Tag: Occult

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Review of Madness From The Sea: Cthulhu’s Lure by Jonathon T. Cross

One of my favourite things as a reader is discovering books that turn out to be more than they appear. These books often masquerade as something traditionally defined as “low brow” entertainment, but in truth, they are deeper than their shocking titles or covers would indicate. Madness From The Sea: Cthulhu’s Lure is absolutely one such book. Whilst its hentai cover, depicting a woman pulling an orgasm face as Cthulhu’s tentacles envelope her, would indicate a shallow (though thrilling) bit of smut, Cthulhu’s Lure is so much more than mere tentacle-titillation.

The basic of premise of Cthulhu’s Lure will be familiar to fans of Lovecraft. Frances Smith, a young woman living in Boston, keeps receiving erotically charged dreams about a great squidlike entity that exists in a liminal dreamscape, a haunting “labyrinth of stone monoliths”. Unsure what she is experiencing, she does what most of us in the Twenty-First Century would do, and turns to the internet. It doesn’t take long for Frances to develop a cult following. Some of them are weirdos who are turned on by tentacle fetishes. But many are genuinely curious as to the meaning of her dream experiences.

Meanwhile, Donnie, Frances’ husband, is growing increasingly uneasy with his wife’s behaviour and wants to rescue their marriage. As Frances is drawn closer and closer into the labyrinth of her own desires and fantasies, Donnie—with the help of one of Frances’ friends, Hazel—takes drastic measures to prevent her from hurting herself and others.

There is a lot more to say, but to avoid spoilers, I will leave it there.

One thing I really loved about this story is how it genuinely tried to bring a modern twist to Lovecraft’s original tale. Whilst I enjoy modern Lovecraft fiction, in general I find it too often falls into the trap of trying to re-create the original. Cellphone signal is lost. Maps are destroyed. Time travel occurs. Essentially, the writer tries to avoid modern elements to imitate the same style of horror deployed in Lovecraft’s nineteenth-century stories. Whilst this can be fun for a bit of escapism, it ultimately feels contrived, and like an avoidance of the truth.

Jonathon T. Cross, however, takes on the modern world head on. He explores what a return of Cthulhu might look like in the modern age, and how the internet—a space that operates not unlike a shared dreamworld or an astral plane—would pay a huge part in such a resurgence. Whilst there are comedic moments in the story, overall the modern elements don’t take away from the atmosphere of dread but actually augment it, partly because it is all so believable. You may be looking at me like I’m crazy, but the idea of an internet community building exponentially and then bubbling violently over into the real-world, leaving chaos in their wake, is not only possible but probable in the near future.

Jonathon T. Cross also creates a link between his modern setting and the “old world”. He does this in several ways, but principally through the medium of dream, using the dream-world as a liminal space in which possibilities can coexist, including the communication between entities from beyond the stars and human beings. Whilst dream-sequences can be overused in fiction, the dream-world in Cthulhu’s Lure is a specific and well-used concept that not only serves narrative purpose but also reveals character. Symbolism within the dream is reflected in reality in clever and subtle ways. Likewise, desires expressed in the dream are corrupted and made manifest in the waking world. A dialogue exists between the phantasmal realm of myth and the modern world of crumbling materiality desperately clinging to a sense of meaning. Frances Smith is the middle point where all of this converges: old and new, technological and magical, intuitive and rational, mundane and extraordinary. She is the prophetess of a new age, a red woman sprung from Aleister’s Crowley’s lusty imaginings but instead of being wedded to the Ten Headed Beast she is wedded to Cthulhu.

As I said before, Cthulhu’s Lure is very far from tentacle-porn. In fact, its use of sex bears more in common with Greek mythology than with modern erotica. The concept of a beast or monster mating with a woman to produce theriomorphic offspring is pervasive throughout virtually all the ancient mythologies. Perhaps the most famous example of this is The Minotaur, a creature half-human and half-bull, born of the sexual congress between Pasiphaë and the favoured snow-white bull of Poseidon. Poseidon, of course, is the god of the sea, so there’s already a link, albeit tentative, between Cthulhu and the bull-monster of Greek legend.

Because of the Minotaur’s hybrid nature, Pasiphaë could not nourish the child, and so it became increasingly ferocious and bloodthirsty and eventually turned to devouring human beings for sustenance. The Minotaur is therefore imprisoned in a terrible labyrinth constructed by the genius inventor Daedalus. The Minotaur waits at the heart of the labyrinth, a black secret, devouring any who are sent as offering into its runnels.

Cthulhu likewise waits in the labyrinthine and “sunken” city of R’lyeh, accessible only via dream or by a perilous voyage across the Pacific Ocean. R’lyeh, the labyrinth, these dark and inaccessible spaces represent our unconscious, inhabited by the antediluvian urges that can still be awoken with the right ritual and sacrifice. In the modern world we have seemingly conquered these urges and desires, but we still fear their return, and the time is soon coming “when the stars are right” and these desires—symbolically represented by Cthulhu—will once more walk the earth and hold sway.

The other brilliant thing about Cthulhu’s Lure is that it for all its Lovecraftian and mythological trappings it remains the grounded story of a failed marriage. And despite all the messed up things done by both Donnie and Frances, you still care about both of them, and still sort of want things to work out. Jonathon T. Cross channels Lovecraft, but filters the anxiety, the paranoia, the obsession, and the madness through a totally new lens, producing something that feels like one of the most original takes on the mythos in quite some time.

You can read Cthulhu’s Lure in a single day (I know I did), yet it will take you on a deep journey into a woman’s fracturing psyche and a man’s desperation to save what little he has in life. The last line of the book is a real humdinger. And, I may be wrong, but it looks like there might be further books in the series to look forward to.

Jonathon T. Cross is definitely a writer to watch. You can check out more of his work over at https://www.thatspookybeach.com as well as cool art and other merch.

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New Release: Servants of the Dark Gods!

The silhouette of the king on his knees, he holds two whips for self-flagellation in the middle of a Gothic cathedral with bright sunny stained glass windows , his back is wounded and bleeding 2d art

Hello everyone,

I am pleased to announce my new book SERVANTS OF THE DARK GODS will be released in May! See below the cover reveal!

This collection, set in The Book of Thrice Dead multiverse, pulls together six of my best and most horrifying short stories, three of my most popular dark novellas (including The Meaning of the Dark), and includes a new original short story entitled “Spring Offensive”.

Many of these stories have been out of print for several years, so it is a delight to see them in print again! These stories contribute to the wider lore and origin stories of the principle cast of The Book of Thrice Dead, so those familiar with this series will meet some old friends—and learn some surprising truths.

The stunning cover design was done by dear friend and awesome writer Dan Soule. The art is Warm Tail.

Furthermore, I am delighted to announce that the incredible Lezlie Smith, of The Nerdy Narrative booktube channel, has written a stunning Foreword for the collection. Honestly, it might be better than the stories themselves!

Here is a short extract:

“For those familiar with Sale's work, this collection offers a tantalizing glimpse into the origins of characters, tracing their paths through the web of existence to the precipice of villainy. For newcomers, it serves as a portal to worlds beyond imagination, where every story is a gateway to discovery and self introspection.”

You can view the Amazon pre-order page for more information:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon CA

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FANTASY, HORROR, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN

Recently, I had the good fortune to see my novel The Claw of Craving reviewed over on Monster Librarian. The fantastic reviewer, Murray Samuelson, opened the review with a really profound and intriguing observation:

“Some of the best horror novels of the 80s and 90s weren’t really horror at all. They were, at heart, fantasy books with a dark core, with James Herbert’s Once, Clive Barker’s Weaveworld, and Ronald Kelly’s Fear being standout examples.”

In my view, he is absolutely right, and has hit upon a truth that leads us to thought-provoking questions about our contemporary and genre-obsessed era. In my view, it’s undoubted that some of the best “horror” novels of the twentieth century were, in fact, epic, sprawling fantasies that contained dark or horrifying scenes. But more than that, I would argue the connection between fantasy and horror has existed for a much longer time. We need only think of the nineteenth century gothic novels, with their dazzling supernaturalism and magic alongside scenes of cannibalism and terror (I’m thinking of Melmoth The Wanderer here), to realise that horror and fantasy are inextricably linked despite occupying separate shelves in Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble, if you are a friend from across the Atlantic!).

If we consider the conceptual nature of “fantasy” and “horror” this connection becomes not only more interesting but also self-explanatory. A “fantasy” is something we dream of, something that carries with it positive connotations of hope, magic, and illumination. There is also a sexual and desirous undertone, which is where the danger comes in, for a fantasy is often something taboo in society, something we must confine to the realms of dream lest it be enacted in reality at terrible cost… As you can see, we’re already veering into the territory of horror. What is horror but the nightmare to fantasy’s dream? Horror is the unveiling of that which lies in the subconscious psyche of its readers. The early gothic masterpieces, despite predating the establishment of psychological theory by some way, have an undeniably psychological bent to them, an inherent understanding that ghosts, whilst they may be literal, truly stand for the aberrances of our memory, the hauntings of guilt and shame and regret and love lost that manifest in a tangible way in our lives—in ways that feel like horrible magic. But are we not now veering back into fantasy?

Horror and fantasy might be seen as two sides of the same coin, though I think it is more accurate to say they are a yin-yang, a ceaseless dance of “opposites” that in reality form a oneness. Desire creates fear creates desire creates fear in an endless cycle that leads us deeper into the mysteries of the human soul.

So, when did this bifurcation occur? When did we decide that horror and fantasy were separate entities, and that too much of one “spoiled” the other?

The honest answer is, of course, no one knows for certain. I am sure that an academic could research and reason out a fairly probable conclusion. But no answer can reflect the great complexity of forces that shapes human thought over decades or centuries. Tolstoy wrote despairingly about the folly of attempting to do such a thing, so I will not try. The truth is, over time, things change, and one thing that changed was that around the mid-twentieth century, fantasy began to acquire a new aesthetic and identity that was more aligned with the bright and colourful covers of Dungeons & Dragons modules than with the magic-strewn brutality of The Nibelungenlied. Our image of what fantasy is became altogether more aligned with Tolkien’s The Hobbit. That isn’t to say writers weren’t writing dark fantasy—they always have been and always will—but the fantasy in the public eye, and what critics and readers considered fantasy, was becoming dragons, treasure hoards, elves, dwarves, and heroic battles.

Let me be clear, I love all of those things with unapologetic and childlike abandon.

But I also have a darker side. As an eighteen year old, who knew he wanted to be a writer but didn’t know how, I remember reading Stephen King’s The Stand and meeting Randall Flagg for the first time, and having my tiny mind blown, realising that the mythic grandeur of old tales could still be told upon a modern canvas. I was awed equally by the dark magic that lived in the hands of this leather-jacket wearing madman, and by the cruelty of which he was capable; the gloves were off. No cutaways or convenient concealed armour. Here, I had a taste of fantasy and horror meeting in the middle. But it wasn’t until I was much older, in my late twenties, that I would experience Clive Barker for the first time, and realise what was truly possible when fantasy and horror collided.

Fantasy and horror complete each other. Fantasy without horror feels trite and shallow (and also highly predictable), whereas horror without fantasy feels nihilistic and obscene. Some people do enjoy books about relentless torture without hope, but I think they are in the minority. For most of us, the horror of someone’s skull being kerb-stomped into smithereens must be tempered by the awe and wonder of a spirit materialising in the hour of need; the beauty of a first magical kiss must be properly seasoned by the bloody hand of a cowled killer. This interplay is, to my mind, what I find sorely lacking in many novels, both horror and fantasy, but the fantastic news is we are now seeing a glorious revival of this genre marriage.

Of course, I cannot cite every example, because no one can read everything out there in the world, but here are just a few of recent books I’v encountered embodying the best of fantasy and horror:

BleakWarrior by Alistair Rennie is perhaps one of the greatest fantasy novels I have ever read: occult, metaphysical, labyrinthine, daring, bloody, mystical, yet bizarrely and paradoxically hopeful. It is one of the most hyperviolent and hypersexual stories I’ve ever encountered, and yet it wields its violence and sexuality not for the sake of shock value, but to probe the absolute limits of the human condition and human sanity. BleakWarrior is a non-dual meditation on the interconnectedness of all things, explored via the medium of a darkly fantastical world whose rules can be bent and broken by those with sufficient madness and will. It is Highlander with occult philosophy and a triple R rating.

Daniel Volpe’s A Story of Sorrow is a splatterpunk fantasy that pushes the brutality of a dark, medieval world to its very limits. Volpe’s characters are callous and bloodthirsty, his magic is twisted and disturbing, and yet within this harsh framework is a vitality of human spirit, even a sense of adventure. Though A Story of Sorrow is really only a brief toe-dip into Volpe’s world, I am excited to see where his story goes. It has an episodic feeling which is very much aligned with fantasy’s roots, yet is clearly all building to a crescendo which will transform our woebegone hero from a killer into something more. Then again, perhaps I’m projecting my optimism onto a story that is, ultimately, one of sorrow…

Full Metal Octopus by Carlton Mellick III is filed under bizarro, but at heart is a fantasy novel that contains scenes of nightmarish horror, especially for those with claustrophobia. The novel follows a precocious fairy, Eliot, living in the slums of Grub Town—a city located in Mellick’s fantastical version of America—who gets involved in a gang war on a mythical scale. The adventure features tentacle sex, death-by-vaginal-constriction inside lamia strippers, and yakuza elves. The tone oscillates between enchanting romance, pure weird, and a desperate bid for survival in the bleak reality of a world that stands allegorical of our own whilst losing none of its dark magic. The ending made me ugly cry. It’s a tour de force that, for all its modern perversions, exposes the true, enduring power of magic and fantasy and its connection with the timeless hope that lives in the human spirit. Truly a masterpiece.

The Serpent King by Brian Barr is an occult, science-fantasy epic that contains scenes of abject horror intermingled with startling, dazzling magic. Set in another galaxy, one in which serpents rather than apes have become the dominant, sapient species of their planet, The Serpent King charts the rise and fall of the galaxy-spanning Nagan empire and the quixotic sorcerer Zian. Brian Barr has one of the most fecund imaginations of any writer working today, and his unique blend of science-fiction and fantasy offers up a feast of world-building and sociological commentary that cuts to the bone of contemporary struggles. In addition, Barr’s understanding of occult principles lends grisly verisimilitude to his magic. The Serpent King is equal parts Illuminati conspiracy, a satire of that very premise, and a terrifying bloodsoaked tragedy, all combined by the finest of dark alchemical magics.

Iseult Murphy’s The Mountains of Sorrow may seem like a cute tale about a wood-witch and her squirrel friends, but do not be deceived. The Mountains of Sorrow contains harrowing scenes worthy of a canto in Dante’s Inferno. The evil queen, Zelda, may sound like a princess from a popular video-game series, but she is anything but: Zelda is a cruel, terrifying antagonist whose masterplan is so callous and gruesome it leaves one reeling. Murphy uses the fantasy setting to brilliantly underscore her horror themes by way of contrast. For example, juxtaposing the beauty of the natural world and those who defend it with those who worship technological idols, and the sacrilege of the human flesh and spirit that is the only possible result of such idolatry.

I also want to add a forthcoming book to this list. I had the privilege of reading Stolen Pallor by Sean Eads and JoshuaViola, a book soon to be published by Blood Bound Books. This novella is a darkly fantastical horror that explores the meaning of art. Set in a modern world that parallels our own, yet is also just different enough to enchant us, we are soon drawn down the rabbit hole of strangeness until we reach what seems the very precipice of hell itself. This book feels like Fincher’s Seven and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser conceived a warped lovechild. It has such sights to show you.

Well, I think that does it for now. Thank you so much for coming this far. If you can think of any books that do this well and haven’t been mentioned, or would like to chat about the ones I have included, please let me know in the comments! As always, my love to you, brave explorers of these subterranean realms!

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BEST IN SHOW: THE TOP FANTASY & HORROR WRITERS OF OUR TIME

There are lots of articles ranking the very best books in a particular genre, and there are also lists ranking the best writers and books of all time. Whilst a sense of hierarchy (this thing is more perfectly executed than that thing) is important in criticism, it should never come at the sacrifice of palette. The old-fashioned saying “Different horses for different courses” rings true: we go to certain genres and writers for specific experiences, whether we know this consciously or not. And so, I wanted this ranking list to work a little differently to most. Instead of saying who is the “best” (because of course we will all have different definitions of what constitutes “the best”), I wanted to showcase writers who excel at delivering particular experiences. Picture it like this: rather than looking at who is sitting on the biggest pile of gold, I instead wanted to point you towards the writers who possess very niche, gleaming treasures… I also exclusively wanted to feature living writers. I love the classics, but there are so many hugely talented authors working today.

Of course, this list—like all lists—is entirely subjective, but it might just help you to find the right writer to scratch a particular itch, a particular artefact you’ve long sought in the paradoxical desert of over-saturation. In addition, there are a good number of phenomenal authors who did not make this list, authors like John Durgin, Richard Thomas, Iseult Murphy, Brian Barr, Eric LaRocca, Anna Smith Spark, and more... The reason they did not make this list is no aspersion upon their literary abilities, and simply a reflection on the aesthetic focus of this article and the limitation of space!

So, without further ado, here are the best in show, my choice fantasy and horror writers and the particular delights they offer up. They have such sights to show you!

The best to make me believe in the supernatural… Lee Mountford

I had the privilege of meeting Lee Mountford in 2022 at the Self Publishing Show in London, a conference for independent authors run by Mark Dawson and James Blatch. He is one of the most kind-hearted and humble souls writing today. However, not only that, but his fiction is truly unique. He has taken the “haunted house” formula to another level of intensity, combining gothic verisimilitude with supernatural intensity. Lee Mountford’s Perron Manor, which is part of his Haunted series, will immerse you in the dark history of the eponymous house, a history so intricately interwoven with real history that you will find yourself Googling “Perron Manor” to see if such a place really exists. The mantle of reality cloaking Mountford’s work is, quite frankly, terrifying. With a torturer’s artistry, he makes you believe one small thing after another, until finally we reach a crescendo and come face to face with supernatural horror in its purest form—and are forced to believe that too.

“It is shocking to see how quickly esteem can turn into infamy.”

Inside: Perron Manor

The best to make me care about f*cked up people… Christa Wojciechowski

Christa Wojciechowski is one of the most original writers working today. Her work is equal parts psychological horror, erotic thriller, and something altogether more mythopoeic. There were therefore a number of reasons to include Christa Wojciechowski on this list, from her startling and dark eroticism (which is so much more than pornographic, but almost spiritually harrowing) to her scalpel-sharp command of prose, but ultimately I settled on what may be her greatest gift: making me care about objectively awful people. Christa Wojciechowski has a unique gift for creating characters of rich psychological depth, and rendering those psychological interiors in ways that don’t feel expositional. Her characters are often broken, wrestling with addiction and vice, and many of them do terrible things in the name of love or in an attempt to survive, but somehow we still love them, forgive them, and care about them. Christa Wojciechowski has made me weep for abominable people, people who—were I in my right mind—I might wish were locked up. This is her dark genius, and I hope more people get to experience it.

“If he only knew how good I was at tapping into veins, every one except the one of truth.”

Oblivion Black

The best to make me peer into the abyss… S. C. Mendes

I first encountered S. C. Mendes by chance. I was a big fan of the publisher Blood Bound Books and therefore monitored the books they released. They had put put a novel entitled The City, authored by Mendes. I confess, I did not pay it much attention at first, but then I heard online rumours in the form of cryptic reviews, rumours that the novel was not entirely what it appeared to be. One rumour used the phrase “lizard people”. Needless to say, my curiosity got the better of me. Nothing could have prepared me for The City. It is elegantly written and terrifyingly brutal, a vision of total horror that yet conceals in its gory excrescences a pearl of wondrous hope. It is a book of psychological layers, of Dantean ingenuity and spirituality, and not for the faint of heart. In short, The City was and is a totally life-changing book. There are many “extreme” horror authors out there, but I find much of their work lacks the spiritual power that a true hell descent mandates. Mendes will make you peer into the abyss, but not because he is a fetishist or likes violence or depraved sexuality, he will make you peer into the abyss because he has been to hell and returned to the land of the living to share with us its dark lessons.

“The City seemed cold this time, but it no longer felt foreign. The carnival atmosphere was like a discarded lover: the terrain was familiar, but its company was unwanted.”

The City

The best to make me care about a relationship under duress… Dan Soule

Dan Soule is the literary James Herbert you did not know you needed in your life. His books take classic horror concepts, such as a mummy or an alien invasion, and transform them into heartfelt, modern, and epic narratives. His greatest talent, however, is his ability to describe relationships—whether a friendship, family relationship, or a romantic entanglement—that you immediately become invested in. Dan Soule understands that “no man is an island” and every individual is bidirectionally entangled in a network of relationships that continuously modify and define them. Balancing Dan Soule’s elegant relationship work, however, is the horror itself, which often threatens to tear the relationship apart, or else to warp it so out of shape that it is no longer recognisable or wholesome. The stakes of Dan Soule’s books are therefore always higher than high because we care so much about a particular bond. Dan Soule uses this tension to grip his readers by the throat. 

“Dawn was still a distant shore for all those souls cast adrift on the night.”

Savage

The best to make me afraid of the woods… Steve Stred

I’ve been a fan of Steve Stred for a long time. There are so many things I love about his work, from his brutal, direct prose-craft, to his grounded and believable characters, to his interesting takes on religious and occult themes. However, there is one thing Steve Stred is becoming known for above all others, and with good reason: making people shit-scared of the woods. Many of his stories take place in the forests and wilds, yet the theme never seems worn out. As a competent outdoorsman, Steve Stred knows his way through the wilds, and he uses that knowledge to create terrifyingly believable works of horror that make me never want to see a tree or go for a night-stroll through the forest ever again. I may sound like I am being flippant, here, but we all know it takes consummate skill to imbue a familiar and beloved location with a sense of dread. Spielberg’s iconic film Jaws made an entire generation of people, multiple generations in fact, terrified of the water, and is rightly praised for this incredible feat to this day. Steve Stred is to the forest what Spielberg is to the sea, a maestro who can tap into our deepest fears.

“His dreams that night were filled with visions of the trees swaying in the wind.”

The Stranger

The best at world-building… Carlton Mellick III

This might seem like a highly controversial choice. Surely, the title of best world-builder should belong to a classic fantasy author or someone writing alternative history novels. To my mind, however, Carlton Mellick III is simply untouchable when it comes to creating a world that is internally consistent and believable, yet also fantastical and totally surprising. Whether he is exploring the internal anatomy of a fallen kaiju (The Big Meat), a world of modern conveniences and metropolises populated by faeries, elves, and nymphs (Full Metal Octopus), or else a futuristic universe in which the population crisis has been solved by “combining” people (Biomelt), Mellick always delivers. His skill is in making the world-building an integrated part of the storytelling. There are no info-dumps: characters and their actions reveal the world’s mechanics organically. His concepts are outlandish—they don’t call the genre bizarro for nothing—and yet he makes them feel more grounded and realistic than the most pedestrian literary fiction novel. We believe not only that such a place could exist, but that all the people living in it are real too, and are products of this unique (and sometimes disturbing) world. Mellick has so many talents as a writer. He remains one of the only writers capable of making me cry when reading what is ostensibly tentacle porn. Yet, his world-building methodology is worthy of attention for anyone looking to write their own fiction and learn from a master.

“At least his wings haven’t been clipped. At least he’s still beautiful, even if his beauty is only allowed to shine when he’s safe behind closed doors.”

Full Metal Octopus

The best to take me on a dark adventure… Rob J. Hayes

Rob J. Hayes is swiftly becoming a favourite author. I bought the first book of his War Eternal series based on the cover alone, but what I found within surprised and delighted me: a compelling, unique fantasy narrative that manages to hit all the fantasy tropes I love so well whilst making them new. The War Eternal is a five-part series (I am currently on the final book) that follows Eskara Helsene, a sourcerer (the spelling is significant) who is imprisoned for being on the losing side of a war. There are so many things to praise about this series: the narrative voice is astounding, the world-building is fascinating and well-handled, and the dialogue between its rogue’s gallery of characters will put a smile on your face and strike to the heart in equal measure. But, what I love most about The War Eternal is the story vivifies a feeling I had not experienced for a long time reading fantasy: that I was on a mythical, dark, but wondrous adventure. Whether we are journeying to the site of a terrible war between magicians, through an underground city of the Djinn, or to the floating city of the Rand, or to the bustling, phantasmagorical cities of Polasia, Rob J. Hayes’s story instills that sense of wonder and adventure that so enchanted me as a child reading every fantasy book I could get my hands on. In my view, this sense of adventure is sorely lacking from so much of fantasy these days, which tends to focus more on battles and politics (for those who enjoy these, however, there is plenty to be found in War Eternal). So, if you’re ready for an adventure, I highly recommend his masterful series.

“They had always intended me to be a weapon used against the Terrelan Empire, but what if I was more? What if could be more? What if, instead of being a weapon used by one empire against another, I was a weapon to be used against a God?”

The Lessons Never Learned (Book 2 of The War Eternal)

The best to surprise me… Brian Bowyer

As a student of the five act structure, an editor, and someone who has spent a lifetime working with narrative and fiction, I find that I am rarely surprised these days. This isn’t as bleak a picture as it sounds, as I find a great deal more pleasure in the journey of a story as a result of my studies. For example, if the identity of a killer is going to be revealed, I usually find I’ve worked out who it’s going to be, so instead of focusing on the “surprise” of the reveal, I tend to focus on how the reveal is executed. It’s a different mindset, but yields just as much enjoyment. However, as you've probably gathered, everything I’ve just said gets thrown totally out of the window when we discuss the work of Brian Bowyer. When reading a novel by Brian Bowyer, I can safely say at no point do I ever know what is going to happen in the next paragraph, let alone in the next chapter. This isn’t because his books are full of random and meaningless events. His stories have a dreadful, inexorable logic to them, pulling you towards some moment of revelation or horror—or sometimes even heroism—that is totally unexpected yet hair-raisingly cathartic. Perhaps the greatest example of this is his novel Flesh Rehearsal, where a character on a dark and twisted arc suddenly arrives at a moment of transcendental redemption almost too epic to put into words. Bowyer surprises his readers at every turn—and yet you sense that he is not trying to surprise you. His work isn’t strained, or preposterous, or conceited, simply totally and utterly alive. Be warned, if you want to read Bowyer’s work, you are going to be faced with horror so demented and twisted it will turn the stomach of even a hardened veteran, but the horror is often worth it for the—here’s that word again—surprising glimpses of hope, love, and faith that emerge from the darkness.

“They spoke of him on the radio again—he who was currently between names—and he didn’t like it. He turned the radio off. Much better. Now, the only sounds in his car were the rumble of the engine and the music of his tires on the road… He drove out of the hills into the city. With a couple of hours to kill, he decided to look for someone to sacrifice to the ancient gods of death.”

Flesh Rehearsal

The best to make me afraid of having sex… Nikki Noir

Nikki Noir is a truly original voice in dark fiction, combining eroticism, the occult, cosmic horror, and more besides. Her Black Planet series is a powerful coming of age story that plunges us into the depths of human depravity and supernatural evil, a tale of innocence in the face of cataclysmic corruption. One of the most brilliant aspects of her writing is the way she uses the erotic elements of her stories to cloak the dagger she is about to drive into your heart. She lulls us expertly into a false sense of security, titillating us with scenarios that are all too believable perhaps because they mirror the darkest human yearnings, only to then ambush us with scenes so horrifying they seem to have leapt from a John Carpenter movie. Nikki Noir is the sadomasochistic seductress of the written word who has frankly traumatised me into periods of abstinence.

“Riley rose from Jordan’s crotch, letting the gore drip from her mouth, still praying to the dark quarters of the universe. Hopefully, the watchers were as satisfied as she was.”

Black Planet

The best to make me feel awe… Clive Barker

Most of the authors on this list are independently published. That’s because I genuinely read more independently published fiction these days. I find indie fiction is where the really interesting writing is happening, where authors are experimenting, taking risks, and painting unique landscapes upon the canvas of the human mind. However, that is not to say I only read independently published fiction, and credit has to be given where credit is due, such as to the great master Clive Barker. For many horror and fantasy writers, Clive Barker is where a love of the genre began, and it’s easy to see why: his prose is angelic, his imagination one of the most fecund to have ever found expression via the pen, and his ability to challenge preconceived notions of desire, morality, and beauty are frankly, to quote the great man himself, “legendary even in hell”. However, if I had to pick one faculty of Barker’s writing which most draws me to him, I would say it is his capacity to instil awe. In our modern world of cynicism, scepticism, and desensitisation, awe is a rare and beautiful thing. Yet, Clive Barker’s stories, whether short or long, almost unfailing evoke it. Barker writes like one who has tasted the magic of the world, fully imbibing it, so that it has become a part of his very being. Reading his work, we can taste a little bit of this magic too.

“All his adult life, he’d asked why. Why God? Why meaning? Why love? Now he realized his error. The question was not why; it was why not?”

Everville

Thank you for taking the time to read this (very lengthy) article! I hope you enjoyed reading about these amazing writers, and that it played havoc with your TBR pile. Please do share this so others can discover the amazing work these writers are doing, and maybe find their new favourite author in the process! And lastly, if you have a particular author who offers up a particularly rare gem of experience you would like to suggest, please do leave a comment and let everyone know! 

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The Pallid Mask: unpacking the symbolism of masks in cosmic horror

The English occultist Andrew D. Chumbley once wrote, “mistake not the mask for the face, nor the symbol for the symbolised” and yet in this wisdom we see one of the central paradoxes of the human condition exposed: our fascination with idols and representations juxtaposed with a desire to lift the mask, pierce the illusion, and find the truth.

The human desire to fashion false images has been with us since the earliest beginnings, from the golden calf forged by the Jewish exiles in the Book of Exodus to modern day celebrity worship; virtually every history, mythology, and oral tradition tells us that human beings have always worshipped false idols. We have always, in other words, mistaken “the symbol for the symbolised”.

Nicolas Poussin: Adoration of the Golden Calf

But along with this has also been a quest to probe reality, whether through spiritual or scientific means. Both have merits and drawbacks, of course. But it is this enquiry into the true nature of things that drives us to constantly interrogate both symbol and symbolised, both mask and face, and ask the question of how we differentiate the two.

It is this vice, or perhaps a better word would be ignorance, that separates us from the animal kingdom, for animals do not inhabit the realm of symbols, and therefore only know of direct interactions with reality. Animals can, of course, perform deceptions: cloaking themselves, even disguising themselves as other animals, but these parlour tricks are mere sleights of perception, not of intellect. There is a world of difference between mistaking one animal for another, for example, and mistaking an image of God for God Himself.

And God—or one other phrase to use might be “true reality”—is really what we’re looking for in life, whether we consciously know it or not. All of us are born with a sense of profound connection to the universe. This is personified in the childish belief that if we point our finger at a plane and say “Crash” the plane will actually crash. We believe so strongly we are part of a whole system that our mere thought can influence another part of that whole, even condemn hundreds of lives to death. Of course, this influence can work positively as well, but most of us first encounter the potency of our own minds in a negative context as we test the limits of our own power (something children are hardwired to do). Unfortunately, adulthood—with all its pressures—often breaks our sense of connection and instils in us a belief that all things are separated. This leads to a yearning to know the true nature of reality—something we already knew, but have become ignorant of.

In The Matrix, we see the urgent desire brilliantly expressed by the character Morpheus:

“What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”

Morpheus in The Matrix (1999)

This desire is a longing to lift the mask and see the true face of the world.

Masks are in many ways the “other side” of symbols. A symbol is a sign that conveys meaning. Words are symbols, a mechanism to deliver meaning to another person. Masks, on the other hand, are often used to conceal a reality. However, in order to conceal something, we have to create a new reality—an illusion—to take its place. Thus, the theatrical masks of the commedia dell’arte, Japanese Noh masks, and the props of Venetian masquerade are all stylised to either resemble archetypal emotions or else fabulous monsters and beasts. Masks are lies that paint over the truth in order to forge a new one. Symbols, on the other hand, are an attempt to describe the truth. The problem is that symbols often obscure true reality just as much as the mask. The word “fire” is not fire. A map is not the territory. If you look at Everest on a map and place your finger upon it, you have not touched Everest. The map is useful, of course, in order to help us navigate the territories of life. But it is not life itself.

We need symbols, but we must also be wary of them. We need masks to function in society, but we must also be careful lest we begin to think of the masks around us as faces, mistake our own mask as our true nature, or even begin to think that insubstantial constructs are actual reality.

A great example of this is to be found in money. Money is not real. This is no new philosophical statement, it’s fairly broadly understood at this point. Money is a concept that is collectively agreed upon by the human race in order to help society function. It has no true meaning. It is not “real”. If all the banks in the world crash tomorrow, in reality, nothing with have changed, and there is no reason for any bloodshed or harm. But we all know, deep in our hearts, people will go out and kill one another if such an event occurs, all because of a symbol, all because of an illusory mask.

This is a form of madness our species is subject to. We have not evolved much from worshipping the golden calf. And the Pallid Mask created by Robert W. Chambers, author of The King In Yellow, is a perfect embodiment of this. For the mask brings madness to those who wear it. And soon, one cannot tell the difference between a mask and a face.

Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.

Stranger: Indeed?

Cassilda: Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.

Stranger: I wear no mask.

Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

But there is a flip side to this. Just as we must not mistake the mask for the face, we must also recognise that perhaps we are wrong to assume that face and mask are separate. In our quest to surgically divorce mask from face, symbol from symbolised, we violate the original unity of the universe. Intriguingly, in Carcosa, the dark fantastical landscape over which the King in Yellow reigns in Chambers’ mythos, masks and faces are often synthesised, made One in the all-powerful realisation of truth:

“The mask of self deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below, but there was no one to see except myself, and when day broke the mask fell back again of its own accord.”

Man in the Pallid Mask by Adam Lane.

Perhaps then, this is the greatest wisdom? That there is neither mask nor face either, only the ceaselessness of here and now, the interplay of symbol and symbolised in the endless dance of the King in Yellow’s eternal court… When such a dance becomes ubiquitous, when all know its steps, a new era shall begin, perhaps not dissimilar from that described in “The Greater Festival of Masks” by Thomas Ligotti:

"For the old festival has ended so that a greater festival may begin. And of the old time nothing will be said, because nothing will be known. But the masks of that departed era, forgotten in a world that has no tolerance for monotony, will find something to remember. And perhaps they will speak of those days as they loiter on the threshold of doors that do not open, or in the darkness at the summit of stairways leading nowhere."

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I hope you enjoyed this article on the nature of reality. If you want to read more about Carcosa and the Pallid mask, then you might be interested in my upcoming book inspired by Chambers, The Claw of Craving; you can listen to an extract from the first chapter, here. I’d like to take a moment to thank the incredible folk at Blood Bound Books, Joe Spagnola and S. C. Mendes, for being brave—or perhaps mad—enough to publish my take on the mythos.

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11 MAGICAL BOOKS TO READ THIS HALLOWEEN

Hello my dear friends,

I’ve been silent for a while, but mindflayers never sleep, we simply dream in our dark labyrinths to wait out the aeons until it’s time for us to reclaim the surface world.

As it’s Halloween, which is my favourite day of the year, a magical time of year in which anything is possible, I have 11 magical and horrifying book recommendations for you! Some of these are recently-reads, and some are oldie-goldies. Either way, they’ll ensure you have a spooktacular Autumn and Winter. These are not in a particular order, so without further ado, here they are…

1. Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti

Okay, I’ll admit I’m quite late to the Ligotti party, but I’m so glad I’ve arrived. Ligotti combines psychological insight, impressionistic and poetic prose, and cosmic horror in the vein of H. P. Lovecraft to produce his own unique brand of darkness that is as addictive as it is unsettling. Songs of a Dead Dreamer is a collection of short stories—each one allowing the reader a glimpse into the blackest of unknowns, exploring existential questions of love and being. If you’re not a regular reader of short stories (in which case you’re not alone as I prefer longer mediums) I’d still recommend this compelling collection. Venture to the further reaches of the human psyche, to places where alchemy is not merely about the transubstantiation of matter but also of spirit. Glimpse the darkest worlds where only the truly mad can find their home. Songs of a Dead Dreamer is like an acid trip into the heart of darkness, one that cannot leave you unchanged.

SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER

2. Witchopper by Dan Soule

Dan Soule has written many books, all of which I love, but Witchopper is a very special tome. This story explores the relationship between father and son, between light and dark, between faith and chaos, between atavism and restraint, and explores what it means to grow up. It’s a story of post-Edenic loss of innocence told with tremendous passion, fierce intelligence, and fearless honesty. It’s a book not afraid to challenge social mores, sensibilities, or traditional ideas of morality. But at the same time it’s a hopeful story of redemption and love conquering all. The scope of this book is such that no brief review can do it justice, you’ll simply have to travel to the rural town of Southwell, and find out for yourself…

WITCHOPPER

3. All of Me by Iseult Murphy

I’ve reviewed All of Me previously on this site: it’s probably one of the best novellas I’ve ever read. This is a story of Faustian pacts, body-image, and the near-impossibility of self-love. It’s a harrowing and surprising tale that had me riveted from page one to its emotional, moving finale. Whilst it bills itself as body-horror, and there’s plenty of that to go around, the aspect of the book that will stay with me is the powerful psychology explored through its principle characters, a psychology which is as believable and sympathetic as it is unnerving.

ALL OF ME

4. Petite Mort by Nikki Noir and S. C. Mendes

Over the last year or two I’ve reviewed several works, both long-form and short-form, by Nikki Noir and S. C. Mendes, including a novella they wrote together called Algorithm of the Gods and the short story #DeadSealChallenge. Mendes and Noir are an awesome writing team—their styles blend effortlessly—and some of the ideas they come up with would make a bizarro author jealous. What I truly love about their work is how rich it is with symbolism, so that each sentence, image, or event feels loaded with meaning and purpose. While there is plenty of gross-out for even the most diehard fan of gore, and sex to satisfy the porn addict, the guts and orifices are never pointless titillation but a mechanism to explore deeper themes. Petite Mort is a collection of Mendes and Noirs’ shorter collaborative fiction, including Cucumbers and Comforters (which I reviewed here) and other horrifying wonders. If you’re curious about Mendes and Noir, this is the place to start.

PETITE MORT

5. We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix

Those who know me knows how much I adore Grady Hendrix. He is an incredible writer who manages to combine the humour and humanity of life with a rich texture of darkness. Of his many books, My Best Friend’s Exorcism is undoubtedly my favourite. However, one book by Grady Hendrix that is often overlooked when I see discussions about his body of work is We Sold Out Souls. This is a fundamentally occult tale that explores conspiracy theories, Faustian bargains, and the intimate connection between rock ‘n’ roll and the dark powers. Balanced against feisty heroines is the ever-present malignancy of the dark eye, which is at once Sauron-like but also something altogether less fantastical and more disturbing. Several scenes in this book are so vividly described they will never leave you (if you’re claustrophobic, then you’ll probably want to tap out of this one), and the plotting is elegant and cunning in how it dovetails. This is a story of the pitfalls of success, the injustice of the world, and the timeless struggle between good and evil.

WE SOLD OUR SOULS

6. Flesh Rehearsal by Brian Bowyer

I reviewed this book fairly recently, but you will have to forgive me for recommending it again, because Brian Bowyer is simply a genius. Flesh Rehearsal shares some similarities with We Sold Our Souls, it’s a book about heavy metal, occultism, powerful women, and the darkness dwelling in human hearts—but it’s also surprisingly a book about love.In many ways it’s a deranged novel, written with feverously intense prose that cuts to the heart of matters with the precise brutality of a sacrificial blade. Flesh Rehearsal embodies the wisdom of John Ruskin, “All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.”

FLESH REHEARSAL

7. Incarnate by Steve Stred

Almost every single book by Steve Stred would be appropriate for Halloween reading, but I think Incarnate is one of Stred’s most disturbing and accomplished books. Incarnate is particularly potent because it takes on so many horror tropes—holidaying in a remote location, a haunted house, a séance gone wrong—and yet remakes them into new, weird, and wondrous forms. Just when I thought I could predict what was going to happen, Stred throws a curveball. And the unconventional way Stred approaches writing horror scenes—sometimes narrating from bizarre or unexpected perspectives—casts a deeply unsettling spell over the reader. Stred is one of the few authors who can make me feel dread, and Incarnate succeeds in doing just this. If Shirley Jackson had lived to write a sequel to The Haunting of Hill House, this might have been it.

INCARNATE

8. Inside Perron Manor by Lee Mountford

Continuing the theme of haunted houses, Lee Mountford’s introductory novella to his Haunted series is a sublime masterclass in epistolary or “found footage” horror. Written from the perspective of a paranormal investigator obsessed with an ancient, malevolent house, Mountford inveigles us in the occult and disturbing history of Perron Manor to the point where we begin to lose our sense of reality. The aim of all good verisimilitudinous horror tales is to destroy the reader’s perception of the truth and make them believe, against all odds, in the reality of the tale, and Mountford succeeded so well in this I actually googled “Perron Manor”… Do you need any more encouragement?

INSIDE PERRON MANOR

9. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

In recent years, I’ve largely found myself preferring indie and self-published books to traditionally published ones—they take more risks and they explore unchartered territory—but there are exceptions to the rule, and Susanna Clarke is one of them. Piranesi is a phenomenal book that explores occult ideas, including the dissolution of the Self, the presence of other planes of existence, and much, much more. The horror here is subtle—a horror of not knowing one’s own mind, of doubting reality to the utmost extent. The tale is told in a style that is hauntingly imagistic, making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. There are a number of surprises in this story, but even if you work out the true nature of things, the journey to get there is so thrilling, so heroic, so mysterious that you will want to re-read it again the moment it finishes.

PIRANESI

10. Oblivion Black by Christa Wojciechowski

This may seem an odd choice, as it is less fantastical and overtly “horror” than the other selections on this list. But likePiranesi, the horror in Oblivion Black is subtle yet no-less present. Oblivion Black is at its heart a novel about addiction and beauty, and how the two interrelate. It explores the story of a recovering heroine addict who takes up a job modelling for a legendary sculptor—erotic tension and unspoken desires ensue. However, beneath the sculptor’s charismatic facade lies darkness and trauma, just as our heroine, Ona, stills feels the draw towards her addictive past. Both are liberated by the creation of art, but even art can be corrupted when it is made with ill-intent. Oblivion Black is shocking, provocative, seductive, beautiful, and horrifying all in equal measure. And it’s sequel, Hierarchy of Needs, which I had the pleasure of beta-reading, is even more so. Don’t miss out.

OBLIVION BLACK

11. Melmoth The Wanderer by Charles Maturin

Four years ago, I wrote a ridiculously long article about Melmoth The Wanderer. My feelings about the book have not changed since then, I still regard it as the underrated masterpiece of Gothic fiction. What stands out about this novel is the style in which it is written, which is at once poetic and precise yet also labyrinthine and haunting. Maturin ensnares the reader in the runnels of Melmoth’s mind until we begin to think like the deranged anti-hero who threads his way through the complex layers of this book’s framed narrative. Imagine Inception written by Mary Shelly and Christopher Marlowe and you have a sense of the warped genius of Melmoth The Wanderer. Everyone should try reading this book at least once—though be warned those who succeed may end up mad!

MELMOTH THE WANDERER

Well, that’s my 11 recommendations for this spooky occasion. Have a terrifyingly joyous Halloween my dear friends. And stay classy!

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Thanks for reading this epic-sized blog! If you’ve come this far, then I can only profusely thank you for your dedication. If you want to support my work, including the production of more detailed content like this, then you can head on over to my Patreon where I post monthly content, from essays to behind-the-scenes videos to exclusive cover reveals and beta-reading opportunities. 

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Review of The Guild by S. C. Mendes

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a huge fan of S. C. Mendes, and even got the fantastic opportunity of collaborating with him on a few projects, such as the Magical Writing podcast. Whenever an S. C. Mendes story drops I always stop what I’m doing and head on over to read it as soon as possible.

The Guild is a culinary-themed standalone novelette that still has all the ingredients you expect from an S. C. Mendes story: layers of mystery, occult principles, graphic horror and sexuality, and deep symbolic meaning.

The plot centres around Jordan, a young guy down on his luck, one who will be painfully relateable to many readers. Desperate for money, he answers a Facebook Ad that seems too good to be true: eat one meal and get paid $300. Simple right?

The problem with things that sound too good to be true is that they often are.

There isn’t much more I can tell you about the plot without giving things away. Suffice to say this story is a curious rabbit hole that is full of grisly surprises. Mendes knows how to weave a mystery, and because of the occult principles underpinning the book, which we’ll get to in a minute, the revelations never devolve into absurdity, even though they are downright weird.

Whilst the opening of this book is truly nasty, possibly a little too extreme even for my tastes (though Splatterpunk fans will be delighted), the overall tone and feel of The Guild is a subtle horror, an interplay between a low-key body horror (that terrible knowing, where you’re sick but can’t figure out what’s wrong), and psychological horror: being caught in a dependency money trap and unable to claw your way out.

Mendes definitely pays homage to the work of Lucy Leitner, not just with the odd sly reference to stories such as Get Me Out Of This Shimmering Oasis, but also in terms of his themes and setting. It’s clear Mendes has a healthy scepticism for the wellness fad and the New Age movement, but at the same time he understands the principles on which this movement was built. In this way he uses his narrative to kind of deconstruct the corrupt modern facade of wellness and New Age medicine whilst at the same time unveiling the secret truths behind principles such as “vibrations”.

And let’s talk a little bit about vibrations for a moment, shall we?

Without giving too much away: Mendes builds his worlds and characters from the ground up. They’re anchored in real human experience. It’s because of this he can tackle such esoteric and eyebrow-raising principles as “vibrations”.Behind the faux-gurus promising you wealth and happiness if only you can raise your vibration is the very real occult idea that the whole world is a symphony of many vibrations. In essence, the universe is sound, and everything material is music vibrating at such a frequency as to seem “real”. This accounts for the way that reality seems so strangely plastic, why we can have instant connections with certain people, and why others will remain forever alien to us. The ancient Hindus called this Nada Brahma.

Whether you view this as a cool bit of fantastical world-building or a secret glimpse of the true nature of reality is up to you. Mendes never preaches, he only teases. His books are laden with more conspiracy theories than a reddit forum, but whilst he points out their innate absurdity, he also recognises they—like vibrations and other occult ideas—are based on granules of truth (after all, MK Ultra turned out to be real). Mendes is one eternal wink at the camera, a writer with the wisdom to know that you can never be quite sure what’s real; after all, our world is totally absurd. This is what makes his books so interesting.

And despite this kind of esoteric truth-drop, the story never loses sight of the people navigating the very real problems of the modern world. Nor does Mendes sacrifice character for the sake of giving us a tour of his (albeit intriguing) mind-palace. Jordan’s actions are completely believable given his circumstances, and we buy into his plight. He’s isn’t a goodie two-shoes, far from it, but we can tell that beneath the anger and self-pity is someone who is genuinely trying to do the right thing. We root for him.

Similarly, Mendes’ “villains”, or shadow-figures, are always more than machiavellian moustache-twirling archetypes. They have real motivations, which they often conceal, and it’s up to the reader to try and pierce the veil of obscurity and see their true intent. Mendes knows that the true purpose of villains is often to teach us. Jung said the Shadow Self was ninety-percent pure gold, and that’s because of the insight the shadow offers us if only we tune in to what our darker selves are trying to tell us about reality. To put this in more simple and grounded terms: people with messed up views on the world can often show us what we really don’t want to admit is true. Thanos had a point: the world really is overpopulated. No two ways about it. Of course, his proposed solution is barbaric and evil, and we condemn it. But he’s still shown us a truth.

Mendes echoes this well-known truism with his sophisticated villains. And the climax of this novelette sees our hero, Jordan, come face to face with revelations about who he is, and his world, that re-contextualises everything we have just read.

The Guild is a top-class standalone horror novella that will delight fans of S. C. Mendes and readers new to him alike.

Get it on Godless

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Review of Incarnate by Steve Stred

Steve Stred is one of the most prolific writers alive today, to such an extent that his latest full-length novel release, Incarnate, caught me by surprise—in more ways than one. Bearing a cloven hoof upon the cover I wondered, at first, if it was connected in any way to his epic Father of Lies trilogy, but on further inspection, the book is standalone, and although the cloven hoof is not a red herring, and there is certainly a demonic presence in the tale, there is much in Incarnate that is new for Stred’s writing, and in all the right ways. 

Stred has a trademark minimalist style that allows you to fill in the blanks. His prose is intentionally straightforward, no-nonsense, which allows him to create believable and credible worlds and people. I always know I’m in a Steve Stred novel from word go because the family or friendship dynamics are spot on and well-thought out, without any need for painstaking exposition. This is the case in Incarnate, where Ryan, along with his parents Craig and Nora, form a family unit that is instantly relateable and likeable. They decide to make a stay at a house that, as local legend would have it, has been haunted due to a séance gone wrong. If you’re rolling your eyes at this point, please stay with me, because while many of these ideas and elements are well-worn, Stred makes them new, and offers a number of surprises. 

The demonic presence, known as The Watcher, and who soon comes to terrorise our happy family, is no generic demon, but an insidious being with uniquely disturbing methods for hunting. Though there is an element of the “haunted house” tale here, it bears far more kinship with Shirley Jackson’s legendary masterpiece The Haunting of Hill House than any shlocky TV re-run. Stylistically, Stred has reached new levels, this being his most fluid, evocative, and supple prose. Consequently, the house holds a fascination that works upon the minds of Ryan and his family, and subsequently upon us. Stred furthers this fascination by deploying an ingenious meta-device of including excerpts from an old book written about the house, a book which seems to be speaking to its reader directly, in order to further inveigle us in the history and “mind” of the house. This was one of my favourite elements of the story, and the mystery of the author of the book becomes a compelling thread woven through Incarnate. 

As I said before, however, Stred often uses familiar tropes, but he always handles them in unique ways. For example, most horror authors utilise claustrophobia to heighten their horror. For example, they set their story in a cramped underground basement, a collapsed cave, a locked room, a prison cell. The horror is concentrated by virtue of the concentrated space. Notice, too, that those previous examples are largely urban. Stred, however, as someone who I know from interviews and his afterwords, clearly has extensive experience as an outdoorsman, shifts his horror often to nature and expansive, large spaces. We see this in much of his work, such as The Stranger and The Girl Who Hid In The Trees (the latter was the first book I read by Stred) in which great forests form the backdrop for the horror. Stred seems to know that whilst we dream horrors will come and find us in the dark recesses of the city, real horror actually dwells out there, in the wilderness, where no one can hear us scream. Of course, there are many famous horror stories that do use rural spaces, including classic Slashers such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and even Friday The 13th to an extent. However, often they rely on the incompetence of city-folk entering this rural space to generate mishap and tension. Stred pits extremely competent and intelligent people against the wild, and they still get royally messed up by it. 

So, whilst the horror is centred around the house, Stred makes the house the epicentre of a wild and dangerous world that borders ours both literally and metaphysically. There is an incredible, double-meaning line in which he invokes this liminality, “…only those who’d travelled these lands knew and understood.” By “these lands” he means the forests and lakes and wild spaces, but he also means the worlds beyond our own, the world from which creatures like The Watcher have emanated. Stred makes us aliens to our natural world and shows us our impotence against it. 

What further intrigued me about Incarnate, however, was the use of dream. This links thematically, of course, with contacting others worlds and planes. Often, in horror, dreams are used as a cheap scare to shock the reader during quieter moments. And whilst Stred does wrongfoot us one or two times, he also uses the dreams to further this idea of the house, and The Watcher, possessing their victims, and taking over their minds. In one stunning sequence, Ryan is dreaming he is in the woods, and the dream ends with a moment of transcendental horror, “Ryan knew what he was looking at. It was his window. The window of his bedroom. Within the window was the silhouette of a boy, of himself, one hand out in front, palm on the glass.” This moment is so incredibly well-written it cannot help but make the hairs stand on end. Ryan is the Watcher in his dream. We are left to wonder at the deeper meaning of this. 

As a final point, the climax to Incarnate is one of the best Stred has written. It is at turns moving, horrifying, sad, and uplifting. In fact, bizarrely, it is possibly one of Stred’s most optimistic endings, though, if you are new to Stred, I should warn you that it is certainly not happy in the traditional sense! 

You can get your copy of Incarnate here: 

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon CA

In addition, I had the honour and pleasure of interviewing Steve Stred about his writing. The interview will become available exclusively to my Patrons on November 12th, here: https://www.patreon.com/themindflayer Sign up at any tier level to get access to this interview, plus other interviews with occult authors, such as S.C. Mendes! 

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Review of Father of Lies: The Complete Series by Steve Stred

Father of Lies: The Complete Series is arguably Steve Stred’s magnum opus. This occult, brutally dark window into the lives of those practicing forbidden magic in the shadows is at once harrowing and totally absorbing. Like a bad acid trip, it keeps us enthralled with vision after vision yet desperate to escape its clutches. 

Based on Stred’s real life experience of joining a cult of a dark web, this quadrilogy and its accompanying essays, interviews, and insights into how the series developed is as disturbing as anything Stred has ever written, which is really saying something. In each successive instalment, Stred takes us deeper into the lore and world of Father, the leader of a cult attempting to ascend into the Black Heavens and achieve immortality alongside godlike demonic entities. We follow both the poor misguided souls hoodwinked into the cult’s masochistic belief system, and the deceitful leaders trying to engineer their own deification. Though this book draws together many ideas and themes that are recurrent in Stred’s work, including animal-human hybrids, the threat of wild or remote spaces (particularly forests), and the evils of secret organisations, it also goes one step further into the Crowleyian territory of sex magic. 

Stred both pulls no punches, graphically describing scenes of sexual molestation and rape without a scintilla of restraint or euphemism, yet also uses coded symbolic language to hint at the magical significance of the terrible acts performed by the cult members. For example, the motif of the “horn and hoof” is a clever symbolic cypher for the penis (horn) and vagina (hooves are cleft, and therefore frequently represent the female principle). Interestingly, the dark god Abaddon, whom the cult frequently calls forth, has male genitalia but cloven feet, thus embodying the esoteric concept of the divine androgyne, an entity that combines male and female principles. It is not my intent to bore you by deciphering every image, but I wanted to demonstrate how deep Stred’s work is; like the eponymous figure of the Father of Lies, Stred deceives us by writing in a direct and simple prose-style that belies the real depths lurking beneath the surface of his work. 

Stred treads a knife-edge in more ways than one with this series. He exposes the lies of cult-leaders and how they deceive and hypnotise their followers, yet he also doesn’t deny the possibility that dark magic exists, and convincingly paints scenes of harrowing supernatural agency. Despite the almost relentless savagery of the narrative, there are moments of beauty or warmth breaking through the black night like stars. The friendship between Detective McKay and Professor Bianchi is a surprisingly tender affair that makes it all the harsher when it is wrenched apart. 

There are also scenes of wonder, though they are often coloured with horror too. There are women who glow with supernatural fire to those with true sight. There are acts of surprising (if misguided) courage by the downtrodden. And there are dark gods, who demonstrate their horrifying power in opulent and brain-searing ways. Perhaps the most awesome scene of this nature in the whole series is from the third novella, Sacrament. Blood begins to shower from the sky, and a character strips down to the nude, opening their mouth to swallow the rain. We are told, “His eyes widened as the portal opened, and his mind stepped into the stars.” It is moments like these that push this story into the transcendental sphere. 

Father of Lies is not an easy read. It is not for the faint of heart. And it is more than just the subject matter, which at points will even the hardiest person’s stomach turn, making me say this. It is also the oppressive mood of the narrative that stays with the reader long after they have finished reading. It is the sensation of being watched, of having read something you are not supposed to. Cliche though this is, one cannot help but feel Father of Lies embodies the Nietzschean idiom: Stare too long into the abyss, and the abyss stares back into you. 

Coupled with this, Stred plays with our perceptions of right and wrong, distorting them to egregious heresy. This feat is no better embodied than in the character of Abaddon who, though a demon, is oddly sympathetic, and even remorseful at times. In this way, Stred seems to appropriately echo Christopher Marlowe’s masterpiece Doctor Faustus and the demon Mephistopheles, who, though he tempts Faust to damnation, is yet an empathetic and strangely human character we relate to. Stred gives us sympathy for the Devil, often because the humans are so much worse. 

Anyone who knows me or who has been on one of my writing courses will be aware that I normally don’t go for bleak. I prefer eucatastrophe, redemption, and bittersweet. None of those are to be found in Stred’s work. Or if they are, it is in a twisted way. However, Stred does what he does so well, he makes an exception of my rule. There are so many wonderful indie authors in the horror field, many of whom I adore, but Stred has perhaps earned his place quite rightfully as the King of Horror, if only for his sheer courage to venture into the blackest depths where other writers fear to tread. 

You can purchase the book here:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon CA

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Review of Carolina Daemonic Book 1: Confederate Shadows by Brian Barr

The first Carolina Daemonic novel, Confederate Shadows, is one of the most esoteric and layered books I have ever read. There is so much going on in this story it is going to be hard to adequately break it down, but I feel I must, because this is a book you definitely don’t want to miss. 

Firstly, I’m going to get a few sundry items out of the way. If you buy the paperback of this, the formatting is slightly weird. There are no page numbers, no text justification, and the margins are way, way too big. Personally, this kind of stuff doesn’t bother me, but I know some people will find it a bit hard on the eyes. I would urge you in the strongest possible terms to overlook this minor niggle, however, and see the gem that this book truly is. You see, Confederate Shadows confirms something that I had begun to suspect when reading Barr’s other novel Serpent King:

Brian Barr is an actual genius. 

This word has a tendency to be overused now, and wheeled out for any hack who can string a sentence together, but Barr is the real deal. He’s doing things with fiction that no one else is. I should also qualify that genius does not equate to perfectly chiseled (and often boring) prose. In fact, it is precisely the reverse. To use an appropriately occult term, it is a state of “Ipsissimus”, of complete and realised selfhood. Confederate Shadows is a work of genius because it is absolutely and unashamedly what it is, traditional rules of storytelling or editing be damned. It’s written with ferocious passion and energy. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the basics. 

Confederate Shadows is perhaps best described as an occult, alternative history novel set in the year 2020 (a year of ill-omen both in reality and in the novel, as it happens). In this alternative timeline, the South won the American Civil War(and the States has become known as the Confederacy), the British Empire was never toppled (and is called Victoria), and China retained its Emperor, having never become a communist nation. Slavery was abolished, but in the 20thcentury not the 19th, and racism and political tensions abound. 

I remarked on Barr’s world-building skills in my review of Serpent King, but here it is perhaps even more impressive. Barr constructs a universe that is at once strange and alien but also strikingly similar to our own. Using his alt-reality, Barr is able to make commentary on a variety of contemporary concerns from racial discrimination in the workplace, to industrialisation (in Barr’s alt-universe, steampunk technology has revolutionised the world, and the only reason slavery was abolished was because slaves were no longer needed with the implementation of robot workers), corporate greed, monopoly, and the weaponisation of race- and class-divide for political and corporate gain. The richness of texture in this universe is incredible, and Barr does not shy away from tackling some of the most complex philosophical issues of our time, often via the mouthpiece of his unusual and fascinating protagonist Titus Hemsley. 

Titus is a mesmerising focal character. He possesses incredible analytical powers. He is at once a man of science, a high-level robotics engineer, but also interested in the occult and the darker side of magick. Others perceive him as “uppity” or arrogant, and we can see from his speech patterns how educated he is. He’s black, bisexual, and perceives the world through a unique lens. What’s fascinating about Titus is how he doesn’t subscribe to the traditional divides. He’s little interested in blaming white people for the evils of the world, because he understands the truth: that all people, black, white, Asian, whatever, are pawns being used in a terrible political and corporate game, and that by fuelling these hatreds, the corporates are getting closer to delivering their coup de grace on human freedom. The prescience of this novel is frankly frightening considering it was written before 2016. 

But Barr never falls into the trap of preaching one philosophy. In fact, he displays a Shakespearean capacity for representing multiple conflicting viewpoints, and without resorting to proposing a definitive “right” way. In this vein, we also meet Titus’ old colleague (we’ll stick with that descriptor to avoid spoilers): Reuben. Reuben doesn’t agree with Titus’ view at all, brutally describing him as an “apologist”. As we follow Reuben’s story, we begin to develop a great sympathy for Reuben’s plight, and see that he also has valid reasons of thinking the way he does. 

We also follow the intriguing courtesan Wei, sent by the Emperor of China as a “gift” to the president of a large American conglomerate that is currently at the centre of a racial controversy. Wei’s perspective is a complete shift of gear, and while it would be easy to see her as a mere plot device to give us a window into the events transpiring inside this conglomerate, she ends up on one of the most interesting character arcs in the entire story. When writing about such sweeping political and theological issues, as Barr is, it can be easy to lose the characters, the human individuals at the heart of it all, but the brilliance of Barr’s work is that this is precisely his point. 

Barr is also not afraid to give us insight into the villains of this story, in particular the eugenics advocate Tobias. It would be so easy to reduce Tobias to a caricature of evil. He is Titus’ rival, from university, and the two share an intriguing backstory that becomes deeper than you could possibly imagine, including a shared propensity for magic. They now work for rival robotics corporations and represent entirely different viewpoints. But whilst Barr certainly shows us what a piece of shit Tobias is, he never makes him beyond sympathy. In fact, there is one tender flashback scene in which we feel tremendously sorry for how pathetic, lost, and repressed Tobias truly is. We yearn for him to make different choices, knowing he cannot. 

This introduces another key theme of Confederate Shadows, which is repression, sexuality, and magick and how they all interrelate. The opening scene of the book – a masterpiece of character-writing – puts us in Titus’ headspace as he searches a bar called the Thirsty Rooster for some easy sex. He’s looking at both the women and the men with opportunity in mind, and we sense that Titus is a bit of a sexual animal despite his intellectual prowess. Later in the book, we meet another character, whom I won’t name for fear of spoilers, who expounds that the perfected or “übermencsh” human being is one who has been robbed of the sexual impetus (and organ), because it diverts and distracts energy. 

Sex and magic (or magick) have always been interlinked. Barr even goes so far as to mention the sacral chakra (the second chakra that sits just below the belly button, at the dantien, and glows with orange light). This chakra is concerned with both the sexual and creative impulses, and throughout history it’s evident that most creative powerhouses also had ravenous sexual appetite. There is some debate between different magical schools of thought, however, as to whether the control and suppression of sexual drive is a boon or drawback for the magical practitioner, and Barr also addresses this occult debate, exploring whether sexuality is a healthy and human balance to the higher potency of magic and idealism – or a hindrance. Titus embodies this balance, in many ways, though he also recognises that his lack of focus has been a bane to him in the past. 

In some ways, the entire novel might be construed as an exploration of the role of sex in human endeavour: we open with Titus looking for sexual opportunity, Titus’s backstory is innately tied up in sex and shame, his rivalry with Tobias is further illustrated by their differing sexuality; many of the villains have problematic and repressive attitudes towards sex, and Wei, the heroic courtesan, represents another mode of transactional (and passive) sex, and the toll it takes on the human psyche. Further symbolism abounds in that her name may be a reference to the philosophy of Wu Wei, popularised in the West by Alan Watts, which advocates “non-volitional action”, or rather, achieving through submission to the cycles of the universe. It’s also a homonym for the English word “Way”, which has occult and spiritual meanings. This is just a taste of the depth to be found in this book. 

And while we’re speaking of occultism, Barr displays very deep knowledge of both the mystical Qabalah (sometimes variously written Kabbalah or Kabala) and other magical systems, including the Qliphothic magic of the Reverse Tree. One need not understand these systems to enjoy the story, but it is refreshing to read a book that is grounded in very real magical (or magickal) traditions; it gives Confederate Shadows and its alternative history just that bit of edge. 

It has been said of the bizarro author Carlton Mellick III that “Every Mellick novel is packed with more wildly original concepts than you could find in the current top ten New York Times bestsellers put together” (VERBICIDE) and I think the same is true of Barr. Just when you think Confederate Shadows has revealed its biggest secrets, it pulls the rug out again; just when you think you’ve seen the weirdest thing it has to offer, it shows you something stranger; just when you think all the characters are on the table, it introduces a new player. For fantasy and sci-fi junkies like myself, this book is like a tapestry of top-tier concepts that are somehow seamlessly sewn together, from steampunk robotics totrans-human body augmentation to Nigerian magic cults to Egyptian necromancy and even genetic modification reminiscent of Warhammer 40,000’s sexless Space Marine warriors (I have no idea if Barr is familiar with this universe, but interesting parallels abound – perhaps it’s more the root Nietzschean philosophy he’s drawing from?).

Confederate Shadows is not a conventional novel. Barr doesn’t care about sticking to one genre, nor does he care about his reader’s sensitivity – he’s a horror writer at heart, I think – so get ready to see some truly fucked up Barker-levelshit. There are many unsettling concepts in this novel (not just gore, but more deeply disturbing due to their religious, political, or moral implications) that I can’t spoil. One of the most impressive things about Confederate Shadows, however, is that unlike many books dealing with weighty political and ethical themes, Barr does not enforce an artificial morality upon the narrative (thus reducing the story to an allegory at best and a preaching fable at worst). Sometimes good people with the best intentions die suddenly and violently and the abhorrent misogynists survive. Bad things happen to women, men, straight, gay, black, and white people without any deference to some kind of political agenda. Barr isn’t holding your hand, he’s holding up a mirror. 

Brian Barr is one of the weirdest and I think most important writers alive today. He is almost certainly the most underrated writer I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. So please, I beg of you, go and buy his book. Or even better: buy all of them. I’ll certainly be picking up book 2 of Carolina Daemonic: Rebel Hell. Barr is the voice of one calling in the desert; we need to start listening. 

Confederate Shadows Amazon UK

Confederate Shadows Amazon US