The Scalding Rooms

by Conrad Williams, Graham Joyce (Introduction)

Some nights you can hear screams rising up from The Eyes, the abattoir on New Cut Lane. Those screams belong to the animals queuing up to be slaughtered there. Well, most of them do... The Eyes is a brutal place to work, let alone die. Many lives have been lost there over the years, sometimes due to faulty machinery, sometimes because of disease, and occasionally when the trapped animals turn on their executioners. But it remains the only employer for most of the people who live in and around the town of Red Meadows. The alternatives include alcohol, random violence and suicide. Some might say those were vastly more attractive. Junko Cane would disagree. Having clawed his way back from a grim life of gang warfare, he is happy with his job, despite the ogreish abattoir boss, Max Grappen. The work, though unpleasant and treacherous, puts food on the table for his wife and child. Life, such as it is, has its comforts. The shadowy past that Junko has tried to leave behind won't give him up so easily, though. When he stumbles across Max Grappen's key card Junko's curiosity gets the better of him and he uses it to access the hidden world of his employer. But he is not the only person investigating Grappen's past. The enigmatic Boa Cleethe, injury analyst, is also suspicious of the abattoir chief. And Junko's nemesis, crime lord Krave Wheaste, is breathing down his neck. What Junko and Boa discover together will not only put the wider population of Red Meadows into terrible danger, but will menace Junko's fragile family and expose the shocking, insane and murderous secrets of The Eyes.

Genres: Horror

102 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

In 2007 Conrad Williams won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel for The Unblemished. In 2008 he won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella, for The Scalding Rooms. In 2010 he won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel for One.

Reviews

[Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short novel isn't exactly horror, or dystopian science fiction, though it has aspects of both and is 100 percent dystopian. It's more a lyrical prose-poem, straight from the consciousness of a desperate, possibly psychotic man living in a world gone to hell. Many facets and implications became clear to me only after I finished the book and immediately started reading it again from the beginning. This novella takes place in the same world as Nearly People, the first book I read by Williams, and I'm equally impressed with both books.

[Matilda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sick and lovely, my favorite combination. Imagine the kind of bedtime story that your father would tell you if your father were a slightly deranged slaughterhouse worker who'd just come home from doing a triple shift on acid.

[Paris Chávez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sequel to Nearly People, this feel very british, and very Conrad Williams. Surreal, and strangely beautiful.

[Sara]

The bone garden also to this writer icant find it in gdreads.and itisnt like our short novel here.here is horror sci fic dark novela.can be lyric and dark poom.sureal and fear can come to me.