josephdante's reviews
766 reviews

The title of this collection is absolutely dead-on: here you will find dark, unsettling stories with bite and characters that get under your skin. Magen has an incredibly fertile imagination—these stories cover a wide variety of weird premises that run the gamut of genre blurring, but one thing is always clear: they will make you uncomfortable. The worlds these characters inhabit are always somehow off, or slightly askew. There’s a disturbance in their universe. The stories are unflinching in their portrayal of characters in situations that are often abusive or violent, whether it is sexual, physical, or emotional. So go in prepared. They are held together loosely by creepy recurring themes and images, such as octopodes and holes that devour everything. Most of these stories have an element of supernatural or otherworldly horror, but the origins are often borne out of a disturbed psychological landscape. Magen’s strengths lie in these weird premises, as well as character development and pacing. My favorite stories were the longer ones in the collection, such as “Molly’s Entropy,” “The Deal,” and “At the Heart of Mina Jones.” I’m not especially well-read in horror fiction—I read more poetry and “literary” fiction—but there really is something here for everyone, provided you can stomach the bleakness.