An inventive and macabre new spin on malevolent body snatchers.
A rookie FBI agent stumbles into a supernatural mystery when a series of murders erupts in New York, starting with her partner.
Hogan and del Toro have an exceptional track record with supernatural thrillers—see The Strain Trilogy (2009-2011)—so this new series starring a novice FBI agent and a classic occult detective is a welcome gift to disciples of Lovecraft-ian fiction. Odessa Hardwicke is cast in the mold of Clarice Starling, a tough but self-doubting FBI agent still finding her way. She and her jaded partner, Walt Leppo, are first on the scene when a disgraced politician slays his wife and children. In the midst of this gruesome scene, Leppo unexpectedly and abruptly stabs the surviving child, forcing Odessa to shoot him dead, glimpsing a weird specter departing as he breathes his last. The narrative then jumps from the modern day to the Mississippi Delta circa 1962, where African American FBI agent Earl Solomon is on the trail of someone lynching white victims. Intertwined between these storylines is the origin story of our other primary character, John Blackwood, a seemingly immortal investigator modeled after Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence. These disparate threads converge as Odessa, unjustly exiled from the FBI, connects with a dying Solomon, who gives her insight into his odd fellowship with Blackwood. After Odessa delivers an appeal to a cryptic mailbox in Manhattan, Blackwood suddenly materializes, a gaunt, erudite, and awkward consort cursed to chase down a specific breed of evil in this world. The body count rises with a massacre on Long Island while Blackwood teaches Odessa about a twisted cult dating back to Mesopotamian times that affords a select few souls, the titular Hollow Ones, the ability to jump between bodies and find ecstasy in their host’s violent death. Readers of occult fiction from Poe to Richard Kadrey will instantly recognize the creepy vibes and likely enjoy the ride.
An inventive and macabre new spin on malevolent body snatchers.Pub Date: June 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-6174-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An impressive and surprising take on war-story tropes.
A doughboy makes a curious discovery at the front in this inventive metaphysical horror tale.
This novel by Kraus centers on Private Cyril Bagger, a U.S. soldier during World War I and the son of a bishop who died on the Lusitania; he’s taken his father’s Bible with him into the Army as a remembrance. He’s also a confidence man and shirker relegated to burial duty in the French countryside, which is fine with him: The work is grotesque (Kraus depicts wartime deaths in visceral detail) but keeps him from becoming a corpse himself. Alas, his commander has hand-picked him and four other “disreputable” soldiers for a suicide mission to rescue what sounds like an incessantly shrieking soldier. Cyril finds the source of the shrieking, which turns out to be—well, that’s tricky. Cyril sees her as a vaguely familiar woman, clothed in red and blue, bathed in bright light, and capable of magically rescuing him from the worst of German gunfire; members of his cohort see a mother, a former lover, and other women. So for the purposes of Kraus’ novel, the shrieker is a metaphor for the ways war stands in contrast to our deepest needs for care and safety. It’s a sweet sentiment, albeit one that Kraus coats in a lot of ugliness, particularly the seemingly endless human carnage. Kraus structures the novel as an extended run-on sentence (with paragraph breaks), giving the story a relentless and intense rhythm. As a veteran horror writer, he’s gifted at depictions of blood and guts and knows how to keep a story moving, but in its latter stages the novel is a philosophical one as well, concerned with humanity’s seemingly inborn need to wage war and what might counter it. The identity of the woman Cyril calls an angel is vague, but Kraus has a clear grasp on our worst impulses.
An impressive and surprising take on war-story tropes.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781668068458
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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