The Worm and His Kings

By: Hailey Piper

Narrated by: Allyson Voller

New York City, 1990: When you slip through the cracks, no one is there to catch you. Monique learns that the hard way after her girlfriend Donna vanishes without a trace. Only after the disappearances of several other impoverished women does Monique hear the rumors.

A taloned monster stalks the city’s underground and snatches victims into the dark. Donna isn’t missing. She was taken. To save the woman she loves, Monique must descend deeper than the known underground, into a subterranean world of enigmatic cultists and shadowy creatures. But what she finds looms beyond her wildest fears - a darkness that stretches from the dawn of time and across the stars.

©2020 Hailey Piper (P)2021 Fireside Horror

A delightful cosmic horror story!

There’s so much atmosphere and world building in this novella I couldn’t stop listening! It’s fast paced and entertaining the entire way through.

Not bad, ending not to my taste.

Though I was disappointed I hesitate to grade it too harshly, as it is still top 5 cosmic horror books I have ever read/ listened to and I’m at 27 now so it’s not too shabby.

Overall Much better than the hack job done by other supposed “critically acclaimed” cosmic horror writers like Cronning (Laird Barron) who stuff their books with meaningless fluff. But not nearly as good as the fisherman (John langan) or revival (Stephen king) .

The cannon should have been fleshed out more and the ending was a little too neat for my tastes in a cosmic horror.
But the details and personality was really developed in the characters and the representation was good too.

Honestly felt like it should have been a multi part book or it could have been much longer , bc like I mentioned earlier, the cannon needed a little more fleshing out and while the ending could have been good I felt like it needed more background buildup to make it truly satisfying.
7/10

A wonderfully angry cosmic horror story

I fell in love with this book almost immediately, and became more so as it went along. It’s set in 1990 New York and tells the story of a young woman seeking her lover, who disappeared without a trace months before. Monique’s search takes her both physically and conceptually into darkness and buried secrets. It culminates in one of those pure expressions of anger at human and cosmic injustice I can recall. And the narration makes it even better, catching the nuances of Monique’s exhaustion, the peculiar cheer of the world’s nicest doomsday cultists, and the hammering horrors that wait for her. Absolutely too-notch all around.

Very solid weird fiction with horror elements

This is a great and short book about very sympathetic characters catapulted into a world of cosmic weirdness that will satisfy that itch that fans of the genre crave. Also in its short duration it is pretty much non-stop with very little downtime. Recommended.

Cosmic Horror Done Right

I'm so tired of authors thinking they can staple tentacles on hack plots and call it cosmic horror. This gets it, the author gets it. Monique deserves poptarts and a hug.

Worth It

Well written. Just enough. Contemporary cosmic horror done right. I am eager for more from this author.

The ending seals the deal

Let's begin with the ending. There's so much horror out there that builds up to a powerful climax, then whizzes everything down its leg with the end, whether it's a diabolis-ex-machina, a desperate "twist" that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, a whimper or a head-scratcher.

Hailey Piper unquestionably nailed the landing. The conclusion is emotionally satisfying, narratively justified, and brings all the themes of the work to a beautiful fulfillment. That counts for a lot in my book.

Now ask me how much I enjoyed the book as a whole. It was good and well-crafted. I love the elements of ambiguity, the cosmic scale, the mythology of a pre-human civilization. Most importantly, while it's dark and desperate, there's just enough light of hope that the narrative doesn't get eaten by the Gru of Indifference. Hailey knows precisely how much lifeline to give you.

If I find fault with the book, it's probably the pacing. For me at least, it dragged in spots. I was alternating this with another book, and I found that one, despite being longer and more languid, held my attention better.

Subjectively, personally speaking, I think the book was good but I didn't like it as much as I wanted to. I probably won't reread this one, although I don't regret reading it or buying it. But I try to be objective enough to recognize my own subjectivity, and for other people this will hit the perfect spot and become a well-worn favorite.

Solid Cosmic Horror

Solid story with a reworking of standard genre tropes. Is it rude to point out that worms are male and female? Great protagonist.

Monique my beloved

i am heartbroken. i will never emotionally recover from this book. Cosmic worm my beloved

dissapointed

After the setup I was fully expecting to love this book. Underground tunnels and caverns are such an underutilized setting for horror, plus there are cults and creatures and cosmic emptiness and all kinds of fascinating subject matter packed in a short novella.

However once the book gets going, exactly where the suspense should peak, the MC has to go on long sob story rants about her past, take a nap, and be endlessly indecisive on whether or not to save her love interest. Not a single character in the story feels real or engaging.

Overall the writing is immature and the author seems more concerned with including graphic trans ideology than the actual story.