A Lovecraftian-adjacent body horror story similar in tone to Between Two Fires. An exiled mermaid and her accompanying plague doctor encounter a village of pied-piper type children being harvested for their organs and reincarnated by a group of Himmlerian priests.

My gripe with this book is simultaneously its biggest boon. Initially at first especially, the vocabulary feels forced, as if the author is trying to use find reasons to use words rather than use words to articulate a mood. E.g.

Manufactured. Understanding frissons. With new eyes, I contemplate the variegation in their complexion, how some swathes of skin are infinitesimally lighter than their neighbour, how their fingers share no commonality in texture

as well as repeated use of $5 words like evanescence, effulgent, and limn. However, as the story progresses and the diction remains consistently above-expectations, the poetic prose start to work. The story is also brutal, which I dig–

The plague doctor crooks a humorless smile. “Martyrs are more powerful than gods.”

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