First published 2006
A sister sinks slowly into deadly bog while her family sings her farewell. A wooden bride comes to life in ways her creator never intended. A lord's servant faces impossible choices between loyalty and survival. These ten tales drop readers into worlds where familiar rules bend and break. Characters navigate rituals that demand terrible prices, encounter creatures that blur the line between human and beast, and discover that survival often requires abandoning everything they once believed about right and wrong. Each story operates like a fever dream, where ordinary people confront extraordinary circumstances that strip away pretense and reveal the raw core of human nature. The collection moves between different worlds and time periods, but darkness threads through every narrative, testing whether compassion can survive when everything else falls away. Lanagan constructs scenarios where characters must choose between their own safety and their humanity, where ancient customs clash with individual desire, and where the price of understanding often exceeds what anyone should pay. The stories accumulate emotional weight as they progress, building toward the recognition that everyone carries both light and shadow within themselves.
Genres: literary-fiction, fantasy, horror, dark-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: dark-fantasy, found-family, moral-dilemmas
259 pages · Paperback · Eos
Content warnings: death, gore, violence