Parallel Hells

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In one segment, “The Camera,” the friendship between Stan and Gary, both in their 20s, is strained when Gary begins taking photos of Stan without him knowing.

Raw pork and opium has one of the more interesting styles of writing explored however the context of the story leaves you going. Favorite stories from this collection included: “A Wolf in the Temple,” “Lipless Grin,” “Hags,” “No Dominion,” and “Saplings. My favourite stories included ‘Raw Pork and Opium’ and ‘Lick the Dust’ and I will probably reread them in the future. I think the longer stories towards the end were much better, but even so none of them did all that much for me. Horror has always been a genre that I have avoided, especially when fantasy is involved as I tend to get freaked out quite easily.

But in the chapter titled “The Flat ,” we are thrust into the primary voyeuristic perspective, as though we are watching David, who has just moved into a new apartment, through a hole in the wall. As a whole, this collection — which is full of sensuous, Gothic-inspired stories — takes familiar concepts in the horror genre (the vampire, the Golem, the haunted house, the cursed books, the demons, the possessions, the satanic rituals, the faeries) and breathes new life into them. Even when Yves introduces himself later in the narrative as Michael, the eerie character of “Stoker” is indelible, a second skin we can’t peel away.

Asta is an ancient being who feasts on the shame of contemporary Londoners, who now, beyond anything, wishes only to fit in with a group of friends they will long outlive. 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. 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.Her academic work focuses on contemporary trauma literature and theory but her freelance and creative work covers any and all topics, particularly those which deal with the horrors of capitalism and issues of gender and class. Probably shouldn’t have been reading this at 1:30am now I don’t wanna sleep hahaha full review to come! I found the best stories were the ones that were a little longer, because they gave Craig a chance to flex her impressive writing muscles and created more space for her examination of the human condition through these surreal vibes.

Irresistibly strange and inventive, Parallel Hells is a collection of dark and delightful stories that blends folklore and gothic horror with a contemporary twist. ok but, why does this collection read weird, like something about the word choices, the writing style, the characterisations, all dated the stories for me in such an odd way that i felt i was looking through amber at each of the stories as i sat down with them. I really enjoyed the level of detail that Leon Craig puts into setting up the story, even when we are thrown into the narrative. loved that it was very gay but didn’t care for a lot of the stories especially the ones towards the end. Macabre, Gothic, sensuous (textures are everywhere), sharp (neither too rich nor too sparse) extraordinarily, varied from Icelandic sagas to London sex dungeons (OK, maybe not that varied!

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 revelers and a notorious murderer who discovers her Viking husband is not what he seems. 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. Craig's deftly crafted stories revel in the trappings of horror -- vampires, golems, Hands of Glory, Satanic rituals -- while exploring more familiar terrain. This endeavour is echoed later in the prose when Tommy, disorientated in the throes of his abundant drug use, expounds to his Uber driver about cavers who “go down into the deep deep cave systems, tiny little tunnels barely the width of their bodies. Through those concepts, Leon Craig explores identity and queerness as she modernizes the familiar tropes — the satanic ritual is suggested by a character in response to trauma; a father who sacrificed to have a child can’t accept that his son is actually his daughter; the shame-sucking demon is trying to figure out whether or not to be honest about their true self with friends; a haunted book is used to help a student get ahead in their über-competitive doctoral program at Oxford.