/lit/ - Literature

>Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell
>by Nathan Ballingrud

Another short story anthology, and this is utterly good shit. The premise is this: "What if Hell was an actual place you could visit? What lives there? How can Hell's natural fauna/flora get here?" Now you get six short stories (sometimes intertwining with each other in small ways) that center around people who interact wit Hell, willingly or otherwise.

Now, I was just about to say how the short story “The Visible Filth” should be turned into a film, and I just looked it up, and it fucking already got turned into a film in 2019, but apparently it sucked, so just read this short story instead. It's good - a rare example of a sociopathic asshole protagonist being written correctly.

Read “The Butcher’s Table” if you like pirates and gentlemanly cannibal cults. “Skullpocket” is great - it's like Nightmare before Christmas but all the ghoulish violent shit is played straight. “The Atlas of Hell” is like Gabriel Knight - horror occult shit on the bayou. Read “The Maw” if you love your dog and would do anything to save him/her.

Good stuff. No politics. Lots of occult horror and body horror.

Is Ballingrud's new book worth reading?