Rhiannon
So I read a very advanced copy of this in April 2024, and have been impatiently tapping my toes for the final FINAL FINAL version to be published. When I read it (nearly two(!!) years ago now) I did a review for the author. And it was... utterly amazing. I wasn't even a few pages into the story when I immediately ordered physical copies of his other books. He immediately jumped to the "auto-buy physical copies author" category for me. Here is the review I posted on a few socials on May 5, 2024 (I'll be posting an updated review once I get my mits on a physical copy):
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Ok, so I was recently privileged enough to be allowed to beta read Jordan's forthcoming novel, The Swallowed Town (released hopefully in the fall?!?) This was my first beta read, and my first time reading something by Page. So, I feel like this experience has set the bar for any future ARC/beta reads really, really high.
I was utterly blown away by the story and the very high quality of writing – the setting, the mystery, the characters… Page pulls off a meta-meta complexity of a tale of a small southern coastal town with a mysterious origin story that was a weird and wonderful cross of House of Leaves and The Shadow over Innsmouth set in our modern technologically driven world. The ‘found footage’ of documents, video, audio, newspaper articles, forum posts, and journals as a narrative device is perfectly woven into a deeply creepy tale that I can’t shake.
It's a kind of ‘cosmic’ horror, but less overt, it’s more subtle. It is an abyssal horror that seems like it’s a few hundred years old, but you just know or feel is really all about that deep time that is unknowable and terrifying.
There is a beautiful, haunting imagery here that paints an atmosphere of dread. If you’ve watched, and appreciated, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Season 3, particularly the ground-breaking Episode 8 (The Return) and were left with that frisson of emotional and physiological fear, this will also set your teeth and nerves on edge in the best possible bizzarro-creepy vibe way. It’s like reading the literary version of those aural and visual assaults on your senses. There are stunning pieces of prose – whole paragraphs – that stole my breath away and I felt myself unavoidably and inextricably spiralling into the mystery at the heart of the story.
Stylistically, there are influences of, and comparisons to be made, to Langan, Lynch, Evenson, Danielewski and Kiernan that for me, are all about that unshakable feeling of unease that just kind of stays with you and rises up from your subconscious during the most normal, mundane part of your day, like when you’re on the bus going to work or standing in line to pick up your coffee.
Page’s story has taken up permanent space in my brain and I am all the better for it. I fully intend on making more room for his stories on my bookshelves and in my apperception.
So I read a very advanced copy of this in April 2024, and have been impatiently tapping my toes for the final FINAL FINAL version to be published. When I read it (nearly two(!!) years ago now) I did a review for the author. And it was... utterly amazing. I wasn't even a few pages into the story when I immediately ordered physical copies of his other books. He immediately jumped to the "auto-buy physical copies author" category for me. Here is the review I posted on a few socials on May 5, 2024 (I'll be posting an updated review once I get my mits on a physical copy):
__________________________________
Ok, so I was recently privileged enough to be allowed to beta read Jordan's forthcoming novel, The Swallowed Town (released hopefully in the fall?!?) This was my first beta read, and my first time reading something by Page. So, I feel like this experience has set the bar for any future ARC/beta reads really, really high.
I was utterly blown away by the story and the very high quality of writing – the setting, the mystery, the characters… Page pulls off a meta-meta complexity of a tale of a small southern coastal town with a mysterious origin story that was a weird and wonderful cross of House of Leaves and The Shadow over Innsmouth set in our modern technologically driven world. The ‘found footage’ of documents, video, audio, newspaper articles, forum posts, and journals as a narrative device is perfectly woven into a deeply creepy tale that I can’t shake.
It's a kind of ‘cosmic’ horror, but less overt, it’s more subtle. It is an abyssal horror that seems like it’s a few hundred years old, but you just know or feel is really all about that deep time that is unknowable and terrifying.
There is a beautiful, haunting imagery here that paints an atmosphere of dread. If you’ve watched, and appreciated, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Season 3, particularly the ground-breaking Episode 8 (The Return) and were left with that frisson of emotional and physiological fear, this will also set your teeth and nerves on edge in the best possible bizzarro-creepy vibe way. It’s like reading the literary version of those aural and visual assaults on your senses. There are stunning pieces of prose – whole paragraphs – that stole my breath away and I felt myself unavoidably and inextricably spiralling into the mystery at the heart of the story.
Stylistically, there are influences of, and comparisons to be made, to Langan, Lynch, Evenson, Danielewski and Kiernan that for me, are all about that unshakable feeling of unease that just kind of stays with you and rises up from your subconscious during the most normal, mundane part of your day, like when you’re on the bus going to work or standing in line to pick up your coffee.
Page’s story has taken up permanent space in my brain and I am all the better for it. I fully intend on making more room for his stories on my bookshelves and in my apperception.