First Chapter Thoughts: FleshTrap by Magen Cubed

Heads up that this is a horror novel dealing with darker topics and as such, both this and the eventual full review will touch on child abuse and gore. 

Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh. So, I’m a sucker for a particular mood in books; developed after reading a LOT of Neil Gaiman and Stephen King, and then watching Jessica Jones. It’s the feeling of prose like thick, dark coffee, an atmosphere of flickering linoleum lights, and the sense of something terrible lurking both in the present and the past.

Maybe this is overly specific. But anybody who follows my writing knows I have an affinity for trauma – how we process it, how we deal with it in messy and “objectively bad” ways, how it lingers. It’s one of the reasons I keep reading Stephen King even though there’s so many other issues with his work; the way he deals with that topic is incredible. And FleshTrap is giving me that same rich, dark, deep feeling, like staring into a dark pool and not being sure what’s at the bottom. Even better: unlike every single King novel, I have absolutely no clue what I’m going to find. I’m going in completely blindfolded.

The first chapter is pretty simple, in terms of what Actually Happens; it’s the main character waking up from a bad dream. By the end of Chapter One, I know that Casey’s father is dead, that he lives with his boyfriend and that he has a journal made out of missing-person posters. (Which has got to be my favourite creepy journal in writing yet.) But despite being theoretically slow, the characterization and the writing means I am READY to read more.

I bought FleshTrap by Magen Cubed on Amazon here!