Okay, so we can all agree that Alien is amazing, right? That the xenomorph is a genuinely terrifying creation and something that we’ve all had at least one nightmare about, yes? Good.
So imagine you are one of the few human settlements left surviving on a land razed by xenomorphs (or ‘demons’, as you know them to be). You live like insects inside a mountainside, clinging to life by the thinnest of margins. Your settlement sends it’s young and able-bodied to trade essential items with other colonies, who rarely come home alive. It is both an honour and a life-threatening duty. You have only hand-held weapons and, if you cross paths with a demon, you are trained not to fight but to use your ‘little friend’ (a knife you keep on you at all times) to tear out your throat, lest the demons carry you away to the Demon Mother at Black Smoke Mountain and you are never heard from again.
ARE YOU DOWN WITH THAT? Because I was SO DOWN with that! Don’t get me wrong, I love a good claustrophobic Alien spaceship story, but claustrophobic Alien MEDIEVAL story?!?! YES PLEASE.
I’m calling this ‘guilty gore’ because that’s precisely what it is to me. This is not high-brow. I don’t think the version I read had even been proofread, there were so many typographical errors in it. But that didn’t bother me at all because the story was so unique and hooked me in from the start.
I realise this novel is not going to win any literary awards, but it single handedly got me through the first 3 days of nasty COVID infection and for that, I will be forever grateful. An excellent distraction during a time when it felt like my own blood was turning to acid.
5 hidey suits of out 5.