Hammers on Bone
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4.4 • 7 Ratings
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
Cassandra Khaw bursts onto the scene with Hammers on Bone, a hard-boiled horror show that Charles Stross calls "possibly the most promising horror debut of 2016." A finalist for the British Fantasy award and the Locus Award for Best Novella!
John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.
He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.
As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Horror author Khaw (Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef) brilliantly combines the self-aware, on-point tone of her gumshoe narrator with the invasive rhythm of the language of pulsing terrors. The drearily everyday is infused with Lovecraftian dread in a marvelously horrifying, tightly built novella that spins a satisfying tale while doing honor to both of its core sources. London PI John Persons, whose "stubbornly human" form disguises his horrifying true nature, reluctantly takes a job for 11-year-old Abel killing the boy's abusive stepfather after hearing Abel's rationale for choosing him: "You're a monster too." Persons's name is apt: he is desperate to hold on to his humanity and his compassion, and he refuses to give in entirely to his inner urges, which want to "rip tear bite cut" in response to his target's testosterone-fueled insults. His struggle hooks the reader, cutting deeply without losing the characteristic emotional distance of the noir style. Khaw's mash-up of gritty and eldritch is anything but incongruous, and the story is self-contained while leaving the door wide open for Persons's next case.
Customer Reviews
Good book
This has been the first book on eldritch horror that I have read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The visceral description of the monsters were really good, and I love how the detective is both clearly not wholly human, but also not wholly evil.
All in all, I very much recommend it to anyone with an inkling of interest in lovecraftian stories, but doesn’t want to experience the deep racism of the original author (at least that was my reason for picking this one to read).