Description
Thirteen dark tales from the author of Saint Sadist and Gods of the Dark Web.
The disappearance of his son brings a rock star home to atone for past sins. A bartending ex-preacher faces a terrible destiny when an former congregation member walks into his bar wearing a bloody shirt. A blizzard traps a suicidal writer at the Jersey Shore with a cult and its strange goddess. A woman shoots a pornographic video and the act shatters her reality. The zombie apocalypse forces three teenagers to take refuge with the school bully. An old poem connects a college student with her haunted past and her doomed future.
Lucas Mangum’s debut collection Engines of Ruin will surely appeal to fans of Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Sara Gran, Richard Laymon, Bentley Little, and John Skipp.
Stories included in this collection:
- Ghost Music
- Hell and Back
- Our Lady of the Sea
- Worlds Colliding
- Video Inferno
- Offerings
- Hayride
- Worm Magic
- Occupy Babylon
- The World Asunder
- A Killing Back Home
- Waters of Ruin
- The Last Easy Rider
Ryan Pascall –
Short stories are a strange thing. To try and present an entirely rounded setting, circumstance and outcome in about 20-30 minutes is not an easy thing to do, be it in written form of an anthology movie such as Asylum (1972- check it out) and it really does depend what the subject matter is.
I tend to find that sci-fi shorts don’t really work as there is too much world-building to be done but horror is a perfect palette to work with. In this case, we’ve got thirteen tales of sexually-charged horror ranging from a murder couple to a zombie apocalypse and (my favourite) ghostly revenge.
My enjoyment with the tales varied from one to another as some simply failed to elicit any sense of shock but all are well written by the one Author and fabulously narrated by Sean Duregger who add a great sense of pace and expression to the characters.
For this type of collection you just need to ask yourself if you like short stories as, while a pretty good selection of stories, they’re not for everyone.
Sebastian Lopez-Pardo –
I want to thank Audiobooks Unleashed, thanks to them for giving me the chance to listen to this book.
It is always a pleasant surprise to listen an excellent book,my congratulations to Lucas Mangum,very good stories and also to listen the narrator’s work for the first time, my congratulations to Sean Duregger for an excellent performance.