Author: A. R. James

Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: A Season of Monstrous Conceptions by Lina Rather

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: A Season of Monstrous Conceptions
Author: Lina Rather
Genre: Historical Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, LGBTQIA+
Publisher: tordotcom
Release Date: 31st October, 2023

Synopsis: In 17th-century London, unnatural babies are being born, with eyes made for the dark and webbed digits suited to the sea.

Sarah Davis is intimately familiar with such strangeness―having hidden her uncanny nature all her life and fled to London under suspicious circumstances, Sarah starts over as a midwife’s apprentice to a member of the illegal Worshipful Company of Midwives, hoping to carve out for herself an independent life. But with each new unnatural birth, the fear in London grows of the Devil’s work.

When the wealthy Lady Wren hires her to see her through her pregnancy, Sarah quickly becomes a favorite of her husband, the famous architect Lord Christopher Wren, whose interest in the uncanny borders on obsession. Sarah soon finds herself caught in a web of magic and intrigue created by those who want to use her power for themselves, and whose pursuits threaten to unmake the earth itself.

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

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Title: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles
Author: Malka Older
Genre: Science Fiction, Cosy Crime, LGBTQIA+
Publisher: Tordotcom
Release Date: 13th February, 2024

Synopsis: Investigator Mossa and Scholar Pleiti reunite to solve a new mystery in the follow-up to the cozy space-opera detective mystery The Mimicking of Known Successes, which Hugo Award-winning author Charlie Jane Anders called “an utter triumph.”

Mossa has returned to Valdegeld on a missing person’s case, for which she’ll once again need Pleiti’s insight. Seventeen students and staff members have disappeared from Valdegeld University―yet no one has noticed. The answers to this case may lie on the moon of Io―Mossa’s home―and the history of Jupiter’s original settlements during humanity’s exodus from Earth.

But Pleiti’s faith in her life’s work as a scholar of the past has grown precarious, and this new case threatens to further destabilize her dreams for humanity’s future, as well as her own.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Unquiet by E. Saxey

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Unquiet
Author: E. Saxey
Genre: Gothic Horror, Historical Fiction
Publisher: Titan Books
Release date: 18 July 2023
Page count: 320

Synopsis: An intrepid young woman journeys across Victorian London and beyond in search of the truth behind the presumed death, and reappearance one icy evening, of her brother-in-law, in this gripping and mysterious gothic horror.

Perfect for fans of The Haunting of Hill House and readers of Sarah Waters.

London 1893. Judith lives a solitary life, save for the maid who haunts the family home in which she resides. Mourning the death of her brother-in-law, Sam, who drowned in an accident a year earlier, she distracts herself with art classes, books and strange rituals, whilst the rest of her family travel the world.

One icy evening, conducting a ritual in her garden she discovers Sam, alive. He has no memory of the past year, and remembers little of the accident that appeared to take his life.

Desperate to keep his reappearance a secret until she can discover the truth about what happened to him, Judith journeys outside of the West London Jewish community she calls home, to the scene of Sam’s accident. But there are secrets waiting there for Judith, things that have been dormant for so long, and if she is to uncover all of them, she may have to admit to truths that she has been keeping from herself.

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Articles / Interviews

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An Interview With Author E. Saxey

E. Saxey is an ungendered Londoner who works in universities. Their fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Queers Destroy Science Fiction and in anthologies including Tales from the Vatican Vaults and The Lowest Heaven. They live in London and tweet at @esaxey.

Firstly, Unquiet is a stunning book. Thank you for sharing it with the world. It already means a great deal to me personally. What do you want people to take away from it?

 

Ideally I’d like people to find it enchanting and excruciating, a bit of a balance. There are some eerie and agonizing parts, and it would be great haunt readers and generally put them through the ringer, but there’s also art and love and hope.

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Emmett Nahil on Let Me Out

Emmett Nahil is a writer, narrative designer, game developer, and literary jack of all trades living in a haunted town north of Boston, Massachusetts. He’s interested in intersectional analysis, diverse representation for other queer Middle Easterners, and bringing more nuanced work to genre fiction. He’s been known to favor horror, along with sci-fi, fantasy, and really weird speculative literature. Let Me Out is his debut graphic novel.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Let Me Out by Emmett Nahil and George Williams

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Let Me Out
Author: Emmett Nahil and George Williams
Publisher: Oni Press
Genre: Horror, Occult, Supernatural
Release date: 3rd October, 2023

Synopsis: After a body is found in the woods, Mitch Sahadi and his friends are accused by the local police of devil worship and murder. The gang decides the best way to get revenge is to embrace the devil. If you can’t beat the accusations, why not make them true?

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Epeolatry Book Review: Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson

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Title: Bloom
Author: Delilah S. Dawson
Publisher: Titan Books
Genre: Horror, Thriller, LGBTQIA+
Release date: 3rd October, 2023

Synopsis: A sweet sapphic romance takes a deadly dark turn in this sharp-as-a-knife novella with the slow build menace of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber―from a New York Times-bestselling author hailed by Chuck Wendig as “a storyteller working at the top of her class.”

Rosemary meets Ash at the farmers’ market. Ash―precise, pretty, and practically perfect―sells bars of soap in delicate pastel colors, sprinkle-spackled cupcakes stacked on scalloped stands, beeswax candles, jelly jars of honey, and glossy green plants.

Ro has never felt this way about another woman; with Ash, she wants to be her and have her in equal measure. But as her obsession with Ash consumes her, she may find she’s not the one doing the devouring… Told in lush, delectable prose, this is a deliciously dark tale of passion taking an unsavory turn…

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Never-Ending Party by Joe Corallo, Rachel Pollack, Eva Cabrera

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Title: The Never-Ending Party
Author: Joe Corallo, Rachel Pollack, 
Art: Eva Cabrera (Illustrator)
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Genre: Horror, Occult, Fantasy, LGBTQIA+
Release date: 23rd August, 2023

Synopsis: Twenty-five years after losing her lover Lulu in a cult ritual for Dionysus gone wrong, Mindy Morrow is trying to live her life and put the past behind her.

Unfortunately for Mindy, the past won’t let her go. While she’s taking care of her friend Flavia, her frenemy Kate is trying to lure Mindy back into the old club scene, and something more ancient and terrifying awaits them all.

From Joe Corallo and Rachel Pollack, the winner of The World Fantasy Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Nebula nominee comes a story about dark pasts and the supernatural.

Collects The Never-Ending Party #1–#5 from the ComiXology original digital series, in print for the first time!

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