A scorned lover delves beneath the earth one final time. A war criminal waiting out his old age in an apartment. Three corporate citizens become lost in the woods and they are so terribly hungry.
Enjoy BP Gregory's latest horror, sci fi and urban fantasy stories gathered together as part of Vu Ja De.
BP Gregory has been an archaeology student and a dilettante of biology, psychology, and apocalypse prepping. She is the author of five novels including the recently released Flora & Jim, about a father who’ll do anything to keep his daughter alive in a frozen wasteland.
BP Gregory lives in Melbourne with her husband and is currently working on The Newru Trail, a murder-mystery set in a world where houses eat your memories. For stories, reviews and recommendations as she ploughs through her to-read pile visit bpgregory.com.
Claustrophobic spaces, parallel worlds, zombies and other horrors fill this fun collection by B.P. Gregory. My review is here ---> https://wp.me/p5t5Tf-1WP
I really enjoyed this collection. BP Gregory's sheer delight at entertaining and creeping readers out quickly manifests in a group of stories that fuses horror, sci-fi, and humor in a unique way that is always unsettling and entirely engaging for that reason. Gregory’s unique voice provides the reader a false sense of security that the author is only too happy to kick out from under you when it’s time to be scared. The end result is you’re never ready for what’s coming! Outstanding in this collection is Gregory’s hard-boiled, sci-fi tale PARALLEL that refreshes contemporary and classic genre tropes while continuously delivering unique narrative payoffs. It’s impossible to predict where the mystery takes you, so it is a pleasure to read again and again. PARALLEL has “franchise” written all over it, so I sure hope Gregory writes more from that universe.
If you’ve read some of BP Gregory’s stuff before, you’ll know that her style is a little different. It’s at once surreal, comedic and terrifying. My advice is not to reject it on reading the first few pages just because it takes you a little time to get your bearings. Chew those sentences over in your mind, absorb the flavour and allow yourself to be disturbed. I liken the reading experience to my appreciation of olives. For many years I didn’t like them because the initial texture and bitter flavour didn’t give me immediate gratification, but once I took the time to chew the succulent flesh and savour the subtle mix of tastes, I knew I’d discovered a food I would appreciate for the rest of my life. This author has a way of introducing the most visceral and stomach-turning details of human existence and shoving them in your face. Not just shoving them, but mashing them in with the ball of her fist until the sludge and gristle enter your mouth and eyeballs. Then she stands back and delivers a quip or off-the-wall metaphor that makes you laugh at what she’s just done. With this in mind, I’ll give a quick resume of the stories in this short collection and try not to give away too many spoilers.
Babes down boreholes
A party of young people led by some kind of guru voluntarily submit themselves to the underground blackness of an off-the-map system of tunnels and caves. Oh, and the MC obviously had a crush or even a full-on relationship with said guru - but will it do her any good in this subterranean crypt?
Abstract
A man discovers that the person living above him is a highly sought after war criminal, and he is the one to deal with him. Or will he?
Parallel
Alternative realities where individuals can be plucked from one parallel universe to the next given access to the right funds and resources. Could be quite useful if you want a crime victim to recount what happened to them at the scene of a murder given that they happened to survive it in the parallel universe. A story with the potential for sequels.
White Picket Gentle zombies? What’s worse, being mauled to death by the horde or having your heart torn apart by their plight?
Our Lady of the Trampled Beast
I found some similarities of the setting with Adam Nevill’s The Ritual. A party of corporate office workers get lost in a woodland wilderness. Here the similarity with Nevill ends, as the horror results, not from some external entity, but the infection (or is it possession) of the party’s individuals by an aspect of the forest itself.
If you want your horror and story development handed to you on a plate, then this volume isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you like characters and ideas that worm away at your psyche long afterwards, then pick up this collection. It is a cauldron of arcane witchery where bits of Lovecraft, Phillip K. Dick and Frankie Boyle have been thrown in to produce a broth you’ll love, but will sit in your stomach malevolently.