome new addition to the dark fantasy
pantheon."

This book is wild and fun and weird as hell. There's nothing out there like it. It's a book that hits a particular style of strangeness that works really well for me. Highly recommend

[Ivy Grimes · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a crazy ride this is! I hate to give too much away, because I went into it not knowing what would happen, and all the surprises kept me flipping the pages quickly. Lots of historical and philosophical references here, though it is foremost a fantastical action-adventure tale, with very strange settings (like splashing around in the stomach acid of a beast) and lively bits of mythology. The story also examines class warfare and family drama resulting from social striving in unique and fascinating ways. There's a real beating heart at the center of it. Lovely, strong prose, too.

[Austin Shirey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is WILD! Feast of the Pale Leviathan feels like a lost classic from the height of the New Weird era. It's an incredibly surreal, beautifully written, and wholly original novel that reads like the fever dream of a poet left adrift on a darkening sea. It's one of those books that is like nothing else I've read.