About this item
Highlights
- Angels and insects, holes in the known world's fabric and what comes out of them, the love of death and the death of love.
- Author(s): Gemma Files
- 372 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Horror
Description
About the Book
Angels and insects, holes in the known world's fabric and what comes out of them, the love of death and the death of love. In award-winning horror author Gemma Files's seventh collection of short fiction, the numinous and the awful tango together through a collapsing series of not-so-alternate realities, and everyone they touch emerges changed, whether or not they may have wanted to be. This is fantasy of the darkest sort, horror-cured, marinating in its own transformative juices.Book Synopsis
Angels and insects, holes in the known world's fabric and what comes out of them, the love of death and the death of love. In award-winning horror author Gemma Files's seventh collection of short fiction, the numinous and the awful tango together through a collapsing series of not-so-alternate realities, and everyone they touch emerges changed, whether or not they may have wanted to be. This is fantasy of the darkest sort, horror-cured, marinating in its own transformative juices. So enter a fractured universe of creepy delights, one where the oldest tropes are turned inside out and wrung for their oddest components, as forgotten gods and monsters cavort beneath a storm of BLOOD FROM THE AIR.Formerly a film critic, journalist, screenwriter and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published five collections of short work, three collections of speculative poetry, a Weird Western trilogy, a story-cycle and a stand-alone novel (Experimental Film, which won the 2015 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst Award for Best Adult Novel). Her collection In That Endlessness, Our End won both the Bram Stoker Award and the This Is Horror Award in that category for 2021.
Review Quotes
Praise for Gemma Files
"Gemma Files's stories are always so smart and humane, and overwhelm the reader with a true sense of wonder, awe, and horror. She is, simply put, one of the most powerful and unique voices in weird fiction today."
-Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World
"When we speak of the best in contemporary horror and weird fiction, we must speak of Gemma Files."
-Laird Barron, author of Worse Angels
"Gemma Files has one of the great dark imaginations in fiction-visionary, transgressive, and totally original."
-Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy
"Boldly, brazenly, Gemma Files pushes her hands deep into the red and seeping unconscious places and finds the bits of treasure worth pulling back out into the light."
-Caitlín R. Kiernan, author of Houses Under the Sea
"Files' prose is terse and muscular yet highly poetic. Her stories are equally full of pain and humanity, injustice and solace. And they enter your brain like a spike between the eyes."
-Dale L. Sproule, Rue Morgue Magazine
"Traditionally, those horror protagonists who catch sight even briefly of the naked malevolence of the world tend to die, go mad, or forget what they have seen. But Files offers a fourth alternative: meaningful survival, accepting responsibility for those around you, getting on with your chosen work. You might think of it as optimistic nihilism. This renewed sense of what horror fiction can do will resonate deeply for readers who find themselves overwhelmed by the increasingly prominent and disturbing images of the real world."
-Helen Marshall, Los Angeles Review of Books