Worlds of Hurt
Demon est Deus inversus…
They are the Misbegotten — once mortal men and women, from different times and different lands, who have all run afoul of a monstrous deity that remade them into undying predators. They are the creatures of our world’s darkest folklore, who hunger for flesh and blood … but who hunger for revenge most of all.
Beginning with his novellas for Poppy Z. Brite’s acclaimed Love In Vein anthologies, Brian Hodge has been weaving an ongoing story cycle into what’s been called “a mythos every bit as dismal and bleak as Lovecraft’s Elder Gods.”
Worlds of Hurt collects the first four chapters of the Misbegotten mythos into a single volume:
“The Alchemy of the Throat” — A modern-day castrato soprano becomes the latest in a line of indispensable companions to an ancient benefactor. Bram Stoker Award finalist.
“The Dripping of Sundered Wineskins” — The immortal Sisters of the Trinity catapult an Irish stigmatic toward his destiny of being either a saint or a butcher. World Fantasy Award finalist.
“When the Bough Doesn’t Break” — The testament of Saint Patrick the Fallen lures a pair of young seekers to rural Ireland, where an agent of divine retribution waits to be unleashed.
World of Hurt — The short novel that Rue Morgue said “makes Lovecraft’s Old Ones seem downright compassionate.” When death is no escape, what do you do? Andrei has a desperate need to know, as the clock runs out on the most excruciating moral choice of his life.
REVIEWS & ACCOLADES
“Packs an emotional wallop that will send its audience reeling … The atmosphere of fear and apprehension is so well-wrought that the pinpoints of hope, love and benevolence scattered throughout the story shine with that much more intensity.” — Boulder Daily Camera
“World of Hurt compresses an epic’s worth of complexity, vision, and the mythic horrific into one little lean, mean heartbreak machine. This is spiritual hardcore horror, both brutal and transcendent. And it will punch you right in the soul.” — John Skipp, author of Conscience and The Light At The End
“From its arresting premise to a jaw-dropping conclusion, World of Hurt is a contemporary fable in which a truly Gothic darkness lies skin-deep under our everyday world. Brian Hodge has a powerful sense of the hidden forces that drive us, and a ruthlessly effective talent for getting them onto the page.” — Stephen Gallagher
“What Hodge is doing is expanding the idea of splatterpunk as something that can explore how the violation of our most cherished belief systems can be as traumatic as any bodily violation.” — Dead Reckonings
“Hodge creates a mythos every bit as dismal and bleak as Lovecraft’s Elder Gods … but it’s the peripheral characters with which he’s concerned … There is no cold Lovecraftian phrasing here, but pages suffused with warmth and genuine awe for the human spirit.” — Hellnotes
“Brian Hodge is one of the best writers writing fiction today, period. His explorations of religion, sexuality, violence, and magic, his characters so vividly drawn that they make most of the rest of us look like we're working with stick figures, and his always-absorbing, never-faltering voice have appointed him the master of any form he tries. If you've not read him, you're missing out on one hell of an enjoyable and important writer.” — Poppy Z. Brite, author of Liquor and Prime
“World of Hurt is at once both one of the most horrifying and moving books I've ever read. There are moments of breathtaking tenderness and hope amid the carnage, and a sense of real people — damaged, frightened, courageous people — trying to find their way in a world that has abandoned them. A thrilling, intelligent and devastating novel that deserves every success.” — Conrad Williams