I was excited to hear of another Micah Castle release and wasted no time in pre-ordering this beast. The cover was a definite selling point, and what a title! But saying all that I still went into this one blind (please pardon the pun). I was obviously expecting something scary and other-worldly, and this didn’t disappoint in either respect.

William is a young lad with not much going on in his life. Well, apart from being part of an ancient family who do questionable things to ladies. Yes, I’m talking about murder, kids. Oh, and eye removal, of course. We’re straight into the action here with a kill being stalked, before the inevitable happens.

We are then introduced to our protagonist, Detective Wolfe. He is definitely the cliché cop, ie. spending too much time on the job and not enough with his young family. Wolfe is actively involved in the investigation of the aforementioned eyeless body murder, before another corpse is discovered.

What makes things more difficult is the police are already searching for another serial killer in the area.

Things carry on like this for the most part, with Wolfe hassling his chief for more resources to catch this ‘new’ serial killer. We also see William going about his days, with his need to kill. And this need is very much an old family tradition, one he doesn’t entirely understand, but has been raised to never question his actions.

Before long, stuff happens bringing our two main characters together. And then things go off the charts.

Cosmic horror, the likes of which infect and plague the most vivid of nightmares, are delivered full-force. It’s a bit of a shift in tone, though I was waiting for things to go full-on weird, so I was happy with this. Things don’t end all rosy here, which is another tick for me.

If you fancy your police/crime procedure books to take a twist on the supernatural, then look no further.

Categories: book review

Tags: cosmic horror, death, gore, horror, horror novella, micah castle, murder, the women without eyes