EUSECT

Trigger warnings for this review for discussions of gore!

This is a short story collection with a focus on the gorey, the messy, the dark things. If you like horror and gore, I don’t think you will need a lot of convincing after enjoying the gorgeous cover to pick this book up. But if you need some more convincing, let me tell you that this is an incredibly well written and very intriguing collection of horror short stories (& it features some great art inside as well!). It includes multiple genres of horror and from cosmic horror to deep sea horror to gruesome body horror, there’s something here for everybody who enjoys the macabre. Most stories feature gore or other forms of body horror, but some focus on more interpersonal horror and for that I just want to mention that I loved the way this book handled trigger warnings. They are provided at the end of the book, but mentioned in the beginning. This makes them easy to check out, without running into the risk of accidentally spoilering yourself, if you choose to skip them.

Besides the cover setting the mood for the stories included here, there’s another cool aspect that I enjoyed at the beginning of the book: It includes a word definition for the title and if you’re a gorehound like me, I think you can understand the giddy joy I felt when reading “to cut something purely for the enjoyment of cutting; generally understood to be enacted upon something living or once living”. Just lovely!

While not every short story was perfectly suited to me, I really enjoyed most of them and felt that most managed to really work with the genre of short story well. Only one story was too short for me to fully enjoy it and I still adored all the concepts presented here and found them to be explored in interesting ways and with some great detailed and gruesome imagery. There’s a roommate with a dangerous curse, deep-sea scientists, self-inflicted amputations, women with weird fixations on corpses and more. My personal favorite stories were “Eusect” (the self-amputation story), “Aurozoa Sleep” (the deep-sea scientist horror), “In Miriam’s Arms” (the corpse-obsessed woman), “We, the Water, the Stars” (a scholar of the cosmic embarks on a sea voyage, but his plans there are sinister) and “Tender Writhing” (a man wrecked by grief over the loss of his partner cannot let him go). As I already mentioned the stories tend to be intimate, exploring character’s reactions to facing the horrors or their descent into depravity or desperation. Despite being very short, these stories managed to provide great character (and world) building and I found myself deeply intrigued by most of them.

All in all, this is an incredible short story collection and if you enjoy your horror gorey, queer and with a variety of bodily fluids, check it out. For myself I definitely have found a new author whose work I will be keeping an eye on!