Babbling Into The Void

 An army is a horror. It's a horrible thing. They say you might change your mind about that when the country is invaded and your people are suffering wrong, but for me this is all just more horror, more army-horror.  Cisco wastes no time in getting to the punch with this novel, and this searing and clear-eyed voice drives the reader like a vengeful officer on a harrowing march through a landscape of nightmare, brutality and absurdity. Low, our protagonist - and (perhaps) the eponymous figure - is a student in a fantastical, dreamlike realm, called up to serve both as soldier and narrator in a convoluted war. Low's position as a 'military narrator' doesn't just serve as an introduction to the alien culture of its world - this is from the off a story about stories, about who gets to tell them and which we hear, and how they shape reality. This theme manifests in many forms, both more direct - such as Low's encounter with an enemy narrator later in the novel, or th...

     A few weeks ago my partner and I finished playing Parasite Eve , a game close to her heart but one I'd never tried. I had a vague idea of what it was like - a survival horror game with RPG elements - and the basics of the plot - an outbreak of 'intelligent' mitochondria taking over the humans that carry them. I admit that the latter was a thing that had put me off the game previously; 'but that's just not how mitochondria work', I had scoffed, essentially. But that simplistic dismissal of the game had kept me from a horror experience that I'm still thinking about now.     Parasite Eve  is the story of Aya, a NYPD officer who, in the game's dramatic opening sequence, is attending the opera on a date. At the crescendo of the performance, a singer who calls herself 'Eve' - a reference to the famed mitochondrial Eve that the game later makes explicit - causes the spontaneous combustion first of the rest of the cast, and then nearly the entire au...

It is inside me now. The seed has burrowed deep and I feel it beginning to sprout. My transformation cannot be far away. I tremble, though I know not if it is in fear or anticipation .  As soon as I heard about this collection I knew I had to read it. As a lifelong cosmic horror fan, a collection which focuses on the element of the sublime in horror - the sense of encountering something vast, unknowable, alien - was an easy sell. The wondrous can be much more chilling than the base or more overtly grotesque, exposing as it does the absurdity of existence and the irrelevance of the human, of humanity, in a vast and limitless universe. This collection takes that idea as a focus, and it's a fantastic theme. Too easily did I allow myself to be led on that path. For so long had I searched for something more, something greater, than this existence, and it was so tantalisingly close. The first thing that stands out to the reader is Mamatas' confident and nuanced understanding of the t...

 Disclaimer: Hellbound Books provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.      Before beginning, I feel like the expectation will be for the reviewer to reveal the worst 'date from hell' they've ever been on. However, I've never been on a truly disastrous date. Probably the worst was the time the waiter brought me a meal I hadn't ordered, and, not wanting to make a fuss, I just started eating – only for the waiter to return with my actual order and to try to reclaim the meal for the customer it was actually for. More than a decade on, that memory still makes me red with embarrassment, but it isn't a very entertaining story - unlike many in this volume. Enough about me, now to the actual book. Dates From Hell is a short story collection from Hellbound Publishing, who specialise in two things: new voices in horror writing, and themed anthologies. The theme of this particular collection, as you've probably guessed, is dates. The focu...