I recently watched, The Empty Man, and I have some thoughts. First off, the trailer is a little misleading. It makes the movie look like one of those urban legends, supernatural killer-type movies. In a way, that’s not wrong; however, this movie is so much more than just that trope. This movie solidly falls into cosmic horror.
I’ll first give you some general, non-spoiler-filled thoughts. Then I’ll move into a spoiler-filled section where we can discuss some of the finer points of the film.

The film was released in 2020, and somehow, I missed it. I’m guessing it got lost in the pandemic craziness or something similar. The film was directed by David Prior and starred many folks I wasn’t familiar with other than Stephen Root, who has a very small part in the movie. However, everyone did a great job acting, and I have to say the production quality of this movie was excellent.
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The official synopsis is:
On the trail of a missing girl, an ex-cop comes across a secretive group attempting to summon a terrifying supernatural entity.

​Simple enough, right? And yes, that is pretty much the gist of it. However, the longer the movie plays, the more complex this story gets, and let me tell you, this movie goes on for a long time. The run time is two hours and seventeen minutes, which is a long time for a horror film. About twenty minutes of this film is in the prologue, which runs for almost twenty minutes and follows a group of hikers in Bhutan that come across a monstrous-looking skeleton nestled in a crevasse. 

After that, we meet the main character, James Lasombra, played by James Badge Dale. Right off the bat, they portray Lasombra as living alone, working at a security/lock shop, and dealing with some past trauma as he is shown taking anti-depressants, and you catch a snippet of memory/flashback of his wife and child in a car. You can guess what happens. I found the choice of character name interesting because, in Spanish, La sombra means “the shadow.” The Shadow knows… 
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The movie jumps in pretty quick with the mystery as the next-door neighbor girl ends up missing. The girl talked with the main character the day before, and given that Lasombra is an ex-cop, he decides to help out the mom (who the film teases has some sort of shady background with Lasombra anyway). Not to spoil anything, but his investigations lead him on a long, crazy journey that introduces him to the concept of the Empty Man. According to legend, if you blow on an empty bottle on a bridge and think about the Empty Man, he’ll show up in three days. His investigation leads him through a lot of weird twists and turns, ending with some dark discoveries.
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Overall, The Empty Man is a good flick. I love the cosmic horror aspect of it and even some revelations (more on that in the spoiler section). However, I think the film is a bit long, plus it is misleading with what the trailer portrays the movie to be with what it ends up being. In other words, the film has a bit of identity crisis and leaves a lot of questions at the end. For that reason, I give this movie a 4/5 instead of 5/5.
 
Now, for the spoilers. Leave now if you don’t want to know. 

The movie starts out with the four friends hiking in Bhutan, as I mentioned above. This takes place like 20+ years before the main story. One of the hikers hears something like a hollow whistling (i.e., blowing into a bottle), and as he tracks the source, he falls into a crevasse. One of the other hikers goes down to help his buddy but finds him sitting cross-legged in front of some crazy-looking skeleton that is more monster than human. He is in a state of shock and unresponsive. They get him out of the crevasse and begin to haul him down the mountain, but a storm causes the hikers to seek shelter in a nearby cabin they find. While at the cabin, one of the hikers begins to see things in the storm (a massive figure in flowing, tattered, black robes). At one point, they can’t find the unresponsive hiker but see his tracks leading down to a huge footbridge that spans across a canyon. The hiker, who was seeing things, produces a knife and kills the other two before jumping off the cliff, leaving the unresponsive hiker sitting at the bridge.

So, during Lasombra’s investigation, he ends up finding not only did the neighbor-girl go missing but all of her friends as well. All of the friends he can investigate has ties to a place called the Pontifex Institute. When Lasombra shows up there, he finds the institute is basically a cult trying to communicate with entities from other dimensions, one of which is the Empty Man. He also discovers the institute believes they can summon or manifest things into reality by concentrating hard enough. These manifestations are called, Tulpas. (Some believe Tulpas are real…you can look it up if you like).

During his investigation, we get more of the cosmic horror angle coming from his discoveries. He eventually ends up at a hospital where there is a man in a vegetative state. Members of the institute “worship” this comatose man, and Lasombra finds out the man has been in a coma for 23 years and moved around from facility to facility. Of course, this man is the hiker from Bhutan.

Lasombra eventually finds the missing neighbor girl with the man in the hospital. She reveals that Lasombra is a Tulpa, created three days ago to be a vessel for the Empty Man since the hiker’s body is falling to the strain of holding the Empty Man now. Of course, Lasombra thinks it’s bullshit, but the girl can tell him all the essential details of his past, and when he calls the girl’s mother, she acts like she’s never heard of Lasombra. Lasombra returns home and finds it is empty, void of all belongings and furniture.
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Now going off the deep end, Lasombra gets a gun and heads back to the institute. While there, he runs into the Empty Man, who basically enters Lasombra’s body. During this scene, the Empty Man takes on a different form from what we’ve seen so far. He looks surprisingly a lot like H.P. Lovecraft’s Nyarlathotep, which I found was a neat nod. 

After this happens, Lasombra returns to the hospital and kills the hiker. When he steps out into the reception area, all the hospital workers stop what they are doing and stare at him. Then as one, they drop to their knees and worship Lasombra as the vessel for the Empty Man.
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So… my biggest issue with the film is at this point. If Lasombra is a Tulpa like neighbor girl says, how do we see him interacting with the mom in earlier scenes? How do we see him living in his home full of his possessions? What about his place of work? Were all of those hallucinations? It doesn’t make sense to me. But, that being said, it was still a good movie, and I enjoyed it. 

I recently watched a film called, The Dark and the Wicked. It came out in 2020, directed by Bryan Bertino. Here’s the official synopsis:

On a secluded farm in a nondescript rural town, a man is slowly dying. His family gathers to mourn, and soon a darkness grows, marked by waking nightmares and a growing sense that something evil is taking over the family.
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The premise sounded interesting, and the trailer looked creepy.

After watching it, I have some thoughts. First off, yeah, it’s creepy. It nails slow-burn dread and tension to the point where there are spots in the movie where you know something will happen, and it has you squirming in your seat. There’s a particular scene where the mother is cutting carrots with a big knife, and we know from the trailer that she loses fingers. So the whole time, you’re just waiting for it to happen, and goodness gracious, they take their time with it, but in a good way.

I’m not going to get into spoilers for this film, but there really isn’t much to spoil. I liked the setting, the atmosphere, and the acting was well done by everyone in it.

This story is definitely steeped in the supernatural. We never get a concrete answer to what’s going on, but they infer some things and leave it up to you. 

By no means was the film perfect. For one, I felt like they could have developed the plot a bit more and some of the characters. I never really cared about any of them much. Instead, the characters are thrust into this situation and reacting to all the horrible things going on. Otherwise, I enjoyed this film.
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I give it a 4/5. If you like creeping dread, then give it a watch. 

Since I wrote my last post, I have been so freaking busy! Sometimes I wonder if I've stretched myself too thin. For example. In November, I participated (and won) National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50k words in the month of November. I did it. I've only successfully completed NaNoWriMo once before. This time I around, I spread my focus around writing on six different projects. I finished five of them. December was dedicated to editing all that mush into something readable. Aside from those stories, I have also ghostwritten a story and an article, started ghostwriting another story, edited another person's novel, edited three children's books, started an etsy shop, and also started a small press. All of this while taking care of my kids, exercising, and practicing the banjo. Oh! I also helped set up and run a Kickstarter project, started mentoring another HWA member, and also run my local HWA chapter.

You might be thinking, whoa, that's a lot of stuff! And you are correct. Sometimes it's overwhelming. Other times the stars align and I can manage to get it all taken care of no problem. But when doing things like this, something has to give, and so far, that something has been my own horror writing. I've written a few pieces under two different pen names, plus the two ghostwriting gigs, but when it comes down to it, my own, C.R. Langille stories have suffered. I'm currently working on a novella that should have been completed a long time ago, plus I'm sitting on a grimdark fantasy that is 75% drafted. I plan on finishing both of them up this year and releasing them, and hopefully even writing my next novel that is a creature-feature that's a mix between Cabin in the Woods and Alone. 

Anyway, what am I getting at with all this? Oh yes, I'm busy. But so far it's a good busy. When it starts to become a hassle, then I will reevaluate my priorities and something will have to drop. Maybe I'll take on less ghostwriting gigs? Maybe I'll slow down on the pen names and focus on my own stuff? Who knows. What I do know, and what I'm trying to get across, is know your limits, or you'll burn so hot you'll flame out and lose your drive. 

Keep on, keeping on. What are you all working on these days? 

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Holy crap! This audiobook has been in the works for most of this year. It took months of coordination, auditions, production, and quality control. I was afraid it wasn't going to make in time for Halloween, but I was pleasantly surprised by the audiobook fairies. 

I've talked about this collection a number of times, and it represents a slice of my publishing career. Each of the stories within were previously published in various anthologies and magazines. Once I had the rights back, I decided to slap them together into my own collection of tales. I talk about the background of each story within, letting you know where it was first published, and some things surrounding the creation of the story. 

This audiobook is narrated by the talented Kris DeCarle, and I have to say, I am super impressed with her ability to spin a yarn. I've included a few of links below. One is if you want to join Audible. If you join you can get the audiobook for free. The second link, takes you to the Amazon page where you can either purchase the book (in electronic or physical form) or the audiobook. I included a third link into the mix. If you want to purchase a signed copy of the book, you can get that direct from me for $5 plus shipping. 

​The storm rages on, leaving death and destruction in its path. With the chaos comes strange tidings and wicked ordeals.

From C.R. Langille, author of the Dark Tyrant Series comes a collection of weird and horrifying stories spanning all across history: the Spanish Conquest; the Old West; present day; and even a desolate, apocalyptic future.

Haunted hotel rooms, mysterious, mind-bending spots, infernal cargo, and misplaced wishes abound in this collection.

Stories Included:
The Spot
Brine & Blood
The Deep Well
All Aboard
Damned
The Scratch
Horishi Tom

Only one thing is certain when the storm passes by--nothing will ever be the same again.

Want a signed copy? It's only $5 plus shipping.

There are good horror books out there, there are bad horror books out there, then there are books that I read that will stick with me for some time. We Need to Do Something by Max Booth III is one of those books.
In short, the book is about a family that is going through some serious marital trouble right at the same time that a tornado warning is issued and they have to hole up in a tiny bathroom together. Just the setup alone is tense! Throw in some odd weirdness, and this book doesn’t just crawl under your skin, it rips it off and wears it like a formal tuxedo.

While not similar in story, this novella gave me the same feeling and emotion as Penpal by Dathan Auerbach, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, and The Merciless by Danielle Vega. We Need to Do Something evokes a sense of dread much like those other books. Plus, while not spoiling it in the least, the ending was somewhat ambiguous, leaving it up to you, the reader, to figure what you think really happened. I love those endings. 

The novella is short, so Booth wastes no time jumping right in. I was also very impressed that he was able to get us connected and invested with the characters so quickly.

Do yourself a favor, read this book! Do it now. And remember, it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. 

 

Warning, spoilers abound! 

I want to talk about the ending of this book. On the outside, we have a family trapped in their bathroom because a tree fell through the house and is blocking the door due to a tornado. No implausible in the slightest. Even the fact that they are trapped in there for days is not outside the realm of possibilities if the tornado was big enough. 

However, there is a sub-plot dealing with the POV character and her friend/love-interest, Amy. The two conducted a ritual that could have caused the craziness. One could dismiss it as nonsense and coincidence, or you could choose to believe that the two girls did, in fact, cause the apocalyptic destruction. These are the kind of endings that I love. The kind that make you think and wonder, and ultimately leaves it up to you, the reader, to decide what's going on. 

Near the end, the POV character is seeing all sorts of horrifying images. However, she's drugged and can't be trusted. So did she really see her friend appear with all the black tentacles controlling her body? Or was it part of her drug-fueled stupor? Her mother escaped the bathroom and came back frightened and rattled, but who knows what she saw, not to mention the mother is under A LOT of stress and isn't in her right mind either. 

Hands down, the most brutal aspect of this book is when the little brother dies from the rattlesnake bite. When the book started, I had an inkling that he was going to die. When the snake shows up, it only cements what is to come. However, it didn't make it any easier to read or experience. My hat's off to Max Booth III, he executed that scene perfectly. 

​Anyway, read this book. Seriously. 

​I recently watched, You Should Have Left, starring, Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried. Here’s the short synopsis according to IMDB: A former banker, his actress wife, and their spirited daughter book a vacation at an isolated modern home in the Welsh countryside where nothing is quite as it seems. In a nutshell, yes. However, the story itself is a little more complex. The synopsis fails to mention that the banker (Bacon) was acquitted of murder charges back in the day for the death of his previous wife and that the actress (Seyfried) is very busy with movie shoots and always has her nose buried in her cellphone. She has film shoots scheduled for London, so the entire family decides to go together so they can spend more time with one another and end up renting a large house in the Welsh countryside. 

It’s a simple setup and we don’t really need much more than that. Early on we see Bacon’s character struggling with anger issues and confidence issues that stem from the age difference between Bacon and Seyfried. Even during the trailer, my wife was making comments on the age gap (it’s almost double, Seyfried being 34 and Bacon being 61). However, they address the gap in the movie and it is a source of contention. The other source, of course, being Bacon’s past with his wife. Even though he was acquitted of the charges and found innocent, everyone seems to believe he killed his wife (she drowned in the bathtub after overdosing on too many pills).

The other major player in this movie, is the daughter, played by Avery Tillu Essex, and I have to say, she was probably the best actor in this whole production. She’s nine years old, but in the movie, she plays a six-year-old. She nailed it! Wonderfully done!
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Once they get to the house in Wales is when the creepiness gets cranked up. Not to spoil anything, but the crew did an outstanding job with some subtle horror using the background in this film. Ever since watching the movie, Insidious, I have always kept an eye on the background of horror movies. This one didn’t disappoint.
The movie doesn’t waste any time ramping up the horror and creepiness and Bacon begins to descend further and further into his own paranoia, madness, and rage. While there wasn’t anything super original with this movie, I still found it enjoyable and would recommend it to fans of haunted houses or weird horror. Overall, I give the film a 4/5.
 
Now, on to the spoilery section of goodness. 

Still here?

Good.
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So where this movie excels is in the details. The house itself plays an important role. We find out later that supposedly the devil built it to collect souls, and that over years it has taken on different forms. The devil builds it, God destroys it, and the devil builds it over. The house itself is bigger on the inside than the outside, and it can shift its layout at will. This becomes quite disconcerting for the characters when the house decides to trap one or more of them.

We also find out that the house reached out to Bacon’s character. In a nutshell, it emailed itself to them as available for rent and Bacon assumed that his wife wanted it and vice versa. Once it got him, he couldn’t leave.
At one point, Bacon finds out that his wife has been having an affair and has a second phone. He gets angry and kicks her out of the house. That’s when the spectral shit hits the fan. Things get crazy, it takes his daughter and tries to trick him. He eventually gets her back and they take off on foot for the nearby town four miles down the road. However, the road leads them right back to the house (as haunted roads and houses do). Fast-forward a bit, and we find out that Bacon killed his wife and the devil has him and tells him he’s not getting out, but he can let his daughter go if he wants, or she can stay with him for eternity.

The next morning the wife comes back and he loads the daughter up and confesses. After that, he returns to the house to face his punishment.

The movie plays on the shifting floorplan quite well, and also plays with time-shifts. I loved how they portrayed the first time shift as it’s the first night in the house. Bacon leaves his wife upstairs to go turn off all the lights and we get a shot of the camera. He walks all through the house and is kind of amazed at how the doors keep leading to other spots and how big the place is. He ends up finding the laundry room with a creepy polaroid pic on the wall of a shadowy figure. By the time he gets back upstairs, for him it only felt like 10 minutes, but the next shot of the clock shows it was five hours.

Anyway, watch the movie, let me know what you thought. As I mentioned above, the concept isn’t new or original, but I think they did a great job with this one. 

I just finished up The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie. I was given a copy in exchange for an honest review. This isn’t the first time I’ve read Lillie’s work. I read The Ceiling Man a few years back when it first came out, and if you haven’t read that, then you are missing out. If you like Stephen King, it is a must-read.

The Cuckoo Girls is a collection of short stories, some of which have appeared in other anthologies, and some of which are original to this collection. Lillie’s style of horror is often very subtle and psychological, and she excels at her craft. I found most of the stories contained inside wonderful reads, but these jumped out as special to me:

“The Cuckoo Girls”: A woman and her sister encounter a strange teenage girl who appears everywhere they go. The girl seems harmless, but strange things start to happen. This story was fun because it’s a head-scratcher. It’s weird, wonderful, and creepy in its own way.

“In Loco Parentis”: A creepy story about a mother whose child isn’t the same anymore. I don’t want to spoil it, but this one gets under your skin and snuggles with you.

“Alyce-with-a-Y”: Lillie takes Alice in Wonderland, which is already kind of a crazy and unsettling story in its own right, and turns up the creep factor. It’s a fresh new take on things in Wonderland.

“And One for Azazel (with Jellybeans)”: One part Twilight Zone, one part Shirley Jackson, and one part Color Out of Space. This was probably one of my favorites of the collection. The ending is brutal.

“Wishing you the Best Year Ever”: What does a strange visitor in a tree, prophecies, and baseball have in common? Apparently, a lot and since this is a horror collection, it isn’t going to turn out good.

If you like subtle, slow-burn, horror, then do yourself a favor and check out this collection. You won’t be disappointed. 

I did an interview with Patricia Lillie awhile back. If you want to check it out you can read it here. 

I recently watched the Color Out of Space directed by Richard Stanley and starring Nicholas Cage. Overall, I enjoyed the film and it was nice to see a Lovecraft story get a big-budget movie adaptation. I am interested to see where Stanley takes his next two films (allegedly is he doing the Dunwich Horror next and then a third film all set in the same cinematic universe. The way they phrase that makes me think there will be some connection). While this movie was good, it wasn’t perfect. To summarize, there was some bad writing and dialogue, and some head-scratching moments, but we’ll get into that a little later. Plus, I found Nicholas Cage distracting in this film. He would go into some moments where he was supposed to be going crazy, and boy did he go crazy, but to the point that I was left scratching my head on what he was aiming at.

For those of you not familiar, the Color Out of Space is based on a short story by the same name written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1927 and is about a farm out in the Arkham countryside. A meteorite lands near the farm and begins to change the surrounding flora and fauna. The plants twist and change, and the animals become misshapen beasts and go mad. The people begin to exhibit the same changes as well. The film follows the same premise, but instead the story is set in the present day.

First, let’s hit the pros of this movie. I’m a huge fan of Lovecraftian horror and was excited to see this film. There was some amazing cinematography, especially with the opening shots of the forest and country. They even had a narrator reciting lines from the actual story which added to the tone and atmosphere of the piece. Imagine hearing this while we get some wonderful shots of the forest:

“West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight.”
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The next great thing was all the nods to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Some serious and others just tongue and cheek. For example, the daughter (Lavinia) was rocking a copy of the Necronomicon, which was fun, but at the same time posed some issues. The news company had an elder sign on their news van.

Some of the effects were cheesy, especially the CGI stuff; however, there were other effects, that I think were practical that reminded me of Evil Dead and those were great. The creature that we see near the end had a very Evil Dead feel.

The story is great and weird, especially as it moves along. I loved Tommy Chong’s character and I think he did an excellent job with it. There’s a creepy scene with Tommy Chong near the end. I don’t want to spoil it though.
Overall, if you like weird, cosmic horror, then check this film out.
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Now, on to the spoilers.

Now, let’s talk about the Necronomicon. If this is indeed set in Lovecraft’s mythical Arkham area, which it is, and there is the Miskatonic University, which there is because there is a surveyor from the university, then I have to believe that the Necronomicon is, in fact, a real thing as well in this world. Which, we find out through the storytelling, it is indeed. However, in Lovecraft’s world, the Necronomicon was an ancient text written by the Mad Arab, Abdul Al-Hazred

Lavinia is seen at the start of the film casting a spell. We’re made to believe that she’s using witchcraft by the way she’s dressed and the words she’s using. We find out through the spell that she’s trying to get rid of her mother’s cancer. Enter the student surveyor from Miskatonic who happens upon her in the woods, mid-spell. He is enthralled with what’s going on and ends up startling her. She quickly tells him that this is private land and he’s trespassing and that he interrupted her ritual. He askes if its type A or B witchcraft (which I’m sorry to say I forgot, I think he asked if it was Gardinian {referring to Gardner who started Wicca} or something else. She asks him which he thinks it is and replies with one and she says wrong. We’re led to believe that it was the other type of witchcraft when in reality she was conducting a ritual from the Necronomicon. This becomes apparent later in the film when she whips the book out and starts casting another spell and carving symbols into her body with a razor blade. We also see that she isn’t as affected as the rest of the family when the fecal matter is hitting the fan, perhaps due to the spells she casts. So with that being said, we can infer that she perhaps caused this whole thing by “summoning” the color creature from out of space.

Now here’s my problem with the whole thing. In Lovecraft’s work, the Necronomicon is a rare text with only a few copies out there in the world. It’s a very dangerous book capable of causing a lot of harm. The copy they showed looked like something you’d buy at a book store, like some sort of novelty. I found it pretty quickly on Amazon. So if this thing is the real deal in the movie, but you can buy it online or at Barnes and Noble then the Lovecraft Cinematic Universe is in big trouble.

​Shortly after the opening scene, the meteorite hits, seeming affecting the seven-year-old son, Jack the most as he can hear a loud buzzing. What kills me is after it lands, they all go outside and start poking the damn thing. I guess they don’t care about possible radiation or whatnot. Cage’s character seems to smell some god awful stink, but no one else does. It doesn’t take long before odd plants start popping up, the animals are acting strange, and the madness increases. 

The flora and fauna continue to change and we start to see that animals are fusing together. At one point we see a crazy llama creature that looks like it could have come out of Carpenter’s The Thing. Then, in one heart-wrenching scene, Jack and the mother get hit by a beam of light and are fused. It’s tough to watch because you can hear the pain in Jack’s cries throughout the whole thing. The mom can’t talk anymore and is only able to make aggravated mewing noises and groans. This combo-creature continues to morph until it becomes this, thing, that crawls around like a crab or spider, devoid of human emotion and purely animalistic. This was the Evil Dead moment for me as this creature looked like something Sam Raimi would have cooked up.

Finally, in one scene we get a glimpse of the creature’s homeworld. Wanna talk cosmic horror? It’s a world of wriggling masses. Loved it. 

​As I mentioned before, this film wasn’t perfect, but it left me wanting more and looking forward to Stanley’s next two films. 

For my next, Women in Horror Month feature, I’m happy to present To Be Devoured by Sara Tantlinger. Tantlinger is a Bram Stoker Award-winning poet and I believe this is her first published novella. Here’s the synopsis:

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What does carrion taste like? Andi has to know. The vultures circling outside her home taunt and invite her to come understand the secrets hiding in their banquet of decay. Fascination morphs into an obsessive need to know what the vultures know. Andi turns to Dr. Fawning, but even the therapist cannot help her comprehend the secrets she’s buried beneath anger-induced blackouts.

Her girlfriend, Luna, tries to help Andi battle her inner darkness and infatuation with the vultures. However, the desire to taste dead flesh, to stitch together wings of her own and become one with the flock sends Andi down a twisted, unforgivable path. Once she understands the secrets the vultures conceal, she must decide between abandoning the birds of prey or risk turning her loved ones into nothing more than meals to be devoured.


What a wonderful and disturbing tale from Tantlinger. Without spoiling anything, I have to say the downward spiral of the main character is horrifying and very well written. I enjoyed getting into Andi's head and watching the story play out. Tantlinger has an amazing eye for the visceral and many of her scenes made me cringe (in a good way). If you like bloody horror and ever wondered what raw meat might taste like (you know, that itch in the back of your brain that keeps asking what it would feel like to tear meat with your teeth and feel the splatter of hot blood on your cheeks...don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about, it's there, inside you, gnawing its way through your gut) then do yourself a favor and join the committee.