Epeolatry Book Review: We All Go Into the Dark by Kevin Lucia

This, for me, was one of those books you don’t want to put down and you don’t want it to end. It’s not really a novel but I’m not sure I’d classify it as a short story collection either—all the stories tie in to a main story. Kevin Lucia does an excellent job of making each story stand on its own but at the same time each is still part of the big picture.

We are introduced to an author who is called to a lawyer’s office about a mysterious inheritance, and that meeting leads us into each tale. 

The first one is entitled “Zoo Town.” A late middle-aged man is taking his last vacation from work (he is being forced out of his job). As an urban explorer, he picks random abandoned places to visit, and usually camps at every vacation. This time he has picked what is known locally as Zoo Town. But no one is willing to talk about it other than to say he shouldn’t go there. Naturally he does. He learns more about the mysteries of Zoo Town than he cared to, and too late realizes he should not be there.

In “The Man Who Sits In His Chair,” a lawyer gets stuck in town when his car breaks down. He explores while waiting for his car to be fixed and finds all kinds of strange anomalies. The more he sees the more he wonders if he will ever leave.

“The Court of the Spider King” introduces us to a photographer stopping in town to capture photos of local spiders for his web site (I’m sure there is an unintentional pun there). He finds a unique spider that shouldn’t exist. When he traces the creatures back to their source, cosmic horrors come out to play.

The last story in the set is “To Slip the Surly Bonds of Earth,” a ghost story with a dash of cosmic horror. A podcaster who is obsessed with haunted roller coasters visits the small town to film their abandoned amusement park. Trouble is, his heart just isn’t in it anymore. He keeps thinking of his boyfriend and what he could’ve done to save him. Then he starts to see him in odd places, finally following him to the abandoned park to face his pain once and for all. But will the park let him go that easily?

Lucia keeps you turning the pages and wanting more. I was so disappointed when I finished. There had to be more to read…. there just had to!

/5

Available from Amazon and Bookshop.