 Hanging around to the end of the video for your chance to win a hardcover copy of The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager. Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review today. I need to let you know upfront that I got this book for review from Off Limits Press. Today we are talking about The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper. Right off the bat, this, the writing, the writing, I'm absolutely stunned by the writing. This is the closest, and you can hold me to this. If you don't agree with me when you read it, I want to talk to you. This is the closest I have ever seen an author come in the indie small press community. This is the closest I've ever come to an author sounding like Clive Barker, like legitimately Clive Barker. And I don't say that easily. I don't say that lightly. This is, if you don't know, Clive Barker I feel is one of the greatest, is probably the greatest short story author of our time, the greatest living one anyways. He, my favorite short story of all time, period hands down nothing is even close is in the hills, the cities. But I say all that to commend Hailey Piper. She has written a fantastic book. The writing, if for no other reason, there's plenty of the stuff that I love, the character, the pacing, the dread, all that stuff. There's plenty of that. But the thing that I really want to hit home is this is fantastically written, one of the best indie small press books I've read, period. You don't have to worry about editing problems, typos, any of that stuff. I didn't find anything. This is just utterly outstanding. So I will be looking into the other two books that she has out. To give you a little backstory, this is about Monique, I believe it is. Monique and Donna? I think it's Monique and Donna. This is Monique searching for Donna in the under, beneath New York City. The atmosphere is off the charts from the very get go. Piper puts you in this environment and then she hits you with the Gray Maiden. I'm not going to say anything else about that one. That was creepy from the jump and the empty place and all these different things that Piper just made me see without over describing them. I think that's one of the things that I love the most and that's what conveys a sense of dread for me is when an author can say, okay, here's a couple of details. You're going to have to fill in the rest for yourself. But it is enough, there are enough details for you to do that with. Like talking about the talents, talking about, I don't want to get into it. I want you to read it for yourself. Easily one of my favorite books of the year. This has been a really good year for books. It's going to be a hell of a long video because you guys voted you wanted one long video at the end of the year from my favorite books. I'm probably going to break it up into best novels, novellas. So this is a novella. It's only 116 pages, I believe. So it's up there. Off Limits Press is doing fantastic work. Samantha Colesnick, author of True Crime, True Crime was published under Grindhouse. But Samantha Colesnick has opened up her own press. It's called Off Limits Press. And so far they've done Laurel Hightower's Crossroads and The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper. I'm going to stop this review right here so that we can get to the giveaway. If you would like a copy of The Last Time I Lie by Riley Sager, put the time signature. That's the time I start talking, any time, between the time I started talking about it to the time I stopped talking about it, any time in between there, send that time signature to Edward Lorne at gmail.com. That's Edward L-O-R-N at gmail.com. If you're still confused on how to spell it, it's the name of my channel. Yes, I call myself E, but the channel's name is Edward Lorne. So put that in an email, shoot that to me, and I will enter you to win. This book, it's out today, by the way, I probably should have said that up front, but this book is out today. You can go grab it. I'm going to make sure to upload this on the 15th. I really, like I've been saying, when I love a book, it's that much harder to review it. The ending, it is Cosmic Horror. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that. The ending, the visuals were absolutely stunning. It takes you from a place of comfort and understanding into a place that is vague and obscure, but you can see what's happening. You can see how things clap together, and you'll understand that when you read the book. I ain't talking about butt cheeks. You can see how things clap together, and I thought that was a fascinating concept, but there's another thing in here that Piper does explaining, you know, the, I don't know if I want to, okay, there's a part in here where she mentions gravity being cosmic, being a cosmic deity. Looking at that, I mean, you could worship gravity. Gravity is that that people worship the sun, people worship the moon, that kind of thing. You could worship gravity because it actually affects your everyday life, that kind of thing. There's a point in there where she brought that up. I've never even considered the concept at all that gravity was a cosmic force, but it is. I mean, when you get right down to it, that's just something that, you know, you could worship just like God, or, however, Buddha, Shiva, whatever, you could worship, but just like that, the, I don't want to, but it's the way, the way Piper describes that and what she goes on to say in that section. I thought was absolutely fantastic. It was original. I don't want to say mind blowing, but it was one of those things. It kind of woke me up, and, you know, maybe pay attention that much more. She really has a lot to say here. Also, this is an LGBTQIA plus book. You're going to get a lot of subtext in that regard, and overt mentions in that regard. And I thought that was very, very well done. It really put me in that place because I'm not, I'm not trans. The book does deal with a transgender person. I'm not trans. I have no idea what people like that go through. And this book put me in that character's mind and let me see that landscape. And when a book can do that, man, it checks all the boxes for me. What else can I say? So have you read The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper? Did you get a chance to get a review copy of it? If you have, let me know what you thought about it down there in the doobly-doo. Did you love it? Did you hate it? If either, let me know why you loved it, why you hated it so that we can have a discussion. But until next time, I have been Ian. You have been you. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!