Into Bones Like Oil

'Into Bones Like Oil' is a horror novella that, in my eyes, embodies perfectly Kaaron Warren's universe. Starting as a classic situation - a woman seeks shelter in a strange house -, it very quickly becomes a gripping and idiosyncratic story of horror and redemption through the discovery of the pain of others. What I love about Kaaron Warren's writing, is that the uncanny is actually the normality, and what we call 'normality' is actually the real horror. Her characters are all wrecks, broken down in life and in the afterlife, and yet they shine with a dark and moving humanity that makes the reader reflect upon the given notions of 'evil', 'friendship', 'support', and many more. If I should ever teach a class on contemporary horror, 'Into Bones Like Oil' would definitely be on my list, to show the students how genre is made to be broken and re-invented. And Kaaron Warren is one of the best in her field when it comes to that. Seb Doubinsky , award-winnning author of the City-States Cycle series Protagonist Dora's children are always at the back of her mind, at the fore. She has her eccentricities and multiplicities, and grave faults. As in all Kaaron Warren's delightful but grim stories she borrows from something relatable. She reaches for the uncanny in the everyday, makes it stranger yet. Into Bones Like Oil is no deviant from this ingenious author's modus operandishe finds the fear she wants to explore, here taking a parent's panic and extrapolating it. Warren is a mother who learnt to steal time standing at the stove cooking bolognaise sauce, stirring with one hand, writing with the othershe understands parental instinct and lures you with it. Narrated from Dora's perspective, the text is clear, patient in its scene setting. It doesn't draw attention to horror, but it is there: a haunting at the back or fore of your mind, inside a sunken building full of dilapidation. The house sat quiet at 6amthere is a strong sense of place. Dora's room is so tiny, it's like a grave. Corridor walls are full of shipwreck paintings. Everything is pale or sickly coloured. And even here, the author charms you, hoodwinks you. At your most ease, as you snuggle into your cushion, Warren tenders a fresh perspective to horror: It is not the sight of a severed hand or a head full of seaweed lolling on the ground. It's the gazing at a house next door, the one with a curled cat on the wall. And there's a child's tricycle asunder by the flowerpots. And walking boots out the door that's ajar. Sounds of washing in the kitchen. A waft of pie But you blink and you're not sure it's a memory, because all you see is a sealed-up well smothered with moss. Warren stirs awake an everyday fear that comes at you one hundred and one ways. And it's not a premonition because it is realised a billion times in a heart full of love. An accomplished story that is most unsettling. Eugen Bacon , Aurealis Magazine A grieving mother is haunted by ghosts from her past in this dark, ethereal novella by Warren (The Gate Theory). Insomniac Dora, mourning the death of her two young daughters, comes to the Angelsea, a beachside rooming house, to escape her troubled lifebut the Angelsea is anything but a peaceful respite. The ghosts of those drowned in a shipwreck visit each night to speak their last words through the mouths of the inn's sleeping inhabitants. When the Angelsea's owners pressure Dora to become a vessel for a ghost, she worries that she will encounter the spirits of her girls and that they will confirm her worst fears by blaming her for their deaths because she failed to protect them. No one in the small, eccentric cast of rooming house boarders is without their faults, and despite Dora's flaws, readers will sympathize with her struggle to find forgiveness. This grim portrait of broken people in a broken setting reckoning with trauma, paranoia, and grief will especially appeal to horror readers who appreciate melancholic and atmospheric stories. Publishers Weekly A strange and compelling novella that plays with the reader's expectations, bending the narrative and its themes until its thought-provoking final page. Dora has lost everything a mother and wife could lose. She blames herself for these tragedies, and her low self-esteem and lack of confidence has turned her into a shell of a person. We meet Dora as she checks into the Angelsea, a rooming house in a nameless watefront town with almost no belongings, money, or purpose. The Angelsea is dilapidated, meager, cramped, and populated with the lost and forgotten people that society would rather sweep under the rug: ex-convicts, the mentally unstable, and a handful of other guests who silenty agree that one never talks about the past. The inn is also rumored to be a conduit for supernatural occurrences. Kaaron Warren is an accomplished, award-winning author with dozens of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories under her belt. Her talent for deftly weaving through these genres is on full display here. Although many of these characters are given little time in the spotlight, they are crafted with enough depth and dimension to bring about a understanding of their histories and motivations. The story culminates in a hazy, dreamlike catharsis that had me re-examine how I viewed the story from the beginning. Into Bones like Oil an unusually effective tale; hard to define, and harder to forget. Adam Weller , Fantasy Book Review Most Anticipated Upcoming Horror and Weird Fiction Signal Horizon 2019's Most Anticipated Blood Curdlers High Fever Books Warren delivers a tale of creeping dread. Dora is in a house that we all know and despise from travelling, but where the guests are used as conduits. For Dora the haunting by her past may be worse than anything supernatural and in Warren's hands the horrific encroaches inexorably on the familiar. Recommended. Tade Thompson , author of Rosewater and The Murders of Molly Southbourne