Parallel Hells

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In 2006, he was a semi-finalist for BBC Radio Voice of Musical Theatre at the New Theatre in Cardiff. Parallel Hells pulled me in with its wonderful cover, but it was Leon Craig’s writing that took me on a rollercoaster of emotions that kept me unnerved and ecstatic. When Stan, who is white, confronts Gary, who is black, the encounter bristles with accusations of racism. In the thirteen darkly audacious stories of Parallel Hells we meet a golem, made of clay, learning that its powers far exceed its Creator's expectations; a ruined mansion which grants the secret wishes of a group of revellers and a notorious murderer who discovers her Viking husband is not what he seems. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

It's fantasy/light horror with a liberal sprinkling of trauma that makes some of the stories highly arresting, some of them sweet and some of them just very good fun. Craig's deftly crafted stories revel in the trappings of horror -- vampires, golems, Hands of Glory, Satanic rituals -- while exploring more familiar terrain. This is a collection of horror stories that spans multiple styles and genres, inspired by mythology, folk horror, and modern popular culture. His frankness causes a sordid sensation to seethe the length of the reader – we feel no different to the faceless fourth person in the images, recording David at his most intimate. All the stories contained within the pages of Parallel Hells were a huge hit for me, there wasn’t a story I disliked or felt bored by, and I felt greatly entertained while reading.The best are weird, twisting interrogations of identity, humanity, the way we relate and the inherent permeability of boundaries even as we try to hold on to them.

Frustrated by Luke’s trite ignorance, Carly goes to “find the rest of the party or I can find out how it feels to murder somebody”. In this deliciously macabre debut collection, Leon Craig explores queer identity, power, love and the painful complexities of being human in startling new ways. A collection of horror stories that explore queer identity through some emotional, disturbing, and gothic tales. Patronised by London’s precariat, the conversations we witness here needle at entrenched social issues and pick at the political fabric of the city in the pre-election years.Raw pork and opium has one of the more interesting styles of writing explored however the context of the story leaves you going. These are people who don’t own their own homes and some – in the case of one compulsive liar – don’t own their own stories. Parallel Hells will not disappoint any connoisseur of the gothic in its most fulsome and unapologetic sense. In using it to overcome her academic rival, the character tells us “There was nothing so pure as being in things but not of them.

By turns unsettling, funny and fiercely intelligent, Parallel Hells is a queer carnival of monsters and masks. Probably shouldn’t have been reading this at 1:30am now I don’t wanna sleep hahaha full review to come! Off the back of that comment about doing this without permission, one thing I did really appreciate in this book was that in one of the stories it featured looks at parts of the BDSM community but really showcased how important consent is to the core of what that community is. Craig takes figures and tropes familiar to the horror genre – the vampire, the undead bride, the haunted book in a dusty library, demons, possession, haunted houses – but skilfully integrates them with the sensibilities and concerns of readers today. An ancient creature, who feasts on the shame of modern-day Londoners, struggles to fit in with friends they will long outlive.The horror in this collection is less overt than you might be expecting; these aren’t stories that will make you squeamish, they’re stories that will wake you up in the middle of the night. Karl and Peppi live in his mind as a “faceless fact,” a thin form of life that desperately needs fleshing out. I loved some of the stories in this collection, I liked others, and I’m pretty sure I’m not smart enough to understand a few.