“Readers will be in for a sophisticated horror story, one that will stay with them for quite some time.”
Carsten Ernst has witnessed too much depravity in his short time for any person to bear, especially one of his status. The trials of his childhood turned him into a solemn, calculating young man who is devoted to reason and order. His siblings engage in incest, torture and other debauchery and even a séance. Carsten spies on them and witnesses something he would have never fathomed could be real. The truth seeker in him urges him to get to the bottom of it all. Strange dreams disturb his sleep, and catapult him into unraveling the mystery. He is instructed to seek a book for it contains answers, though they may seem completely beyond any explanation in the human realm. He discovers a world of darkness, where the dead speak to those with the power to listen, rituals held to commune with spirits and unimaginable power. There is no going back. He is compelled to follow the truth to its dark end.
Carsten begins to pry apart the mysteries of the human world and that just beyond the thin veil surrounding it, dragging others into the perilous dance between what is reality, what are only terrible nightmares and what lies between. Song of the Death God is cosmic horror on a whole different level, casting a baleful eye on all who dare open it. Its characters are well fleshed out and the storyline flows swiftly as it spirals into darkness. The history behind the settings felt well researched, the timeline fit perfectly with the bevy of different people encountered and places visited. The characters felt natural right down to speech, dress and characteristics, some of them illicit deep feelings of abhorrence, while others are quite pitiful. The rituals, entities and alternate plain, where time is not as it is in our world, are exceptional and add to the feeling of creepy horror. The story is also really exciting with shootouts and fight scenes when Carsten is accompanied by his right hand man, Karl, weaving a level of adventure to the story. This will satisfy anyone seeking something with a touch of classic Lovecraft, yet delves much deeper and resurrects more terror from the pit of the unknown than the man himself. The level of world construction, and beast building, is very impressive, and the cover art is simply fantastic.
This is the second installment of the singularity cycle, it’s a good length for novel, not leaving anything to be desired and not bogged down in any instance by unneeded words. The first book in the series is The Immortal Body, both definitely display the writing prowess of Holloway and his knack for taking elements of Lovecraftian horror and creating something all his own. It’s cosmic, dangerous and completely depraved at times. His words are like well chosen nails driven into the mind of the reader until they see those images lurking in the narrators mind. This story, along with its predecessor, are hard to put down and are equally exciting and enthralling. Readers will be excited for more of the Singularity Cycle as well as any other story that comes clawing its way out of William Holloway’s imagination. Whether it involves voluptuous Romani women, headless dogs, black tentacles seeking the spirits of the dead, or something all together different, readers will be in for a sophisticated horror story, one that will stay with them for quite some time.
MICHELLE GARZA
Publisher: Horrific Tales Publishing
Paperback: (223pp)
Release Date: 15 July 2017
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