mikerickson reviewed The Atrocities by Jeremy C. Shipp
-
3 stars
A bite-sized gothic ghost story I blew through in a single sitting. Maybe a touch too short, and I was surprised to see this wasn't the first entry in a series.
We have an unreliable narrator who is clearly coming into this story having gone through some shit in her not too distant past, landing a job for a wealthy couple who... have recently gone through some shit of their own. For as short as this book is and how much time we spend describing how fucking creepy the house is (this is ~Gothic~ horror after all), there were some genuine twists and turns that had me going back and forth about what I thought was actually going on.
There's a tight cast of characters that's easy to keep track of, and only during the trippy nightmare sequences did I find myself struggling to follow the thread. The ending felt …
A bite-sized gothic ghost story I blew through in a single sitting. Maybe a touch too short, and I was surprised to see this wasn't the first entry in a series.
We have an unreliable narrator who is clearly coming into this story having gone through some shit in her not too distant past, landing a job for a wealthy couple who... have recently gone through some shit of their own. For as short as this book is and how much time we spend describing how fucking creepy the house is (this is ~Gothic~ horror after all), there were some genuine twists and turns that had me going back and forth about what I thought was actually going on.
There's a tight cast of characters that's easy to keep track of, and only during the trippy nightmare sequences did I find myself struggling to follow the thread. The ending felt a tad abrupt for my tastes, more like something I'd get from a much pared-down short story, but it could've been worse.
