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They Were Here Before Us: A Novella in Pieces
From the author of the viral sensation Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke comes They Were Here Before Us, a novella written in pieces, designed to be consumed as a single, cohesive work. The only thing more brutal than nature is love.
"They Were Here Before Us warps reality in a way that allows us to see the horrific, grotesque beauty." -- Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club .
"Eric LaRocca's They Were Here Before Us is a disquieting piece of work. Readers will live with this one for a while." -- Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase
"Eric LaRocca's voice--so evocative, so original, so urgent--is one for the ages." -- Andy Davidson, author of The Hollow Kind
"LaRocca is selling his small press titles in larger press numbers, and this might be his best and most accessible work yet." Library Journal starred review
"They Were Here Before Us warps reality in a way that allows us to see the horrific, grotesque beauty." -- Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club .
"Eric LaRocca's They Were Here Before Us is a disquieting piece of work. Readers will live with this one for a while." -- Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase
"Eric LaRocca's voice--so evocative, so original, so urgent--is one for the ages." -- Andy Davidson, author of The Hollow Kind
"LaRocca is selling his small press titles in larger press numbers, and this might be his best and most accessible work yet." Library Journal starred review
102 pages, Paperback
First published October 25, 2022
178 people are currently reading
6824 people want to read
About the author
Eric LaRocca
54 books3,446 followersEric LaRocca (he/they) is a 3x Bram Stoker Award® finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award nominee, and a 2x Splatterpunk Award winner. He was named by Esquire as one of the “Writers Shaping Horror’s Next Golden Age” and praised by Locus as “one of the strongest and most unique voices in contemporary horror fiction.” LaRocca’s notable works include Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Everything the Darkness Eats, and At Dark, I Become Loathsome. He currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts, with his partner.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 804 reviews
November 5, 2022
As beautiful inside as it is on the outside!
Eric LaRocca's latest novella THEY WERE HERE BEFORE US: A NOVELLA IN PIECES is one hell of a read. Each piece, (short story), is unique and creative. More importantly, it's how the author makes the reader feel. That's what stands out the most, for me.
I consider myself a seasoned reader of horror. I've been reading it...well, we'll just say the last 40 years or so. I've seen some great authors come and go during that time, but I like to think I know what's good when I read it. This. Is. GOOD.
Eric LaRocca's writing, his willingness to push the envelope, his fearlessness when getting these ideas down, is nearly unmatched. I hope that I live a long life, so I get to see what Eric does next. Mark my words, he is an author to watch!
My highest recommendation!
*I bought this novella with my hard earned cash, and Eric graciously signed it for me. Thanks, Eric!*
Eric LaRocca's latest novella THEY WERE HERE BEFORE US: A NOVELLA IN PIECES is one hell of a read. Each piece, (short story), is unique and creative. More importantly, it's how the author makes the reader feel. That's what stands out the most, for me.
I consider myself a seasoned reader of horror. I've been reading it...well, we'll just say the last 40 years or so. I've seen some great authors come and go during that time, but I like to think I know what's good when I read it. This. Is. GOOD.
Eric LaRocca's writing, his willingness to push the envelope, his fearlessness when getting these ideas down, is nearly unmatched. I hope that I live a long life, so I get to see what Eric does next. Mark my words, he is an author to watch!
My highest recommendation!
*I bought this novella with my hard earned cash, and Eric graciously signed it for me. Thanks, Eric!*
September 20, 2023
Eric LaRocca has come out of his cocoon at last.
All the previous novels I've read by LaRocca were like a pupa stage, but in this novel he has emerged. Fully imago as this wonderful, terrible mothman. Vast unblinking eyes reflecting your headlights back at you as you go down a lonesome road in the middle of the night. Big fluffy wings that look like they're very good at hugging but also hiding dark secrets and horrible claws. His voice, a cacophony of terrible screams that tell you about a future calamity in Italy where a sinkhole will unleash a giant undead elephant that eats babies.
Go Mothman LaRocca! Splatter the roofs of quiet neighbourhoods with the guts of your enemies! Fly to your destiny ....and to the world's end.
So yes, I liked this book.
Actually I loved this book. I adored it. I laughed, I cried, I cheered, I gagged. A fun Saturday night, I must say.
This novel is so quick but so disgusting that it enthralled me and stayed with me after I read it. Walking for miles with me, staring at me just out of my peripheral vision. Hoping I would let it eat a squirrel.
They Were Here Before Us has a head full of bad spiders and it is utterly, truly, free. Not the price. No you pay for it. And you keep paying after you finish it. Maybe forever. But free in its design.
It's airy. Easy. It's light. Less like a novel and more like a release.
Certain stories just feel like they slipped out into the world almost completely untranslated from the idea that birthed them. Most books are a labour of transformation. You can see how difficult it was for the author. Every sentence constructed with care. Like the ideas needed to be brought into our world in some kind of elaborate decompression suit, otherwise the sheer weight of reality would crush their fragile forms.
But some books feel like the author opened a window and a frothing, ugly, alien bat just came waltzing in. Took off his jacket and hat like Grandpa Simpson and started dancing while singing "Hello my Baby, Hello my Honey, Hello my Rag-Time Gal!" This book is like that bat crawling in the window. Singing his rabid secrets. Foam drooling from his jaws. Head tilted and neck broken.
What a wonderful gift to give to readers.
They Were Here Before Us invites you to breathe that free air of lunacy. Don't just touch that grass. Taste it. Roll in it. Lawnmower man or The Great God Pan? Only Wendy knows for sure.
Normal rebellions oppose the authority of man. Great rebellions oppose the authority of reality.
Eric LaRocca has delivered a great rebellion.
A call to the fierce love of nature and against the tyranny of sanity, logic and rationality.
In the eyes of nature that which is called sanity perverts providence. That which is called logic and rationality devastate the spirit of humanity. All laws and rules are inherently unjust, unbalanced. Our real cage is civility. And we are the ones holding the door closed. Imprisoned by our fears. Our desires. Our pride. Our expectations. It's such a perfect trap.
And madness sets us free.
Y'understand? Sometimes things gotta fall apart to work properly. You gotta chop down the biggest tree to let the garden grow. Destroying order is sometimes the only way to bring nature in balance.
In this book Eric LaRocca writes about the hidden chaos of nature. A chorus of divine anthropomorphism. Where bugs that eat our corpses love us in death as we have never been loved in life, where forbidden monkey lust goes twisted and wrong, where meerkats murder children and nature takes revenge on sadistic killers and WHAT THE HELL IS THAT BALLOON?!!
It's a wonderful collection of brain-worms that burrow deep into your unconscious and hug tight in your thickest, chewiest flesh. Nestled in with the smell of grandma and your accordion lessons.
Eric LaRocca understands that nature is both wonderful and the most cruel, terrifying thing in the universe. It horrifies us, because it can be so beautiful, so free and so monstrous. And yet it feels like home. It's more familiar than our own lives.
Every single defining human trait is a part of nature and comes from nature. Our love, our sense of wonder and hope and our tears and our never-ending blood-lust and quest for the destruction of all who would oppress us. That's not just human. That comes from billions of years of the hunt. It predates us. It transcends us. And through it we transcend. When we are all gone, those ancient emotions, those drives that define us will carry on. In other flesh, in other forms. Until the sun burns out. Maybe even longer.
Eric LaRocca sees us in everything, from the birds to the bugs to the wild animals, because everything has elements of humanity. The birdies, the puppies, the kittens, and the fungal infections that eat the face of children.
It's all us.
Our ancestors, our kin. And we are all it.
We are the sweet, cuddly, snuggle-buns, so fuzzy and cute. Gathered together in front of the fire for warmth and community to protect against the night. And we are also the monsters endlessly circling those fires. Our eyes like the moon reflected on a lake. Shimmering white pools. Our hunger eternal, our teeth forever searching for a throat.
It's no wonder we're so afraid of the dark and the wild. We know what's out there. And it is ourselves.
This novella is Eric LaRocca at his most free. His most fluid. His most wild. It is full werewolf. He abandons structure and sanity and embraces something feral. Something wicked. Something fun. Something more coherent than coherence. Something that was ancient when the sharks were young.
Nature understands the value of breaking things to create new designs, new opportunities. Nature appreciates the inherent worth of desolation and decomposition. And so does writing. So does storytelling. So does art. And so does Eric LaRocca.
Every LaRocca novel bends the laws, breaks the rules, and people get quite upset about it. How he takes his freedom from the prison of our polite society and revels in a little chaos.
I appreciate it and encourage him to go further.
Some people grow up facing oppression their whole lives and they either idolise their cage or start to see the value in severing chains. Not just the big, ugly, obvious chains. But all the little ones. Where society dictates what is worthy of being discussed and what is not. How the taboos that seemingly protect us from being offended are often just the status quo creating excuses to squash conversations that threaten its order.
That disgusting people and dismaying the righteous and rending the arbitrary laws of morality in art is not just fun. But an inherent good. A noble act. A great kindness. And an ancient tradition.
For if the status quo has hurt so many, so badly, how can offending it be wrong?
And so every celebration against the status quo, every forbidden song, every dance for death and heartbreak and butchery is like a crack in their great dam. A harbinger for a flood.
A cleanse.
And as the prison of civility crumbles, the moon eyes wait for our fires to go out. And feral teeth hunger for supple flesh in the dark.
A return to nature and to the wild things that were here before us. 9/10
All the previous novels I've read by LaRocca were like a pupa stage, but in this novel he has emerged. Fully imago as this wonderful, terrible mothman. Vast unblinking eyes reflecting your headlights back at you as you go down a lonesome road in the middle of the night. Big fluffy wings that look like they're very good at hugging but also hiding dark secrets and horrible claws. His voice, a cacophony of terrible screams that tell you about a future calamity in Italy where a sinkhole will unleash a giant undead elephant that eats babies.
Go Mothman LaRocca! Splatter the roofs of quiet neighbourhoods with the guts of your enemies! Fly to your destiny ....and to the world's end.
So yes, I liked this book.
Actually I loved this book. I adored it. I laughed, I cried, I cheered, I gagged. A fun Saturday night, I must say.
This novel is so quick but so disgusting that it enthralled me and stayed with me after I read it. Walking for miles with me, staring at me just out of my peripheral vision. Hoping I would let it eat a squirrel.
They Were Here Before Us has a head full of bad spiders and it is utterly, truly, free. Not the price. No you pay for it. And you keep paying after you finish it. Maybe forever. But free in its design.
It's airy. Easy. It's light. Less like a novel and more like a release.
Certain stories just feel like they slipped out into the world almost completely untranslated from the idea that birthed them. Most books are a labour of transformation. You can see how difficult it was for the author. Every sentence constructed with care. Like the ideas needed to be brought into our world in some kind of elaborate decompression suit, otherwise the sheer weight of reality would crush their fragile forms.
But some books feel like the author opened a window and a frothing, ugly, alien bat just came waltzing in. Took off his jacket and hat like Grandpa Simpson and started dancing while singing "Hello my Baby, Hello my Honey, Hello my Rag-Time Gal!" This book is like that bat crawling in the window. Singing his rabid secrets. Foam drooling from his jaws. Head tilted and neck broken.
What a wonderful gift to give to readers.
They Were Here Before Us invites you to breathe that free air of lunacy. Don't just touch that grass. Taste it. Roll in it. Lawnmower man or The Great God Pan? Only Wendy knows for sure.
Normal rebellions oppose the authority of man. Great rebellions oppose the authority of reality.
Eric LaRocca has delivered a great rebellion.
A call to the fierce love of nature and against the tyranny of sanity, logic and rationality.
In the eyes of nature that which is called sanity perverts providence. That which is called logic and rationality devastate the spirit of humanity. All laws and rules are inherently unjust, unbalanced. Our real cage is civility. And we are the ones holding the door closed. Imprisoned by our fears. Our desires. Our pride. Our expectations. It's such a perfect trap.
And madness sets us free.
Y'understand? Sometimes things gotta fall apart to work properly. You gotta chop down the biggest tree to let the garden grow. Destroying order is sometimes the only way to bring nature in balance.
In this book Eric LaRocca writes about the hidden chaos of nature. A chorus of divine anthropomorphism. Where bugs that eat our corpses love us in death as we have never been loved in life, where forbidden monkey lust goes twisted and wrong, where meerkats murder children and nature takes revenge on sadistic killers and WHAT THE HELL IS THAT BALLOON?!!
It's a wonderful collection of brain-worms that burrow deep into your unconscious and hug tight in your thickest, chewiest flesh. Nestled in with the smell of grandma and your accordion lessons.
Eric LaRocca understands that nature is both wonderful and the most cruel, terrifying thing in the universe. It horrifies us, because it can be so beautiful, so free and so monstrous. And yet it feels like home. It's more familiar than our own lives.
Every single defining human trait is a part of nature and comes from nature. Our love, our sense of wonder and hope and our tears and our never-ending blood-lust and quest for the destruction of all who would oppress us. That's not just human. That comes from billions of years of the hunt. It predates us. It transcends us. And through it we transcend. When we are all gone, those ancient emotions, those drives that define us will carry on. In other flesh, in other forms. Until the sun burns out. Maybe even longer.
Eric LaRocca sees us in everything, from the birds to the bugs to the wild animals, because everything has elements of humanity. The birdies, the puppies, the kittens, and the fungal infections that eat the face of children.
It's all us.
Our ancestors, our kin. And we are all it.
We are the sweet, cuddly, snuggle-buns, so fuzzy and cute. Gathered together in front of the fire for warmth and community to protect against the night. And we are also the monsters endlessly circling those fires. Our eyes like the moon reflected on a lake. Shimmering white pools. Our hunger eternal, our teeth forever searching for a throat.
It's no wonder we're so afraid of the dark and the wild. We know what's out there. And it is ourselves.
This novella is Eric LaRocca at his most free. His most fluid. His most wild. It is full werewolf. He abandons structure and sanity and embraces something feral. Something wicked. Something fun. Something more coherent than coherence. Something that was ancient when the sharks were young.
Nature understands the value of breaking things to create new designs, new opportunities. Nature appreciates the inherent worth of desolation and decomposition. And so does writing. So does storytelling. So does art. And so does Eric LaRocca.
Every LaRocca novel bends the laws, breaks the rules, and people get quite upset about it. How he takes his freedom from the prison of our polite society and revels in a little chaos.
I appreciate it and encourage him to go further.
Some people grow up facing oppression their whole lives and they either idolise their cage or start to see the value in severing chains. Not just the big, ugly, obvious chains. But all the little ones. Where society dictates what is worthy of being discussed and what is not. How the taboos that seemingly protect us from being offended are often just the status quo creating excuses to squash conversations that threaten its order.
That disgusting people and dismaying the righteous and rending the arbitrary laws of morality in art is not just fun. But an inherent good. A noble act. A great kindness. And an ancient tradition.
For if the status quo has hurt so many, so badly, how can offending it be wrong?
And so every celebration against the status quo, every forbidden song, every dance for death and heartbreak and butchery is like a crack in their great dam. A harbinger for a flood.
A cleanse.
And as the prison of civility crumbles, the moon eyes wait for our fires to go out. And feral teeth hunger for supple flesh in the dark.
A return to nature and to the wild things that were here before us. 9/10
Read
May 21, 2023They Were Here Before Us: A Novella in Pieces/Eric LaRocca (Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, You've Lost A Lot of Blood)
Release Date: October 2022
General genre: Adult Horror/Hear me out, these are like modern Grimm Fairytales
Subgenre/Themes: body horror, gross-out, relationships, love, the cruelty/brutality of nature,
Writing Style: Lyrical, Experimental, Ambiguously Cautionary, Social Commentary, Imaginative/Fantastical/Whimsical/Grotesque
What you need to know: The description sets early reader expectations by suggesting how to read this book: "a novella written in pieces, designed to be consumed as a single, thematically cohesive work."
This suggestion prepared me to see the mechanics of a novella restructured in a creative way. I anticipated a cast of characters and a linear plotline broken apart but then puzzled back together. I don't think the idea of a novella in pieces was executed to meet this expectation. However the theme, "The only thing more brutal than nature is love." was present throughout the entire experience. If you have read Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias and enjoyed that mosaic style; connected vignettes, this book has a similar structure with no recurring characters, but a repeated theme.
My reading experience: I am an Eric LaRocca fan. My favorite works are The Strange Things We Become and Other Dark Tales (soon to be re-released from Titan as "The Trees Grew Because I Bled There") you can read that review here:
https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/...
And, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (also re-released from Titan)
https://litreactor.com/reviews/things...
I have a lot of favorite authors and I don't love everything they release. I'm not that kind of fangirl. Admittedly, I wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to a few favorites (King) but I know when to dust those glasses off to see clearly and confess when I don't love a book (I have a least 7 King books I don't recommend to people). All of this prefacing is to say that I feel fine saying there are LaRocca books I didn't enjoy so much. We Can Never Leave This Place was not a hit for me. This book is not a favorite either but it did offer me more than the previously mentioned work. There are 6 short stories:
All That Remains is Yours to Keep
Delicacies From a First Communion
A God Made of Straw
To Hurt the Weakest One
Bird and Bug are Happy
When It's Dark Out
Of these 6, I thought To Hurt the Weakest One was very strong. It played with the theme, "The only thing more brutal than nature is love." in a clever, thought-provoking way that stuck the landing. I did not care for the rest. The first three stories lacked the vulnerability I feel is necessary in order to ask readers to suspend disbelief or push beyond boundaries. I just didn't feel anything and I didn't feel invited to feel anything. I was a casual observer of some repulsive activities/behaviors without a requirement to invest in the story which means I can take it or leave it, so I left it.
The last two stories felt like the first three with the exception of Bird and Bug are Happy, that one just had some consistency issues that pulled me out of the narrative but I liked the vulnerability.
My final recommendation: I think Eric LaRocca fans who show up for everything will find something to love. I think Eric is long for this game and will continue to find success. I believe his talent will only grow sharper and develop clarity and insight that will gather new fans with every release. I'm excited about everything LaRocca has in store for his audience.
Comps: The upcoming release, The Trees Grew Because I Bled There, Grimm's Fairy Tales, especially the story of The Juniper Tree, and also the tale "Diamonds and Toads" or "The Fairy's Mistake". LaRocca's storytelling with the gruesome mixed with whimsical reminds me of modern dark fairy tales.
Release Date: October 2022
General genre: Adult Horror/Hear me out, these are like modern Grimm Fairytales
Subgenre/Themes: body horror, gross-out, relationships, love, the cruelty/brutality of nature,
Writing Style: Lyrical, Experimental, Ambiguously Cautionary, Social Commentary, Imaginative/Fantastical/Whimsical/Grotesque
What you need to know: The description sets early reader expectations by suggesting how to read this book: "a novella written in pieces, designed to be consumed as a single, thematically cohesive work."
This suggestion prepared me to see the mechanics of a novella restructured in a creative way. I anticipated a cast of characters and a linear plotline broken apart but then puzzled back together. I don't think the idea of a novella in pieces was executed to meet this expectation. However the theme, "The only thing more brutal than nature is love." was present throughout the entire experience. If you have read Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias and enjoyed that mosaic style; connected vignettes, this book has a similar structure with no recurring characters, but a repeated theme.
My reading experience: I am an Eric LaRocca fan. My favorite works are The Strange Things We Become and Other Dark Tales (soon to be re-released from Titan as "The Trees Grew Because I Bled There") you can read that review here:
https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/...
And, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (also re-released from Titan)
https://litreactor.com/reviews/things...
I have a lot of favorite authors and I don't love everything they release. I'm not that kind of fangirl. Admittedly, I wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to a few favorites (King) but I know when to dust those glasses off to see clearly and confess when I don't love a book (I have a least 7 King books I don't recommend to people). All of this prefacing is to say that I feel fine saying there are LaRocca books I didn't enjoy so much. We Can Never Leave This Place was not a hit for me. This book is not a favorite either but it did offer me more than the previously mentioned work. There are 6 short stories:
All That Remains is Yours to Keep
Delicacies From a First Communion
A God Made of Straw
To Hurt the Weakest One
Bird and Bug are Happy
When It's Dark Out
Of these 6, I thought To Hurt the Weakest One was very strong. It played with the theme, "The only thing more brutal than nature is love." in a clever, thought-provoking way that stuck the landing. I did not care for the rest. The first three stories lacked the vulnerability I feel is necessary in order to ask readers to suspend disbelief or push beyond boundaries. I just didn't feel anything and I didn't feel invited to feel anything. I was a casual observer of some repulsive activities/behaviors without a requirement to invest in the story which means I can take it or leave it, so I left it.
The last two stories felt like the first three with the exception of Bird and Bug are Happy, that one just had some consistency issues that pulled me out of the narrative but I liked the vulnerability.
My final recommendation: I think Eric LaRocca fans who show up for everything will find something to love. I think Eric is long for this game and will continue to find success. I believe his talent will only grow sharper and develop clarity and insight that will gather new fans with every release. I'm excited about everything LaRocca has in store for his audience.
Comps: The upcoming release, The Trees Grew Because I Bled There, Grimm's Fairy Tales, especially the story of The Juniper Tree, and also the tale "Diamonds and Toads" or "The Fairy's Mistake". LaRocca's storytelling with the gruesome mixed with whimsical reminds me of modern dark fairy tales.
April 18, 2023
Macabre with ideas and thoughts that I've never ventured to before. There is an word of warning given in the forward basically saying, “prepare yourself”. Good advice I realized later, but can you possibly not turn the page to see? LaRocca doesn't waste much time before before displaying a beetle stricken with love for...a corpse. I wasn't going to say it, but I said it. That's hardly the most extreme of it. Strangely, I had slight feelings for the bug, for awhile.
The first four stories are quite short, just four to ten pages each. With each of these, a line marking the macabre is seen, whether it be the gross or the taboo, then crossed over. I liked the story named “A God Made of Straw” best. Payback for those who do wrong is the why. The story was painful, but the pain maker gets his due, and I'm good with that. The final two stories are a little longer, and they were okay. To me, the first stories were more of analogy of man. Even if a insect is used to represent him, I realize man is always the monster.
3.5 stars
PS. This little paperback by Bad Hand Books is nicely illustrated. Black & white drawings are integrated among the words throughout. You don't often see that, and it makes a difference.
The first four stories are quite short, just four to ten pages each. With each of these, a line marking the macabre is seen, whether it be the gross or the taboo, then crossed over. I liked the story named “A God Made of Straw” best. Payback for those who do wrong is the why. The story was painful, but the pain maker gets his due, and I'm good with that. The final two stories are a little longer, and they were okay. To me, the first stories were more of analogy of man. Even if a insect is used to represent him, I realize man is always the monster.
3.5 stars
PS. This little paperback by Bad Hand Books is nicely illustrated. Black & white drawings are integrated among the words throughout. You don't often see that, and it makes a difference.
November 19, 2022
Perhaps "love" wasn't exactly the right word.
In fact, perhaps "love" was far too benign of a word given the intensity of my feelings for her.
Yet again, Eric LaRocca has delivered a piece of horror art that is equal parts disgusting and gorgeous, all wrapped up in a surreal, shocking package. This "novella in pieces" reads similarly to a collection of short stories with an overarching theme, each of them featuring how toxic love gone wrong can be.
We start off with a beetle in love with a corpse, and I knew immediately that They Were Here Before Us was going to offer the same unpredictable, wild ride that Eric's other works have—in the very best way, of course. I love Eric's writing and am forever singing their praises, so it's no surprise that I was totally enraptured with this new release and devoured it all in one quick go.
If you enjoy bizarre, beautiful, quietly (but, at times, extremely) violent horror unlike anything you've ever read before, you can't go wrong with Eric LaRocca's writing, and They Were Here Before Us is no exception. Much like many of my other favorite pieces of surreal horror media, this is the sort of story I plan to revisit time and time again, and I'm sure I'll find something new to love every single time.
✨ Representation: multiple queer characters
✨ Content warnings for:
———
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January 5, 2023
A quick, weird, messed up read. Animal POVs FTW
May 3, 2023
This is a novella that weaves together different stories that explore death, nature, and love from unusual angles, such as insects or birds.
'Her lips were our velvet cushions, luxurious pillows where we could sleep and dream until our next feeding. Her pried-open, ever-vigilant eyes—our relaxing sauna, far more preferable and far more tepid than any mountain spring.'
The author creates a strange and haunting mood with his different perspectives. The stories are brief but powerful, and they make the reader wonder about their role in the world. The writing is colourful and poetic, but also shocking and graphic at times. Unfortunately, I did not connect with this book very much. It seemed to me that the prose was lacking emotion or was too focused on the author's agenda to then resonate with me. This is not a book for the squeamish, but for those who like dark and unconventional fiction.
'The wind whispers all around me, as if it were the voice of an immortal deity—as if he were telling me that he would protect me and my children no matter what.'
This book was just shy of the mark for me but has convinced me to try more of Eric LaRocca's work.
'Her lips were our velvet cushions, luxurious pillows where we could sleep and dream until our next feeding. Her pried-open, ever-vigilant eyes—our relaxing sauna, far more preferable and far more tepid than any mountain spring.'
The author creates a strange and haunting mood with his different perspectives. The stories are brief but powerful, and they make the reader wonder about their role in the world. The writing is colourful and poetic, but also shocking and graphic at times. Unfortunately, I did not connect with this book very much. It seemed to me that the prose was lacking emotion or was too focused on the author's agenda to then resonate with me. This is not a book for the squeamish, but for those who like dark and unconventional fiction.
'The wind whispers all around me, as if it were the voice of an immortal deity—as if he were telling me that he would protect me and my children no matter what.'
This book was just shy of the mark for me but has convinced me to try more of Eric LaRocca's work.
November 3, 2022
"You’ve— lost a lot of blood, Marcus says.
Lost a lot of blood? The teenager shouts at him. My arm’s a f**king unraveled Christmas sweater."
Poe meets Barker in this novella in pieces that’ll make you puke until your eyes pop out of your skull.
You have never read horror like this before!
Eric takes us on a wild journey of beautiful grotesquery. You never really know where he'll take you with his tales of horror, all I know is that you'll be grossed out and love it all the same. Eric's brain is one that I would love to live in for a while.
Lost a lot of blood? The teenager shouts at him. My arm’s a f**king unraveled Christmas sweater."
Poe meets Barker in this novella in pieces that’ll make you puke until your eyes pop out of your skull.
You have never read horror like this before!
Eric takes us on a wild journey of beautiful grotesquery. You never really know where he'll take you with his tales of horror, all I know is that you'll be grossed out and love it all the same. Eric's brain is one that I would love to live in for a while.
March 15, 2024
What do people see in this author???
I understand LaRocca is queer, but how the fuck did anyone sign off on a story about a sexual relationship between a gay man and a chimpanzee, framed in a way that seems to say: "this is a good thing, actually"? It's so incredibly tone deaf that even if the author looked me in the eye and told me this story is actually a reclamation/subversion of the *gay men fuck monkeys* myth, I'd still be shaking my head, because the story doesn't do anything interesting or subversive with the idea.
I dunno, y'all. This whole thing was a mess from beginning to end. It's also so incredibly weird for me to notice, yet again (as I did in my review for Things Have Gotten Worse ...), that for very, very short works, the repetitive nature of using variations of the words "pit of the throat/stomach", and "clogged throat" is super noticeable, but maybe I was primed to see it because it jumped out at me last time.
This just needs another editing pass. Two of the stories switch between past and present tense for no discernable reason. It all just feels so amateurish to me. I'm baffled by the wild acclaim this author has garnered. Honestly, I think the consistently stunning cover art is playing a role.
Anyway. There's nothing here for me. I gave LaRocca a second chance, and it seems that I won't ever be picking up what they're putting down. Lesson learned.
I understand LaRocca is queer, but how the fuck did anyone sign off on a story about a sexual relationship between a gay man and a chimpanzee, framed in a way that seems to say: "this is a good thing, actually"? It's so incredibly tone deaf that even if the author looked me in the eye and told me this story is actually a reclamation/subversion of the *gay men fuck monkeys* myth, I'd still be shaking my head, because the story doesn't do anything interesting or subversive with the idea.
I dunno, y'all. This whole thing was a mess from beginning to end. It's also so incredibly weird for me to notice, yet again (as I did in my review for Things Have Gotten Worse ...), that for very, very short works, the repetitive nature of using variations of the words "pit of the throat/stomach", and "clogged throat" is super noticeable, but maybe I was primed to see it because it jumped out at me last time.
This just needs another editing pass. Two of the stories switch between past and present tense for no discernable reason. It all just feels so amateurish to me. I'm baffled by the wild acclaim this author has garnered. Honestly, I think the consistently stunning cover art is playing a role.
Anyway. There's nothing here for me. I gave LaRocca a second chance, and it seems that I won't ever be picking up what they're putting down. Lesson learned.
December 11, 2022
The story of the beetle that fell in love and the meerkat that had to make a huge decision about her child or the scarecrow and the bird, these were the stories that hit me the hardest. These six stories should be viewed as a whole. And there is a theme that goes through all of them. I might have even shed a tear.
Check trigger warnings before reading.
Check trigger warnings before reading.
January 9, 2023
As someone who reads the most disgusting, dark, and depraved extreme horror books like it’s a 9-5, I will admit that the reviews of this book had me excited. Unfortunately—despite having its moments—not much here really shocked me. The story with the monkey was probably the most boundary-pushing one; everything else didn’t really GO THERE. Still, LaRocca’s writing is beautiful, and the stories they tell are unique and bizarre in ways that constantly kept me on my feet, expecting the unexpected. This artsy type of horror isn’t really my thing, though, so I STRUGGLED to care about/get through some of these (I DNFed the one of the Bug and the Bird)… but there’s definitely an audience for this who I’m sure will love it, and deservedly so. I loved THGWSWLS, but I think my relationship with this author’s work ends here.
April 11, 2023
i shouldn't have listened to this at 7am right after waking up - i nearly threw up multiple times during that first story
also i can get behind many things but i draw the line at fucking your pet chimp
that being said i do very much enjoy LaRocca's type of horror and way of story telling and i think the short stories were really interesting though some captivated me more than others
3.5 stars
read as part of 202-Queer 🌈✨
april reading: 8/26
also i can get behind many things but i draw the line at fucking your pet chimp
that being said i do very much enjoy LaRocca's type of horror and way of story telling and i think the short stories were really interesting though some captivated me more than others
3.5 stars
read as part of 202-Queer 🌈✨
april reading: 8/26
March 24, 2023
Just getting a min to leave a review on this ! I literally had to process wth I just read. This was one of the most bizarre and disturbing 📖 I’ve come across to date. This is novella of 6 short stories that range from a beetle in love , a chimpanzee who lost his love to a parent trying to decide if their child’s life is worth saving. This book has me taken aback. If you have ever read LaRocca then you have a mild idea of what lies in these pages. And I say MILD!!! This was by far one of LaRocca’s most disturbingly beautiful tales to date. I have to say 🎩🎩🎩🎩🎩 off to you Sir! If you like bizarre, dark and get you in the feelers read this !
July 3, 2024
I dedicate this book to my mother, the affliction. This book is a true representation of our relationship.
April 9, 2023
I never have any idea what Eric is talking about!
The last story was my favorite of the pieces.
The last story was my favorite of the pieces.
January 15, 2023
God this was such a beautiful novella except the bug and bird story which just sort of sucked. Would be a 5 star read without it. The animal stories got the fuck under my skin.
December 6, 2025
The first few stories in this collection were sooo good, probably up there with some of my favourite works from Eric Larocca. Unfortunately two stories in particular let me down a bit, so I'm giving this a 4 star. All of these were disturbing, but a few were genuinely sad. I think I care more for animals than humans lol 😭
December 24, 2022
Adverbs galore!
Idk what love or nature has to do a dude fucking a chimp but whatever.
A bird prays to a scarecrow god and then a kid kills all her babies. But the scarecrow comes to life and pushes the kid and the kid dies and then the scarecrow pats the bird on the head. Ok.
A man and his blind son encounter a monster balloon or some shit idk. So the man kills a homophobic teenager in a toll booth and then has a snake eat his own eyes so the balloons won’t pop on him. There might be a big ass bird idk.
A colony of meerkats leaves behind a mother and her weak ass kid. So she eats him because weakness is for losers. But for some reason they come back. All of them come back to bring her to their new home. Doesn’t make any sense. Then they eat her. Probably idk.
The beetle one about loving the dead girl was pretty good ngl.
Bug and bird are lovers but bird has like amnesia or some shit and loves another woman and bug cuts her arm off because art is cool. Idk man. The beginning of this story was unnecessary or maybe I’m just stupid.
Regardless, fuck you Eric. I’ll still read Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke though.
Idk what love or nature has to do a dude fucking a chimp but whatever.
A bird prays to a scarecrow god and then a kid kills all her babies. But the scarecrow comes to life and pushes the kid and the kid dies and then the scarecrow pats the bird on the head. Ok.
A man and his blind son encounter a monster balloon or some shit idk. So the man kills a homophobic teenager in a toll booth and then has a snake eat his own eyes so the balloons won’t pop on him. There might be a big ass bird idk.
A colony of meerkats leaves behind a mother and her weak ass kid. So she eats him because weakness is for losers. But for some reason they come back. All of them come back to bring her to their new home. Doesn’t make any sense. Then they eat her. Probably idk.
The beetle one about loving the dead girl was pretty good ngl.
Bug and bird are lovers but bird has like amnesia or some shit and loves another woman and bug cuts her arm off because art is cool. Idk man. The beginning of this story was unnecessary or maybe I’m just stupid.
Regardless, fuck you Eric. I’ll still read Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke though.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 7, 2023
This felt like Aesop’s fables. Except the animals are less whimsical and instead portrayed in their true bloody, brutal nature. The minute I heard “meerkat,” I said WELP…this one’s going to be fucked up. (Don’t google who the most homicidal mammal is, you’ll never look at Timon the same.) This was a fun little novella, punchy and visceral at times but also agonizing on the feels. Very much a LaRocca, who somehow plays to my artsy-fartsy side with his beautifully-veiled, devastating prose every time. The way he can weave in a single sentence nuance that makes you think, the next second hitting you with a literal gut punch of violence is beyond me. I’ll keep eating it all up tho. Just like those BLOODTHIRSTY MEERKATS.
Read
December 23, 2022A nauseating and truly fucked collection of stories told from the perspectives of various animals (and insects).
Eric LaRocca is just one of those authors I can’t bring myself to give ratings to.
CW: Interspecies necrophilia, bestiality, animal cruelty, violence, murder, attempted murder, blood, gore, cannibalism, brief mention of self harm, references to infidelity, hospitalized loved ones, brief reference to domestic violence, brief use of homophobic slur
Eric LaRocca is just one of those authors I can’t bring myself to give ratings to.
CW: Interspecies necrophilia, bestiality, animal cruelty, violence, murder, attempted murder, blood, gore, cannibalism, brief mention of self harm, references to infidelity, hospitalized loved ones, brief reference to domestic violence, brief use of homophobic slur
November 17, 2022
Incredibly beautiful, sad, bizarre and unique. How LaRocca keeps outdoing himself is a mystery to me but I’m amazed by his talent. Just read this or any of his work for a reading experience you won’t soon forget.
October 26, 2022
Beautiful, unique, strange and amazing. 🖤
February 26, 2025
this started off super strong. i was really enjoying the writing and how nasty the initial stories, but i just got lost and confused in the later stories. i wanted to like it so much more, the gore scenes were so good! but it just fell apart for me
December 19, 2022
Weird, different, creepy, interesting, a bit disgusting, but overall, a great read!
August 13, 2022
This is one of the most unique story collections I've ever read. With the combination of LaRocca's poetic prose and the unique (mostly non-human) perspectives in the stories , this makes for a very interesting read. The stories spark a range of emotions, some quite heartbreaking, all of them a bit cosmic in nature. Fans of LaRocca's work will definitely enjoy this collection!
October 10, 2025
What the hell ❤️
August 23, 2022
I would like to thank Eric LaRocca for sending me an eARC of this novella in exchange for an honest review.
I've said it before, but it must be said again: Eric LaRocca IS the next generation of horror literature. They have such a way of weaving in elements from previous eras of the genre while also meticulously adding fresh takes that take the readers to the next level.
They Were Here Before Us: A Novella in Pieces was incredible from start to finish. I remember starting the first chapter and thinking: "Wow, THIS is what reading for pleasure is." I know that's hella weird to say, but it's true. I was in awe, not only of the story itself, but of the writing. I didn't want to finish the novella... I wanted more chapters because of how beautiful, haunting, and grotesque these stories were. It was apparent, from very early in the novella, that my rating would be 5/5 stars.
If I were to rank the chapters from favorite (INCREDIBLE) to least favorite (STILL INCREDIBLE, BUT JUST A LITTLE LESS SO), it would be as follows:
1) "Bird and Bug are Happy"
2) "Delicacies from a First Communion"
3) "A God Made of Straw"
4) "When It's Dark Out"
5) "To Hurt the Weakest One"
6) "All that Remains is Yours to Keep"
I appreciate how LaRocca links their stories within this collection; these are all stories that focus on love: parental love, romantic love, the loss of love, betrayal in love, obsessive love, etc. Each story focused on a different horror surrounding this theme in a way that I have never experienced before. There were stories in this collection that had me cringing from disgust as well as passages that had me stunned with disbelief.
Unfortunately, I can't go into much more detail without spoiling the plots of these stories, so I will leave you with this: Read this book at your earliest convenience. It will not be released until October 25th, 2022 (one day after my birthday #ScorpioSeason), but grab your copy as soon as it becomes available to you... you won't regret it!
I've said it before, but it must be said again: Eric LaRocca IS the next generation of horror literature. They have such a way of weaving in elements from previous eras of the genre while also meticulously adding fresh takes that take the readers to the next level.
They Were Here Before Us: A Novella in Pieces was incredible from start to finish. I remember starting the first chapter and thinking: "Wow, THIS is what reading for pleasure is." I know that's hella weird to say, but it's true. I was in awe, not only of the story itself, but of the writing. I didn't want to finish the novella... I wanted more chapters because of how beautiful, haunting, and grotesque these stories were. It was apparent, from very early in the novella, that my rating would be 5/5 stars.
If I were to rank the chapters from favorite (INCREDIBLE) to least favorite (STILL INCREDIBLE, BUT JUST A LITTLE LESS SO), it would be as follows:
1) "Bird and Bug are Happy"
2) "Delicacies from a First Communion"
3) "A God Made of Straw"
4) "When It's Dark Out"
5) "To Hurt the Weakest One"
6) "All that Remains is Yours to Keep"
I appreciate how LaRocca links their stories within this collection; these are all stories that focus on love: parental love, romantic love, the loss of love, betrayal in love, obsessive love, etc. Each story focused on a different horror surrounding this theme in a way that I have never experienced before. There were stories in this collection that had me cringing from disgust as well as passages that had me stunned with disbelief.
Unfortunately, I can't go into much more detail without spoiling the plots of these stories, so I will leave you with this: Read this book at your earliest convenience. It will not be released until October 25th, 2022 (one day after my birthday #ScorpioSeason), but grab your copy as soon as it becomes available to you... you won't regret it!
January 8, 2023
I've read three of his novellas now, and each time I think, "maybe I won't hate this one!" And each time I'm proven wrong. I want to like his work SO BADLY but I just can't stand it. The worst part is, a lot of his ideas are really really good!
The issue for me is this: his work feels like a high school kid who thinks they're the best writer in the world took to making something gross in the name of profoundness. It just feels like it tries so hard to be smart when in reality it's just a nasty book(no shame in that, splatterpunk is one of my fav genres!). It's not that I dislike the deeper meanings behind the book's stories, it's just that I feel it's hamfisted.
On top of that, his writing feels like it never touched the hand of an editor, I've caught quite a few times over the course of the three novellas where descriptive words were reused one line from another and other easily fixed things like that. It distracts one from reading and it's irritating as it is so so avoidable as a published writer.
The issue for me is this: his work feels like a high school kid who thinks they're the best writer in the world took to making something gross in the name of profoundness. It just feels like it tries so hard to be smart when in reality it's just a nasty book(no shame in that, splatterpunk is one of my fav genres!). It's not that I dislike the deeper meanings behind the book's stories, it's just that I feel it's hamfisted.
On top of that, his writing feels like it never touched the hand of an editor, I've caught quite a few times over the course of the three novellas where descriptive words were reused one line from another and other easily fixed things like that. It distracts one from reading and it's irritating as it is so so avoidable as a published writer.
September 26, 2024
First Eric LaRocca I've read, and also the first from Bad Hand Books, and this will definitely be up there in my top 5 best reads of the year.
A collection of very disquieting stories, penned as a 'novella in pieces' of 'nature and love', intended to be considered as a 'thematically unified whole', and represented as 'art-as-torture'. It's very grim, very beautiful, very dark and nostalgic and unnerving, and overwhelmingly powerful.
Interspecies necrophilia, disembowlment, dismemberment, hate, loss, love, marginalisation, sexuality, gender and everything else combine in these stories to emotionally annihilate you. Strange tales of animals and humans and everything in between.
Must read.
A collection of very disquieting stories, penned as a 'novella in pieces' of 'nature and love', intended to be considered as a 'thematically unified whole', and represented as 'art-as-torture'. It's very grim, very beautiful, very dark and nostalgic and unnerving, and overwhelmingly powerful.
Interspecies necrophilia, disembowlment, dismemberment, hate, loss, love, marginalisation, sexuality, gender and everything else combine in these stories to emotionally annihilate you. Strange tales of animals and humans and everything in between.
Must read.
November 1, 2022
4.5
I didn't think I could enjoy a story told from an animal perspective, but somehow Eric LaRocca made that happen. This was very Barker-esque in the way that these stories were about the violence and brutality of love.
I didn't think I could enjoy a story told from an animal perspective, but somehow Eric LaRocca made that happen. This was very Barker-esque in the way that these stories were about the violence and brutality of love.
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