A Lush and Seething Hell audiobook

Review originally published at Cemetery Dance Sept. 23rd, 2019The cover of A Lush and Seething Hell depicts two figures standing in some brambles; a darkness looms behind them, above them, all around them. It’s a menacing tower of darkness bearing down, but also rising up. Upon closer inspection, the figures aren’t so much standing as they are cowering.I know because I stared at the cover and the title for awhile before I ventured past it to get at the meaty insides. And it’s that posture of cowering I remembered after I finished this book. There are two stories that make up A Lush and Seething Hell. The first is titled “The Sea Dreams it is the Sky,” and it’s about a poet named Rafael Avendano, also mysteriously known as The Eye, who strikes up a casual friendship with a woman named Isabel. They realize they have a lot in common and their relationship deepens. For the reader, Jacobs writes with so much attention to detail, it’s impossible to remember that what is unfolding are fictional events. I kept wanting to reach for my phone and Google “Rafael Avendano” so that I could read more about his life and poetry.As a side note here, graphic scenes of torture are difficult for me and at some point in the story, Avendano finds himself in the hands of his enemies. What happens to him is so graphic and told in such an unflinching manner, I might have shied away from it, but Jacobs lured me in with describing Avendano’s mental escape into oblivion. There was this beauty to what was happening inside this poet—that even the cruelty he was experiencing physically couldn’t strip him of what was happening in his mind. I hope that makes sense. It does when I read it back to myself.Eventually, Isabel and Rafael’s narratives experience a shocking confluence that leaves the reader suspended in mind-reeling bliss. I read one scene over and over again because it was just so powerful. It captured my imagination and lead me into a long spell of thoughtfulness. I couldn’t fully get my brain around it until I gave myself more time with it.I came away from this story with a nasty, bookish hangover…the only cure? Jacob’s second story (and my favorite of the two) “My Heart Struck Sorrow.” This is the story of a librarian weighed down by grief and guilt. He goes on this assignment with a coworker to an estate left in their company’s possession by a philanthropist who has passed away. They find a long forgotten room filled with recordings and journals. As a lover of horror fiction, I get excited about stories with found footage/files—one of my favorite subgenres. The narrative splits into two at this point, with our present-day protagonist becoming immersed in the discovery of these forgotten memoirs and the tale that he’s reading about: Two men in the 1930s are commissioned by the Library of Congress to travel around America collecting the songs of the people for posterity. Folk songs. One song in particular catches their attention.I’m not going to sugarcoat the facts here—this story terrified me. This song that keeps coming up and the strange events that happen after it is sung and listened to—it’s unnerving. Again, I was captivated by Jacobs’ storytelling style and his impressive use of specific details, which really must come from his extensive research. I kept experiencing this inability to remember that what I was reading was fiction. This illusion adds to the bone chilling nature of the story. I loved this novella. It’s one of my favorites now. I will be recommending this one a lot and keeping an eye on anything John Hornor Jacobs releases in the future.

My gushing blurb!The audacity of John Hornor Jacobs to write two brilliant, hallucinatory, terrifying short novels that mash up South American poetry and politics, pre-WWII American folk songs, all-too-human depravity and longing, and cosmic horror. And then, he presents them in one book, A LUSH AND SEETHING HELL; one of the best books of the year. Damn him.

4 stars average--I really liked it. This is a book of two horror novellas. Both are really well written.The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky: 3 stars. This is a story of cosmic horror, and also the tale of a South American dictatorship and all the horror that entails. It uses one of my favorite plot elements: a mysterious manuscript that must be translated, and that might reveal some universal secrets. If you're squeamish, be warned that there's lots of torture here. I liked the story, but thought the ending was a bit abrupt.My Heart Struck Sorrow: 5 stars; I really loved this American folk-horror tale about the folk song Stagger Lee. The research done for this story--about the American south after WWI, the Mississippi flood, racial tensions, folk music, etc.--was impressive. At its heart, the story is about guilt and punishment. The resolution was perfect, and the characterization (Honeyboy!) was excellent.I received this review copy from the publisher on NetGalley. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review; I appreciate it!

This review and others can be read on my blog, Black Forest Basilisks.This is not a comfortable book. It is brutal. It is often gory. It is violent, torturous, and painful. It is not palatable. And yet, A Lush and Seething Hell is perhaps one of the most polished and seamless books I have read. As Chuck Wendig put it in the foreword, “his magic tricks remain pure fucking magic. These murder ballads are ones we have not heard before.” I cannot find it in myself to disagree with him. When I review a book, I tend to pick it apart to see what makes it tick. Then, I reduce it down into a format that will give a reader a good idea as to the tone and content of the book while also allowing some of my own biases and voice to come through. I fail to pick this book apart. I fail to see the specific gears that make it tick, though I can certainly see the hands turning and hear the bells chiming.A Lush and Seething Hell is a duology of two novellas, The Sea Dreams it is the Sky and My Heart Struck Sorrow, the latter being closer to a novel in length. However, neither of these two books feel like novellas. It is shocking to think back and realize how short they actually were. It is an illusion, a conceit, but never a façade. They are so well-crafted that they have the feel of length due to their depth. They are two very different stories, yet they complement one another perfectly. The expectations set up in the first novella are subverted and twisted in unexpected ways, almost a sucker punch to the reader. -The Sea Dreams it is the Sky-‘A thousand voices caromed in my head. From such a remove, I can see now it was just the tugging of the flesh, trying to find something to grasp onto to protect itself, the quivers of an organism in distress sorting through experience and conditioning.My life up until then was just a fabric of verse and poems. Now my life was no longer mine.’While reading The Sea Dreams it is the Sky, I found myself searching online repeatedly for the country of “Magera,” located somewhere in South America. This country is fictional, and I suspected as much while reading and due to the futility of my online searches… and yet, I doubted myself. This felt real. This felt like a country that ought to exist. And, perhaps, in a way it did exist – only to slip down a voracious, toothy gullet that had been coaxed open with a surfeit of human suffering and cruelty. The book opens on two refugees from Magera who chance to meet in Málaga, Spain. Isabel, a teacher at the university nearby, develops a strange friendship with the one-eyed and once-famous poet, Rafael Avendaño, now also known as The Eye. Isabel initially finds Avendaño to be quite off-putting: he is misogynistic, often rude, and overall incredibly rough around the edges. Even so, she finds herself drawn to him as a curiosity in her otherwise predictable world. When Avendaño departs from Málaga to return to Magera, he leaves his home and all its contents in Isabel’s care… along with the request that she ensure to always feed the cat, for her own protection. ‘I could not say I liked The Eye. I think I disliked him the way one dislikes a cousin or uncle. But he was interesting. And so familiar. We agreed on a meeting time. He stood, drained his coffee to its dregs. “I will be up all night now,” he said. He placed far too much money on the table. When I indicated it was ten times his share, he said, “Go, buy yourself a book. I’ve enough to spare. Allow me to spend my money on young women in ways that won’t get me chased out of town.”‘Avendaño’s home is younger than his years, a den of sin and gluttony. The beds are large, hung with colorful fabrics, decadent. It is the home of a young man in his prime, intent upon woo-ing women, and living large in all respects. Isabel takes full advantage at first, bringing her own lover, Claudia, over to the home where they enjoy themselves thoroughly. When she begins to dig deeper into just what Avendaño was doing here in Málaga, however, she uncovers a manuscript he had been working on titled Below, Between, Beneath, Beyond. This manuscript details his work on a translation of a book called Opusculus Noctis, which he titles A Little Night Work, during the fascist takeover of Magera. Thoughts of this book creep through Isabel’s mind, both waking and dreaming, and ultimately, she follows Avendaño back to Magera to discover the truth. ‘[Claudia] stubbed out her cigarette and rose. She looked in the fridge. “Did you get tomato juice?” Something about the question irked me. There had been no thanks from her, for anything. The breakfast. The date. The lovemaking – not that I demand assurances. But she was ungracious. “I think you should go,” I said. “I’ve got work to do here.”She turned to look at me, incredulous. I ignored her, picking up the manuscript of Below, Between, Beneath, Beyond. “Okay,” she said. She disappeared into the Eye’s bedroom. When she emerged, she had her purse and was putting on her earrings. “See you at school,” she said, and left unceremoniously. I sighed. I felt as if a great weight had lifted. Surely, Sartre had it right. Hell is other people. I found myself holding Avendaño’s secret manuscript. I opened it and began to read.’After Isabel leaves for Magera, the surreal, Lovecraftian elements begin to seep into the narrative. They take root, forming fruiting bodies within the text. The spores release and the reader breathes them in, becoming a host in turn to the ideas within the pages. The normal becomes the uncanny. The uncanny becomes the surreal. The surreal becomes horror. The horror becomes intolerable. The intolerable must be plucked from the host. So it goes. Isabel is pushed further than she realized she could go – she is transfigured by her own hand. She encounters death. She is an animal. She is death. Death permeates, and that which is beyond death clutches at her. And as Isabel pulls through to the conclusion – hers and Avendaño’s – the reader is not left dissatisfied. Lovecraftian horror too often becomes overly ambiguous and surreal. Jacobs walks the tightrope between the cosmic and the mundane, bringing the reader to a close that feels just strange and uncanny enough to satisfy without being overly opaque and impossible to parse. The prose is both purple and clipped simultaneously, creating a tone that transports you into the lush, seething hells of Magera’s dictatorship. The Sea Dreams it is the Sky hovers in the liminal spaces, lurking at the edges of your vision. -My Heart Struck Sorrow-‘Come think on death and judgment,Your words have all been said,A soldier home from warring,His hands and heart stained red.No water flows will clean youNo ocean wash awayThe stain that now corrodes youUntil your dying day.’My Heart Struck Sorrow takes a sharp turn from the subject matter of The Sea Dreams it is the Sky. Where the former was set in Spain and Latin America, My Heart Struck Sorrow is a tale woven from the fabric of North America, the United States. This is a story of Southern Devils, of the hell that exists in the hearts of men and women. A story of racism, sexism, discriminations large and small, present and past; a story of the sheer disregard we hold for our fellows. The book follows Cromwell, a middle-aged white man working for the Library of Congress examining folk songs. He is not a good man. While it is revealed early on that he has recently lost his wife and son, snatching a morsel of sympathy from any reader with a heart, it’s also revealed that he’s been involved in a years-long affair with another woman at work. He has justified this to himself, argued for it, even as he recognizes it for the moral failing that it is.He and his partner, Hattie, are assigned to document the contents of a house that has been left to the Library – former residence of a famous cataloguer of folks tunes, Harlan Parker. In the house, they discover a locked and boarded up room behind a dresser, which contains a myriad of old records and a journal that takes Cromwell back in time through music and old hatreds. Cromwell is enraptured by the story that unfolds in Parker’s journal, quickly developing an obsession with uncovering the truth. Hattie accuses him of taking advantage of historical black music for his own gain, pointing out that his motives have nothing to do with the community that created this music and mythos, but only with the wants and desires of the old white men in charge of his department.‘She tilts her head. “It’s a matter of perspective, Crumb. I see this shit for what it really is and you’ve got your blinders on. Ever think that, back in Parker’s day, the mission of the Library was coming from a race-based viewpoint? That these fine, upstanding, woke-as-fuck dudes from 1938 were collecting for the archive, but the archive itself was geared toward a white audience? Academic circles were almost wholly white. And all these fellas would go back from collecting and make the speaking circuit to audiences full of white faces wanting to hear ‘primitive’ music and stories of the proletariat.” Cromwell shrugs. “Whatever else it is, or represented at the time, it’s data, to be interpreted how it’s interpreted. You’re here now.”’As his digging into the journal becomes deeper, the imagery contained within becomes ever more disturbing. He seeks to find the roots of the song “Stagger Lee,” a song about a “bad, bad man” with devilish themes and nightmarish connotations. This song, also titled “Stackolee,” “Stagolee,” and other permutations, becomes a fugue throughout the novella, reappearing time and time again. The refrain, “I am an ocean, a black and churning sea,” follows Cromwell, haunts him. As he comes closer and closer to the conclusion of the journal, his own flaws come to the forefront: he is a sad, pitiful man. The denouement of the novel pulls each piece together to cast his heart in sharp relief as both his story and the story of Harlan Parker converge.—While this is not a book I would recommend to everyone given its often gruesome and painful content, it is a novella duology that is undeniably a masterpiece. I stood enthralled by his storytelling. It has been polished to a bloody-black gleam, cutting when you are least ready for it.If you enjoyed this review, please consider reading others like it on my blog, Black Forest Basilisks.

Horror is many different things to different people. What scares one person isn’t the same as what frightens another. For me, the best horror is a deep examination of our negative emotions; those thoughts and fears that disquiet in the depth of the night: moments left undone, words unsaid, the strange, the weird, the obscene brought to light. Done well, it is a cerebral exploration of the darkness that lies within everyone.If that is your vibe, too, then here are two stories done exceptionally well and collected in a single volume entitled A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs:THE SEA DREAMS IT IS THE SKYI read this story as Word document last year. It immediately reminded me of the Jorge Luis Borges story, “The Gospel According to Mark,” which I read many years ago. Stylistically, both works begin in the most mundane of ways and make a slow, steady progression, first into the surreal and then into horror. Jacobs takes the unsettling imagery of a country at war with itself and gives us, what I like to call, Borges meets Lovecraft.Refugees from the fictional Latin American country of Magera chance upon one another in their self-imposed exile in Málaga, Spain. One is the poet, Rafael Avendaño, and the other is a teacher, Isabel, who is our narrator. Avendaño is thought by most to be dead, murdered by the fascists who now rule Magera, but instead, he escaped with his life, but not with his art. Since his exile in Spain, he no longer writes poetry.Isabel, on the other hand, doesn’t approach her friendship with Avendaño with any sense of reverence. She finds his poetry to be misogynistic and puerile, nor does she teach his works in her classes. He invites her to a movie. She goes. Their strange friendship begins. When Avendaño leaves Spain to return to Magera, he gives Isabel the key to his apartment and asks her to look after his place. There, she finds a book authored by Avendaño entitled Below, Between, Beneath, and Beyond. Here, she finds the story of Avendaño’s days before, during, and after the fascist takeover of Magera, where Avendaño is required to translate a book, Opusculus Noctis, which he titles A Little Night Work.As she reads Avendaño’s autobiography and discovers his notes on A Little Night Work, Isabel decides to return to Magera to find Avendaño. Here, their stories converge, and the Lovecraftian aspects of the story emerge in full bloom.Lovecraftian stories can be hit or miss for me, primarily because the endings can swerve into the obscure with the ending so ambiguous or arcane that the reader is left foundering for a solid landing. Jacobs avoids that pitfall here. He keeps the narrative tight, and as the story seeps into the surreal, leading the reader to a logical ending that seems neither too real, nor too opaque.It’s a hard balance to write, but Jacobs handles it like a virtuoso, drawing the reader into his world and unveiling the strange, the weird, the obscene, to bring the true horror of evil into the light. This is the kind of dark fiction I love to read, and I offer it to you, highly recommended.MY HEART STRUCK SORROWMy Heart Struck Sorrow is my favorite of the two. While Lovecraftian stories have their allure, southern stories with the devil are some of my personal favorites. Primarily because the devil and his kin are often stand-ins for those aforementioned emotions. Stories that entwine music and madness are also some of my favorites, so with My Heart Struck Sorrow, I got the best of both worlds.This is one of those stories that the less you know going in will enhance how the story works for you, so I’ll only give a very basic overview of the plot.Cromwell is a music librarian in the Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. His wife and son have recently died, leaving Cromwell in a state of grief even as he returns to work. There, he finds that the grandniece of Harlan Parker has died and bequeathed their rather massive collection to the Library of Congress.A war hero, Harlan Parker once worked for the Library of Congress, travelling across the south to collect and index folk music on a commission of ethnomusicology, but something strange happened during Parker’s travels, causing him to abandon the commission and simply disappear into his sister’s Springfield home, where he remained until the end of his days.Cromwell and his co-worker, Hattie, go to the Parker estate to catalog and preserve the estate’s records. In doing so, they find a secret room, because all horror stories should have at least one secret room, and in this small chamber Cromwell and Hattie find acetates of folk music that Parker recorded during his travels, along with Parker’s diary from the late thirties.Soon Cromwell is immersed in Parker’s writings and infatuation with a song known interchangeably as “Stagolee,” “Stackalee,” or “Stagger Lee.” As Cromwell listens to the recordings Parker created and follows the events within the journal, he is led into Parker’s increasingly bizarre adventures in the rural south, which at times, seems to mirror Hell itself.Yet, in the end, Jacobs loops the story back to Cromwell, and the two seemingly divergent trajectories are brought together in a startling conclusion that is both poignant and horrific in its intensity. My Heart Struck Sorrow moves like a song with the refrain of “Stagger Lee” as the backbeat, a thumping baseline of desire for power, for revenge, and finally, as the music winds down, for remorse unanswered by forgiveness.While I enjoy and admire many writers, it’s rare I stand in awe of another contemporary author’s work, but this is one of those times. If you love horror and genuinely excellent storytelling, you should enter A Lush and Seething Hell. You won’t regret the trip.Tell the Devil I said hello.

Thanks to Harper Voyager and the John Hornor Jacobs for an advanced reading copy of A Lush and Seething Hell in exchange for an honest review. Receiving this eARC did not influence my thoughts or opinions on the novel or author.Note: Though the book is comprised of a novella and a short novel, I will really only be reviewing the short novel this go-round, though the extent to which I savored his writing will be plastered all over it.I was lucky enough to have received an advanced reading copy of The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky last year and it was my favorite novella of 2018 (you can find my full review here). It was my first attempt at a work by Jacobs and ended up cementing him as one of my go-to authors for not only reading enjoyment, but writing inspiration. So when I saw that Harper Voyager was publishing a new book by Jacobs, I instantly submitted my request on Edelweiss and NetGalley. I honestly didn’t even give it a 2nd glance to see that it included TSDIITS as I was just THAT excited for it and the gorgeously creepy cover by Jeffrey Alan Love drew me in. To be honest, re-reading TSDIITS was just as enjoyable as the first go-round, and I picked up on some things I missed.But getting to My Heart Struck Sorrow was my ultimate goal.In short, this short novel scared the sh*t out of me. It has stayed with me for days and I keep picturing myself gripping my Kindle harder and harder as I fell deeper and deeper into Jacob’s writing and the story that unfolded. While I can’t say the beginning hooked me, it was enough of a taste to keep me wanting more. TSDIITS was sort of the same way: a slow burn; a fuse that burns down without ignition, only to explode as you begin to look away. And as the flames rise higher, you become entranced; unable to look away and hallucinating things that aren’t really there. Or are they..Jacobs ability to dissect the human psyche through oft-times intense psychological terror and put that onto paper is immensely brilliant. The supernatural effect that the recordings have on our protagonist feel so real that they leap off of the page. What really kept me intrigued were the recordings themselves. While they started off fairly innocent, a quick turn of events sent us off course and onto the highway to hell. The Lovecraftian elements shined through in the darkest depths of the novel and lead to several scenes of pure terror; ones in which I had to click the lamp back on and steady my breathing.All in all, I cannot recommend A Lush and Seething Hell enough. While these stories aren’t for everyone, those who love brilliant writing and slow burn horror will find themselves overjoyed which what Jacobs has given the world. I loved it and I think you will, to.A Lush and Seething Hell hits stores on October 8th.

Initially reviewed here at thequilltolive.comI am not a religious man. Despite my Catholic upbringing and coming of age in the American midwest, the world of the spiritual has never called out to me. I’ve never felt the rapture of religion or the whisper of the divine. As such, I find myself sorely lacking in vocabulary to describe my experience with A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs. Comprised of the novellas The Sea Dreams it is the Sky and My Heart Struck Sorrow, this “anthology-lite” as I’ve come to think of it is beyond normal description for me. Had I truly submerged myself in the dogma of Catholicism, with its near-magic and incensed ritualism, I might be able to better put into words how these stories affected me. As it is, however, I can only imagine that this is what people who have had spiritual revelations felt like in the aftermath: my nerves are raw and frayed, and I feel as if I have been exposed to something separate from me and all the experience I’ve had up to this point.I know that sounds rather overwrought and excessive, but so much of this book has infused me and singed the edges of all that I am that there’s no other way to describe it. The book’s cover art slowly wore away from my fingers as I read it, and over the week it took me to read and re-read and really digest the depth and weight of the stories it contained, I would find little black spots on my hands and forearms from the ink wearing away. It was almost as if I was physically consuming the book as I read it. I’ve received and reviewed a decent number of ARCs at this point, and while they’re never quite as well put together physically as a release copy of a book, I’ve never experienced anything quite like this. I felt personally connected to the stories of Isabel and Cromwell, and felt that I was being marked just as they were by something incomprehensible and vast and somehow more than the paltry world I had experienced to that point. Jacobs uses the phrase “collapsed-time” in both stories to describe the fluidity and lack of form of time when experienced through a period of great pain or emotion, and that is exactly what I felt during my time with the stories. Time as I had known it ceased to act for me in the way it always had, and I felt myself separate from it in a fundamental and indescribable way.I’m normally more lighthearted in my reviews and take less care in my attempts at mellifluous descriptions and language, but I don’t know that I could review something that I felt so profoundly without all of this extra…everything. I’ve waited to start writing this review for weeks now to see whether the feeling would change or stick with me, and if anything my experience with these stories has grown more profound in retrospect. I don’t know if I’ll ever find a novel or anthology or anything else that will impact me quite the same way. I never have before.The book begins with The Sea Dreams it is the Sky, a tale about Isabel, an exiled teacher from the made-up South American country of Magera. While the country described in the story is imaginary, the trials and tribulations it undergoes at the hands of a totalitarian regime supported from behind the scenes by the United States are all too based in history. She meets her country’s most famous (or infamous) exiled poet Avendano, who is believed by most to be dead after being captured and tortured by the government. When he tells her that he must return to the country under strange circumstances, he gives her his apartment and access to his unfinished translation of an ancient and obscene text. In the process of continuing the translation she is drawn back to her country to search for Avendano and to try to reconcile what is currently happening to her with what has happened and continues to happen to her country. The story becomes more dreamlike and terrifying as it continues and Isabel is drawn further into the horror that has subsumed her home, horror of cosmic and sadly mundane nature. While there are great and unknowable forces at work in Magera, they are contrasted against the totalitarian regime of Vidal, and I found this comparison to be remarkably profound. Cosmic horror relies heavily on the fear of the unknown, that the forces at work against the protagonist are so vast and alien that the horror happening in the story is actually impersonal, because why would an ancient being with the power of gods actually care about a single individual? In stark relief against this is the specific pettiness of the horror Vidal’s government inflicts on its own people. Teachers, students, Marxists, and regular citizens who know the wrong people are intentionally targeted and disappeared in ways horrific enough that the description of Avendano reacting to the tortures that aren’t themselves described was enough for me to be truly unsettled. It is a trip down a rabbit hole into a twisted surreal wonderland that I wanted to leave but couldn’t get enough of.My Heart Struck Sorrow, the second story of this anthology-lite, is a more classic cosmic horror tale of a researcher discovering a work of art that tells a story humans aren’t meant to understand. I want it to be clear that my description of this as “more classic” is not meant to imply that this is in any way less scary or meaningful for that fact. With as much horror as I read, it’s rare for me to be physically affected by a story, but in three pages my scalp was tingling and the hair on the back of my neck was raised. This story masterfully mixes both supernatural horror and terror of a mundane nature and is stronger for not relying on one or the other. Following a music researcher, Cromwell, as he explores recordings left to the historical agency he works for as part of an old woman’s estate, My Heart Struck Sorrow is a mysterious and haunting story about the magic the world used to, and may still, contain and a man’s desperation to tap into that regardless of the personal cost. I will say no more about the story, but, “He’s a bad man, Stackalee.”I need to wrap this “review that isn’t really a review so much as me pouring my heart out about something that filled it too much” up. I’m sure you can tell from everything up to this point that I absolutely loved this book. I have never been impacted by stories the way I was with this, and the very act of reading cast a sort of glamour over me and my life for both the week I was actively reading it and each day since. Maybe it was the mindset I had going into the reading of this book. It could have been a strange cosmic alignment that changed me and made me more receptive to it. I’m not sure, but I had as close to a religious experience as I’ve ever felt while reading this, and to anyone looking for another great cosmic horror writer, look no further than John Hornor Jacobs.Rating: A Lush and Seething Hell – 10/10 (I would give it more if I could)-Will

My review of A LUSH AND SEETHING HELL can be found at High Fever Books.A Lush and Seething Hell is the kind of novel that you hope will, and even expect to, take an author’s career to the next level. It’s the sort of work that, if you haven’t been reading John Hornor Jacob already, you’ll be kicking yourself for this oversight and scouring bookstores for his past releases. The good news is that you’re getting two sublimely literary tales of cosmic horror here, one a novella and the other a short novel. The first, The Sea Dreams It Is Sky, is one I had read previously when it was released as an ebook-only edition in late 2018. It subsequently made my best of the year list, and below is a very slightly modified review of what I wrote about it then and published elsewhere. The second story, My Heart Struck Sorrow, is exclusive to this release and was a read I’d been anticipating ever since finishing The Sea Dreams It Is Sky last year.First up…The Sea Dreams It Is The SkyAlthough H.P. Lovecraft is the most familiar name in the genre of cosmic horror, a number of other authors writing in this vein have shown themselves to be far better wordsmiths and storytellers - Victor LaValle, Brian Hodge, Laird Barron, and Caitlin R. Kiernan immediately spring to mind. I feel comfortable adding John Hornor Jacobs to this list now, with his novella The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky proving to be one of the best titles I've read in 2018 (and 2018 was absolutely flush with incredible horror titles, I might add).Racism was absolutely endemic in Lovecraft's work, with the man's total fear of Otherness, which is to say blacks and immigrants, pervading his mythos. Jacobs, however, writes entirely from the perspective of The Other - his central characters, Isabella and Rafael Avendaño, are South American expats living abroad in Spain. Their home country, the fictional Magera, has fallen to a Pinochet-like military junta. If either were ever to return home, it would mean certain death. Isabella is a lesbian, and, perhaps worse for those in power, both educated and an educator. Avendaño is a poet and outspoken critic of the despot ruling Magera.Whereas Lovecraft's horror arose from racist anxieties, in Jacobs's novella, political anxiety is the topic du jour, and certainly one that's far more relatable for this reader. Although set in 1987, The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky is unfortunately timely. The far-right threats of political violence stemming from the fictional Vidal's rule that threaten Isabella and Avendaño echo current global trends and the rise of nationalism. Brazil recently returned to a military dictatorship with the election of Jair Bolsonaro, the 'Trump of the tropics,' and with him came military raids of that country's universities earlier this week, a turn of events that makes Isabella's fears of returning to Magera sadly relatable. The threats to Avendaño's life simply for being an outspoken critic of an authoritarian regime vividly echo life under Trump part and parcel every bit as much as they recall life under Augusto Pinochet, and one can't help but wonder if a bomb is going to make its way into Avendaño's mailbox at some point in the narrative. The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky functions as a fictional examination of historical incidents that occurred in the 1960s-1980s, while also encapsulating the worries of political extremism circa 2018.Much of the horror stems from the fear of the Mageran junta, with the comic elements playing only a minor role in the story's backdrop. The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky certainly has its share of horror, and a few squirm-inducing scenes to be sure, but it's of a quieter, slower, and highly literary nature. The characters come first in Jacobs's story, and we get small hints of their history and past lives in the homes they were forced to flee. It's not until nearly the half-way mark that we experience a fully unflinching view of the junta's atrocity as told through Avendaño's view, and the horrors that unfold therein are almost entirely human, with only brief glimpses of the supernatural. Primarily, we experience this story, and Avendaño, through Isabella's eyes. Her position as an educated woman informs Jacobs's style, as does Avendaño's pedigree as a poet, and the writing is whip smart with the prose taking on a deeply literary aspect. Avendaño speaks with a poet's grace, his words reflecting his perspective. When he speaks on even minor topics, such as the luchador horror films he routine frequents at the cinema, he speaks of grander philosophies: "Misery is a condition that we are all promised," he tells Isabella early on. "On the screen, painted in light, that misery is very small." Isabella lives the life of a professor, but is far from cloistered within the halls of academia - she has passions and love interests, and can be tough when required. Jacobs subverts one's expectations of the nerdy damsel in distress, and even Isabella reminds us in her narrative that "I am as sensitive to situation and intuition as any person. The idea that academics—especially female academics—are cloistered aesthetics that retreat from the real world to content themselves only with books is nonsense." The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky is a smart and deeply layered novella, and its depth routinely belies its page count. This is a lushly literary narrative, one that is first and foremost a character study of political exiles, and Jacobs's authorial skills are tack sharp. My Heart Struck SorrowReeling from the death of his wife and son, Cromwell returns to his job at the Library of Congress’s folklore division in time for news of another’s passing. Matilda Parker, the grandniece of a former employee of the folklore division, Harlan Parker, has bequeathed her estate to the department. In cataloguing Parker’s belongings and readying the estate for sale, Cromwell and his partner, Hattie, discover a hidden room holding a number of acetate recordings made by Harlan, as well as his journal, which slowly reveals a number of mysteries of Cromwell. Before his death, Harlan had become convinced that there was an ur-version to the song “Stagger Lee,” and that an arrangement of infernal lyrics had been forgotten, or deliberately hidden, and his obsession leads him into the darkest corners of the American South. Cromwell, for his part, finds himself growing obsessive over Harlan’s journal and the dead man’s stories of his search.As with The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky, My Heart Struck Sorrow is a masterfully written piece and the concept of a bedeviling and arcane version of an old American folk song is a top-notch premise. As with the preceding story in A Lush and Seething Hell, the horror elements are supremely quiet, but Jacobs still manages to pull the rug out from under his readers on a few occasions, and to startling effect. The real meat here, though, is the grief shared across time and space by Cromwell and Parker.These two men of the folklore division present a truly intriguing duality that Jacobs slowly unravels over the course of the story. Both are grieving and blaming themselves for the loss of their closest loved ones, while also carrying the guilt of their various transgressions. We learn early on that Cromwell had an affair with a coworker, which only ratchets his guilt and self-blame up a few more notches. Parker’s journal and decades old recordings are opportunities for Cromwell to lose himself in, but also to connect with a man he never knew but whose interests are shared by him — and possibly reconnect with those he has lost.Grief is a sort of madness in its own right, and if left untended can lead to a sort of insanity. The question then becomes just how far down the path of irrationality are these men willing to let their wounded hearts lead them, despite knowing better and despite the dangers of the unknown. The infernal verses of “Stagger Lee” and their own particular illustrations of a very different kind of descent into hell have been left unsung for a reason, and yet Parker persists in his search, jeopardizing his own safety, as well as that of his partner, even as they encounter the inexplicable. But in the throes of grief, how much of Parker’s writings can be taken reliably, or has he been lost to madness?Jacobs layers My Heart Struck Sorrow with levels of meaning, raising a number of questions along the way while providing little in the way of certainty, even as some answers seem wholly resolute. It’s a story that sticks with you and keeps you pondering its mysteries for days after.[Note: I received an advance copy of this title from the publisher.]

Aah, I love me some cosmic horror now and again: Knowledge better left alone, but that pull at you and the unfortunate characters within these pages. JHJ has been mentioned in the same breath as Clive Barker, and I can easily see why when it comes to the 1st story in this book. There’s some definite Hellbound Heart-vibes to it (and I loooove Barker!). It’s like a non-bigoted H.P. Lovecraft & Barker had a love child that at times outshines both parents. Equal measures creepy & brutal, those who grew up straddling 80s splatterpunk & classic Lovecraft will probably find themselves enjoying this as well.-The Sea Dreams it is the Sky: A young woman who fled her country’s dictatorship gets to know a poet & fellow countryman. The poet is in possession of a certain manuscript & leaves her to his apartment and papers when he goes back to their home country. He soon disappears and mysterious coordinates start arriving for her by letter. We join her as she goes searching for him in a country where the dictatorship is the least of it.-My Heart Struck Sorrow:A bereaved man is struggling with the death of his wife & son (and the affair he had while his wife was alive). He works for the Library of Congress and is tasked with going to an estate. Namely, he gets to work on saving old folk music recordings and the associated journals. The fact that they were located in a hidden & locked room should have been a red flag.Deals with guilt (of having cheated, survival), obsession and madness. Both solid stories that kept me up way past my bedtime because I just had to know what was on the next page. PS: Loved the mention of Opusculus Noctis (Southern Gods, anyone?)

4 and 1/2 starsI really enjoyed this one. Not too very familiar with the cosmic horror sub-genre but what I got from it is a strange feeling of dread while reading both stories. I can't say I like one story more than the other (but if I had a gun pointed to my head I would say the first one only for the breath of fresh air feel I got right up from the start) but what I can say is that the reader will probably be as enthralled as I was. A LUSH AND SEETHING HELL reminds me of the Dell /Abyss line which was known back in the day (the '90s) to publish literary horror, mostly from budding horror writers who have went on to become well-known in the industry. John Hornor Jacobs's impressive title would have fit right in with the best of them. While not exactly an easy book to get into A LUSH AND SEETHING HELL will nonetheless impress for its rich narrative and imposing chilling scenes. A must read.

Review will be appearing in the October 2019 issue of Library Journal: https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detai...

Fair warning: this will be a fairly long review, because I had so many thoughts as I was reading.The book is actually two medium length stories. Both have some elements in common, and neither rushes the plot. The first story is titled "The Sea Dreams It is The Sky," which immediately conjures for us the mirror effect, in the images of sky and sea. What we often think of as opposites are, in some ways, merely mirror images of each other, and have equal bearing on each other, for evil or for good.This story slowly eviscerates the collective consciousness, that searing memory of "the disappeared," the political victims of every Western-backed dictator and military junta in South America. What appears on the surface to be an obvious (yet limited) imbalance of power, turns out to have volatile subtext. The prisoner and his torturer both erode their humanity, as a direct result of the effects they have on each other. There are inelegant ways to die, just as surely as there are inelegant ways to live. Hardening of supreme will over others merely hones the subjected into sharper weapons. This is most evident in the mind's eye, that inner compelling directing voice.The writing is as cool and sharp as a knife's edge, tactile and ethereal, drawing us in, while simultaneously making us want to back away. The author is particularly skilled in the way he makes the reader feel present at the scene. The second story is "My Heart Struck Sorrow" and it's a bit more dark in a psychological sense than the first story, which was more physically jarring. The themes explored are of guilt, grief, longing, justice, redemption, and the power of music. Music, the great equalizer, open to rich and poor, weak and strong, hauntingly beautiful for those who are haunted by grief and despair. Does music smooth our raw animalistic nature, or does it elicit it? Music can be enigmatic in nature, holding opposites in tension, creating paradoxical internal and external conflict, like an unwelcome talisman, or a burdensome Ebeneezer. Music can wrap around the darkness within, the poison places which we can never escape.The characters present a striking juxtaposition: a sentimental stylized pouring out of one's soul versus a stark kind of existentialist worldview in which all emotions are held in tension. At its most supernatural, the story lifts the veil between life and death. At its most straightforward, it skewers Manifest Destiny and the White Man's Burden. There's a lot more going on than we first realize. It's a good piece of writing. The first story reminded me heavily of Roberto Bolaño, the incredible Chilean writer who wrote 2666. I'm not sure who the second story reminds me of, but several have compared it to the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. This is a worthy read.

A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs is two books in one, a novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and a short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow. Both stories challenge idea of death and hell on earth. They both involve the past and choices made, fro the better or worse. Both stories have good wrap ups and ending that will leaving you thinking for a bit after the story has ended. My Heart Struck Sorrow was the new story The Sea Dreams It is the Sky has been published before. I enjoyed My Heart Struck Sorrow quite a bit more. Chuck Wendig author of Wanders does really cool intro to the book. Thanks to HarperCollins Publishing and Netgalley for letting me read an Advanced Readers copy of A lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs in exchange for an honest review. It was first Published on October 8th 2019 with an expected mass market publication on October 29th 2019.The Plot for The Sea Dreams it is the Sky:Rafael Avendano, a former poet, has escaped Argentina and now lives in Spain. The Poet now wears an eye patch has now goes by the Eye, it is a mystery to how he lost it. He meets Isabel a Teacher of poetry in Spain, and originally from Argentina knows a little of his work but found it crude and juvenile. She and most of the world thought Avendano was dead, during the takeover of Argentina. She befriends him as he is called back to Argentina in hopes of a reunion. Isabel watches his apartment in it she finds a secret manuscript telling just how he lost his eye, she keeps getting mysterious notes with just a latitude and longitude on them, pointing to a place in Argentina.The Plot for My Heart Struck Sorrow: Cromwell needs a distraction from the recent deaths of his wife and son, he with his partner Harriet find that distraction as there job being part of the library is to go through a collection bequeathed to it. The Parker estate is one such donation, they are excited to too into the collection since Parker was a member of the Library of Congress in the music division collection folk songs and stories. Cromwell and Harriet discover a secret room that was locked away, of Parkers last assignment. Where Parker went searching for a particular song about a man and hell.What I Liked: Both stories blend fact and fiction pretty seamlessly. Both stories are about lyrics in a song or in a verse of poetry, and the writing in both are really great, the folk songs especially, I could almost here them. The endings in both stories really work well, and end a in a very full circle way that I always appreciate. I really loved the characters in My Heart Struck Sorrow, they felt very real and grounded I understood their obsessions. I really like the work with the untrustworthy narrator. The flow in My Heart Struck Sorrow is so good such an easy read.What I Disliked: The story flow of The Sea Dreams it is the Sky is so slow in the middle I loved the first couple chapters but then it slows down so much. My Heart Struck Sorrow is almost double The Sea Dreams it is Sky but it took me much longer to read Sea Dreams, because of the flow. I also had a little thing with The Sea Dreams it is Sky and it's use of pronouns, sometimes I was confused with it and had to read passages over as a pronoun is switched to a dream person. Recommendations: I will recommend this collection of two tales, my favorite by far being My Heart Struck Sorrow. My rating for stories is The Sea Dreams it is Sky 3 out of 5 stars and My Heart Struck Sorrow 5 out of 5 stars. I would highly recommend this to readers who like historical horror, or horror with a great deal of real life with a twist. I rated A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs 4 out 5 stars.

I enjoyed both of these stories…. But… I really, REALLY enjoyed and LOVED the second story, My Heart Struck Sorrow!! It was WOW WOW WOW- It was wild and weird, Dark and dreamy, with some super creepy moments! It was chilling, for sure!! I freakin’ loved it!! LOVED IT!!

" They's a black wall he can't figure; they's a black wall he can't break. They's somethin' movin' beyond he can't see in the shadows, Satan's wake. " - My Heart Struck SorrowThis book comprises two stories.The first, The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky, follows a University professor of poetry who befriends a poet who is a political exile. One day, he leaves her cryptic instructions as to the care of his home and disappears. In his home, she finds a recounting of the persecution he faced and his translation of a disturbing and otherworldy text. This story has some truly disturbing passages and an eerie atmosphere, on top of a main character that is endearing and easy to root for. However, I am woefully uneducated in South American politics and the author, in my case, has perhaps too much respect for his reader and explains close to nothing of the relevant history. Therefore, much of the context went over my head.The second story, My Hearth Struck Sorrow, is a fascinating read. It follows the discovery by a librarian of the journal of an archivist specialized in folk music. The latter was obsessed by a particular folk song and narrates his quest to identify some forgotten infernal verses and track down their origins. It is set in the South of the United States and although I'm not American, the history in play was more familiar to me which made it a more approachable read. The mystery of the lost song is fascinating and although the ending left something to be desired, as the narrator says himself, it's not an ending, it's a beginning.

This is two novellas packaged together in one book. The first story is described on the back jacket as being a mix of Lovecraft and Bolano, and I think I immediately walked up to the cash register and threw my money at them when I read that. It's a very accurate description, and i enjoyed it (particularly the final act where the mild-mannered protagonist turns into a poor woman's version of The Bride from the Kill Bill movies), but deduct a point for me literally not understanding the ending.I liked the second (longer) story a little more, I think. It's mostly told in flashback via an unearthed journal of a folklore researcher in the Deep South in the 1930s who may have literally come face to face with the devil. It's also got a Lovecraftian vibe to it, but Jacobs only really hints at the shrieking lunacy behind the veil, you never get a full reveal. The point I deducted for the end of the first story, I award back here for the surprisingly great ending to this one.In closing, Jacobs other books are promo'd in the back of this one, and best believe I'm going to read the first book of a trilogy that Patrick Rothfuss (Madison WI shout out!) describes as “one part ancient Rome, two parts Wild West, one part Faust. A pinch of Tolkien, of Lovecraft, of Dante.”