Oh, now this is clever. I have never read anything like this. Thank you for approving this quirky little novella for me.

Stockton House awaits the reader, it was once possibly a church, our main character takes you by the hand into an unearthly realm into the bizarre and a disturbing interlude juxtapose with disturbing thoughts, dreams, and entities, through labyrinthine hallways, up “spiral staircase with human faces carved into the stone walls.”
The first person narrative evoking the scene, feeling what lurks, that which knocks at night and laughs, and those peering eyes, all layered out with distinct voice and corrects words to horror the reader, precise concise and smack you right into nightmarish Atrocities.

An author had a birthday. A notification of is birthday reminded a reader and reviewer of this novella, one he had to read many days before release date, one of which he had not reviewed. As time went by…so little time and so many books, this one left me behind. A short read, one maybe shocking, an atrocious atrocity was something worth trying, on that day. There was that blurb by the great horror writer Jack Ketchum got me too, and that grand haunting house image on the cover calling, and then on his birthday I decided to give it a shot.
The price on kindle was $3.99 and for the price of a nearly maxed up coffee these words and nightmarish interlude worth every dollar, for something that would just be washed down, this one would lurk and may haunt your quiet times, more lasting than that one coffee you would maybe spend this on.

"The Atrocities" is terrifying. It's horrific. It's also surprisingly winsome, at least for me, a person who's not generally or specifically drawn to works of horror. Not that I want to cast aspersions or side-eye at that genre, or at the horrific as a subset of science fiction and fantasy; I'm simply very easily creeped out, and the better the horror book is at what it does, the less likely I am to be functional in the days following picking it up. I spend a lot of time patrolling my house in the wee hours after reading an effective horror story, and I will be the first to admit I had nightmares and, afterward, a period of hypervigilance after finishing "The Atrocities," even though I leavened it with a much more upbeat and cheerful work. I will also be the first to admit that reading this novella, even late at night, and even with all that followed, was a decision I do not regret. Even in the slightest.

The greatest compliment I can pay an author is to put them in the same sentence with some of my favorites, and so to that end I think it worth comparing Shipp's horrors to those of Ruthanna Emrys, whose "Winter Tide" and "Deep Roots" are leviathan in their tone and scope. I'd also put Shipp into the same sentence, or at least the same conversation, as Jeff VanderMeer, particularly his "Area X" series. In both Shipp and VanderMeer's works, everyday things take on new and twisted forms, and vibrate, and morph, and snap from mundane to horrifying in the blink of an eye. The only difference there is that while VanderMeer's visions are largely pastoral and to do with the living and the abandoned, Shipp's are tied to the built environment and art as a human construct. Here are hedges that are trimmed (or ARE THEY?) to take on violent form. Here are paintings and sculptures which are rapidly becoming something else, even when they're not. It's beyond eerie; this is deeply Weird territory, and darkly so, darkest of all because the humans involved don't see themselves as dark at all.

Will I be reading more of Shipp's work as the future brings him back around again? Yes. Absolutely.

Amazing beginning and middle! Short story, didn't notice out was only 140 pages! But it could have been longer to lead up to that ending! #smackyouinthefaceending
Thank you netgalley for the free arc in exchange for an honest review!

This book had me hooked with it's interesting concept and intriguing execution however, the ending was so abrupt it sucked all the joy out of it for me.

At 104 pages, it was shorter than I expected (that's entirely my fault for not doing my homework) and the story wasn't as in depth and gothic in atmosphere as I was expecting. It was an odd blend of 'woman in a dress sitting by the fireplace in the drawing room' and 'check out my 84" smart TV' which was quite jarring in a short book that didn't have time to add the context.

The story is seen through the eyes of Ms Valdez, a woman hired to teach the spirit of a deceased little girl. I didn't get the sense of any strong emotions from the governess, which detracted from the horror that was just waiting to be released in this book.

The premise of the book that I read in the synopsis was a great one and I think I would have loved this story if it had more atmosphere, depth of feeling from the characters and an ending that made sense. As it stands, this is book is awarded 3 stars because the sense of suspense created by the author made me want to finish it, even if it wasn't everything I'd hoped it would be.

'The Atrocities' by Jeremy C. Shipp was a novella that I wanted to absolutely love, and for most of it, I did.

When Danna Valdez is hired for a governess job, the creepy hedge maze just to ge to the front door should have been her first warning. The gruesome art lining all the walls should have shooed her away. When Danna finds out that the child she is hired to teach is dead, and believed to be a ghost, I realized that Danna is made of sterner stuff than me.

The gorgeous prose created such a great mood. The mix of gothic creepiness with the reminders that this is the modern age were handled deftly. Some of the supporting characters were cluelessly ignorant, and they helped lighten up the story. I was hoping for a really interesting ending, but the ending left me a little disappointed. I still really enjoyed reading this gothic, creepy novel.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

Another solid addition to the TOR novellas collection. Solid three stars. These TOR novellas are always a breath of fresh air after a long and dense novel, or if I am just too busy in the week to read something lengthy. They always manage to convey an interesting and engaging story in a short amount of pages.

First off, the cover for this book is fantastic.

I had some issues with this novella. I could not engage with the main character, but I will cut the author some slack on that front since the novella was so short.

Second, why, oh why did the author feel the need to repeat certain things over and over again! I swear you could make a drinking game for every time he mentioned the eighty-four inch plasma high definition television, we get it! It's an enormous tv! Do you have to describe the size and model every single time!? Also, what is with the repetitious nature of animals in this book, and weird ones at that?

Thirdly, I would describe myself as a well read reader but I found it irritating how many times I had to look up a word the author used in The Atrocities. Don't get me wrong, the author used amazing diction but it was to the point that the words bogged down the passages and interrupted the flow of the novel. I should not have to find myself interrupted by several words in a passage and say, "huh"? I felt almost uneducated by the over-use of sophisticated diction in this modern day, almost teen novella. It did not feel like it was the right place for this and it got in the way.

Fourthly, I wish they had used the hedge maze more in this story. One of the most interesting passages in this novella is used in the first passage to lure you in, but this amazing setting is rarely seen again throughout The Atrocities.

"Turn left at the screaming woman with a collapsing face. Turn right at the kneeling man with bleeding sores the size of teacups. If you come across a big-breasted bear with a child's head in her jaws, you're going the wrong way."

All in all, this was a solid novella for a solid three star review.

The premise of this novella sounds intriguing and I loved many of its ideas and twists, but overall it felt much too rushed. I think it would have worked a lot better if spun out into a full novel. The last act, especially, left me cold and the character of Mr. Evers didn't feel fleshed out at all. I love stories about governesses working in creepy mansions (Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw, Nine Coaches Waiting, ...) so I had high hopes for this one, but unfortunately this is the first of all the Tor novellas I've read so far that didn't leave much of an impression on me.

Interesting little story. The author has great descriptive abilities and I was often on the edge of my seat, wondering what would happen next. The ending was not what I was expecting, and I will admit to a little disappointment, but overall this is a wonderfully creepy, involving, fascinating book.

Nightmare maze? Parents not accepting their child's death? A governess with something to hide? Sign me up!! The Atrocities has an amazing premise and despite its brevity I was entirely ready to be amazed and scared by Jeremy C. Shipp. And to a certain extent he did dazzle me, while also leaving me wanting towards the end. Thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Coming in at a little more than 100 pages, Shipp manages to pack quite a punch into The Atrocities. From the very beginning I loved his imagery and the spookyway in which he described it. Just look at the opening lines:
Turn left at the screaming woman with a collapsing face. Turn right at the kneeling man with bleeding sore the size of teacups.
Those lines betray a knack for the spooky as well as a sense of humour. There were many scenes in this novella where I could see what he was describing. As the new governess, Ms Valdez, arrives at the mansion she encounters a hellscape of odd statues and a disturbed family. Nothing is quite as it seems here, and neither is everything right with Ms Valdez either. Shipp gives us something of an insight into her character and history, but sadly this didn't entirely fit into the Gotthic vibe of the rest of the novella but felt more like a 21st century horror movie.

Shipp creates a stunning atmosphere in the first half of The Atrocities.There is such a foreboding feel to everything, so many questions are raised and in such an interesting way that I was incredibly gripped by this novella. There are a lot of things which aren't resolved towards the end of the novella. Although I enjoy an author that trusts their reader to do some sleuthing of their own to figure out the details The Atrocities left too much in the dark meaning that a lot of details seemed more like random embellishments rather than part of the plot. At a certain point in the novella Shipp lost me for a moment. It was almost like I missed a page or two and now wasn't entirely sure of how the characters had gotten to where they were, why they were doing what they were doing. In the end the finale of The Atrocities fell a little bit flat for me and I would've loved to see this worked out into something more substantial. Add another hundred pages and you'd have yourself a stunning Gothic thriller that satisfies completely.

I really enjoyed the first half or so of The Atrocities and completely sank into the esoteric and dark world Shipp creates. However, when it came to tying up all the loose ends and delivering as brilliant an ending as his opening, Shipp left me hanging a bit. I will definitely keep an eye out for his next book however. I'd recommend this to fans of Gothic and Thriller novels.

The Atrocities is only a short story and I don’t want to give too much away so I’m going to keep this rather to the point in terms of focus.

The description above is taken directly off Goodreads and is a pretty good set up for what you can expect from this read- at least in terms of the majority of the book. This definitely falls into the gothic category. A dark and foreboding country home, a grotesque maze that acts as a barrier to the outside world, a rather starchy governess and a husband and wife who seem to be in the throes of grief. The husband seems like a mad eccentric with a penchant for monstrosities and the wife appears to have lost her grip on reality somewhat. To all intents and purposes this is a ghost story set within the walls of a very unusual, surreal and disturbing mansion but, believe me when I say that this is anything but a straightforward haunting.

For me this book reads almost like a dream sequence. Anything can happen in your dreams after all and that’s the feeling that pervades this book. It’s bizarreness is gripping to say the least and that oddity, coupled with the fact that this can be read in little more than an hour or so definitely held me captive. The story is narrated by Ms Valdez and I must confess that she keeps her cool demeanour even under the most frightening circumstances. There’s no way I would have been able to sleep in that house, in fact, to be honest, I would have turned back halfway through the creepy maze. I’m a wimp. What can I say.

You’re probably thinking I’m not really telling you much here but that’s because it’s difficult. Put basically, if you fancy a creepy story, a ghost story that is something more than you expected coupled with some downright hideous imagination then this could be just the book for you.

The calmness of Jane Eyre meets the madness of Wonderland except Wonderland has turned into a dark nightmare, and, like nightmares I’m not entirely sure that I understand the ending, In fact, to be honest, I’m not even sure if there’s supposed to be a clear cut ending – it makes me wonder if people will take something different from this book. It definitely made me reconsider things.

I don’t really have any criticisms. I guess in some respects I’m a bit of a stickler for wanting more clarity in terms of the ending – it’s a bugbear of mine – but, in this case the ending kind of fits somehow. Just be aware that this is dark, twisted and unusual. It’s also shorter than I would have liked which leaves the ending feeling very rushed but, again, I don’t really make a secret that shorter stories are not usually my thing – just every now and again I get grabby hands and in this particular instance my greed paid off with a good story. Would I have loved this to have been worked into something longer – yes and no. I’m not sure, it might have been just too much to handle in an expanded version.

On the whole a creepy number, it would fit in well on the darker nights if your constitution can take it and it lives up to its name.

I received a copy, through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

Beautiful Grotesque

So here's the thing. I looked up the word "grotesque" to make sure you spelled it with a "q" and I happened to read the definitions - "comically or repulsively ugly or distorted", "comically distorted figure, creature, or image". Note the part about "comically". Shipp does Gothic; he writes beautifully, he can get across ugly and distorted, but underlying the work I'm familiar with, (like the "Attic Clowns" series of story collections), there is always an element of dark humor, bemused terror, and the frankly comic. That's a big part of what I enjoyed in this book, and that may go a long way toward explaining why it just seems so darn odd.

The house and grounds are laid out wonderfully. The premise is introduced briskly and in a deadpan matter of fact way. Our narrator is both wound tight and laid back, which allows for a rather unusual condition of detached, mellow dread. But apart from all that the author is sort of goofing on us and playing around with fiction conventions. Every time someone gets in the golf cart to drive around the grounds we are reminded that it has "integrated cup holders". Every gourmet meal served to our heroine is described in mockingly excessive detail. Every character's appearance is accompanied by a description of some odd item of clothing they are wearing. There are a dozen phrases that are repeated again and again to comic effect.

This is a brief book,( a hundred pages), barely a novella and a brisk read. I didn't think the characters or the plot or the story as such were meant to be terribly important. I took this as a playful experiment in form and style. Like a challenge - "hey Jeremy, bet you can't do "The Turn of the Screw" as though written by H.P. Lovecraft.". Or, "hey, Jeremy, what would happen if you painted Bruegel's "Triumph of Death", but put some of Warhol's Soup Cans around the edges".

Now I may very well be reading way too much into this than is there, and lots of people believe that an author's intentions have nothing to do with the work anyway. So here's a real bottom line - Stockton House is one of the great creepy houses, the hedge and the statue Atrocities are inspired, the heroine's approach to the House through the maze is one of the best opening tracking shots you'll read in a gothic horror book, this author can really do nightmares and nightmarish visitations, and, (I still believe this), there are some very funny bits. On top of it all, every now again you will come across an exquisitely crafted sentence. This was a deeply cool find.

(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Definitely not for the faint-hearted, "The Atrocities" is a traditional dark gothic tale about a woman coming to teach at a mysterious imposing manor house, complete with terrifying statues, violent paintings, and a mysterious enigmatic employer. The only difference here? The student our protagonist has come to teach is deceased. Nightmarish imagery, mysterious symptoms of madness, and questions about the integrity of every character in the book make this a quick read, with an explosive and satisfying ending. For fans of the grotesque, extremely bloody horror, and haunted houses.

There were some aspects of this novella that I enjoyed and some that bothered me. The Atrocities left me feeling conflicted and for the longest time I didn’t know how to rate it.

What I really liked about this story was its setting and atmosphere. I was very intrigued by the mansion and I wanted to know more about it. The author managed to create an eery and uneasy atmosphere within the first few pages. The atmosphere continued to be like that throughout the whole novella and I loved it. I was also very intrigued by all the characters. There just seemed to be something strange about every single one of them. (They all just made me feel weird for some reason.) I enjoyed learning more about them and what their deal was.

What I didn’t enjoy about this novella is its lack of depth. There were some very interesting things hinted at, but never fully explored. I believe that the story would have been a lot better had it been longer and more developed. The premise, setting and characters had the potential to be explored a lot more and it’s really too bad that they weren’t. Another problem that I had with it was the ending. It felt very abrupt. I somehow didn’t even realise the story ended, I just expected something more from it – it didn’t feel completed. There was no transition to the ending, it just kind of happened. Plus there were some parts of the story that I found confusing, which I can’t go into detail about as it would spoil the story.

Overall I enjoyed this story, I just wish it was longer and more developed. I would recommend you to pick this novella up if you enjoy atmospheric and eerie books.

Ms. Valdez travels to a home where she has been hired as a governess only to discover that the strange home is missing one very essential part of the job...the child.

When she first arrives at the house, she is horrified and enthralled at the grotesque works of art around the property. Statues of deformed people suffering and contorted, eyes where they don't belong, missing limbs. The artist, who is the owner of the home, calls them his 'Atrocities'.

She soon finds out that her pupil passed away before she arrived. Her mother believes she haunts the house, and must be suitably occupied to avoid her capricious ghost damaging the house.

Ms. Valdez must decide if she wants to leave immediately, or stay to help this strange woman who is so distraught by the loss of her child that she claims to see her.

This strange novella has bursts of unexplained visions and dreams, at times feeling like a nod toward 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. We have two women, one who has obviously been entrapped and gaslit- and one who has been through some serious trauma that has barely been explained. A lot of the oddities--and indeed the Atrocities themselves--are unexplained in the novella, but the story does not suffer from it. The unexplained nature of the story works to make it creepier, because instead of rationalizations and explanations we get dreams and madness and oddity.

It's a creepy little novella that reminds me of some of the old classics. Great read.

2 stars. It was OK.

Things I liked:
1. The cover! It's fabulous!
2. The first 25% of the book--the description of the house and garden--was creepy and gothic. Great setup, and a great premise for a book.
3. It was really fast to read.

Things I didn't like:
1. The ending. It just sort of drifted off.
2. A lack of depth. Things were hinted at but never explained.
3. Though I expected, from the cover and description, that this would be a gothic novel, it's more like a dark fantasy or even surreal/weird fiction. Not what I expected.

I received this review copy from the publisher on NetGalley. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review; I appreciate it!

The Evers are looking for someone to teach their troubled young daughter who has already scared off two governesses. When Danna Valdez arrives at the job interview, she immediately notices that the eccentric Evers' family will not be ordinary employers. As she approaches their home, she's forced to walk through a hedge maze filled with statues depicting biblical horrors. Mr. Evers insists that the statues are "more than mere grotesqueries.” He says if you "look beyond the violence and suffering to the metaphysical core of the image,” you'll see "a manifestation of God's power." Horrific art fills every corner of the house; canvases with disfigured people adorned with "wings made of human fingers spread out from their backs" and "ashen skin [stretched] tight over their bones like shrink-wrap" line the hallway. Undeterred by the home's ghastly appearance, Danna takes the job but soon discovers the horrors in the home extend beyond the gruesome decor.

Before Danna even arrived at the Evers' home, grief and guilt had trapped her in the middle ground between the living and the dead. A tiny voice inside her head is always tempting her back to the darkness, but she forces herself to keep going. Her simultaneous existence in both a living nightmare and a house filled with chthonic decor makes it difficult to separate her surreal dreams from reality. When Danna is finally forced to look in the mirror, she sees a haunted face she doesn’t recognize. She spots something familiar in Mrs. Evers, which triggers an instinctive need to help. The characters are forced to confront their demons, in both the psychological and physical realm. Some of those "demons" actually see themselves as benevolent forces. Danna is repeatedly tested throughout the story, much like the subjects of the statues in the hedge maze. Mr. Evers insists that his employees have "unstained" souls that are "impenetrable to damnation.” Will Danna be able to see past her own flaws and tap into her "equally powerful strengths" in a home where any perceived shortcoming can result in one's downfall?

I loved the haunting atmosphere and creepy imagery! The nightmarish decor immediately summoned visions of Francisco Goya’s  Saturn Devouring His Son  in my head. The descriptive passages made it so easy to visualize the surroundings, regardless of how bizarre things got. However, I feel lukewarm about the characters and the story. While the ending was set up well, the last act was over so quickly that I didn't feel like I had a complete picture of what was happening or why. Part of that is because I never truly understood Mr. Evers. There’s something about the meaning of the story that I can’t quite grasp, but these are the words and concepts swirling around in my head: virtue/fiend, judgment/compassion, power, conformity, control, rebellion, faith, the Old Testament, and the distortions of a fanatic. I think this novella would've worked even better as a full-length novel.

If you love creepy houses, this book is well worth the experience! It’s only 112 pages, so I recommend reading it in one sitting on a dreary day. The first few pages are available at Tor.com. I think it's best to avoid reading the description of this book because it spoils some of the moments of discovery that I enjoyed.

This book is a lot of fun for horror fans. A nice, light read about atrocities.

A creepy setting, unusual characters, and a truly disturbing house all make for a promising ghost story set-up... but the ending fizzled a bit for me.