This was absolutely phenomenal! I am still reeling after finishing this book, and I don't even know if I processed it all completely. The prose is so quick and smart and inventive, especially when it delves into the horror of it all, which I think is where the author's skill lies. There are fraught personal relations, backstories of tragedy, the use of technology as a narrative medium, the intersection of progress and hubris, bugs oh my god the bugs! Basically everything I ever wanted in a horror novel!

This is such a unique book! I love all of Nick Cutters other books and this was something different but yet refreshing. The body horror genre needs Cutters stylistic writing style. Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review! <3

’The poor don’t eat the rich. The rich eat themselves’

A fun fact about me is that I’m not scared of wasps. Now I know that isn’t a particularly special attribute to have, lots of people aren’t scared of wasps, but also a lot of people are. I grew up seeing other kids in the playground at school shrieking at the tops of their lungs and running, seemingly for their lives, when one appeared. I’ve seen my sister-in-law, a 34 year old woman, get up from the table in a pub garden and run inside. Now maybe this is because I’ve never been stung, by a wasp or any other insect that can sting, but I think in reality it’s because I don’t think wasps are that bad. Sure they’re pretty aggressive, but only when you get in their personal space or start flapping your arms. I think it’s quite funny that this little insect gets as annoyed with people as I do. I just think we all have a little wasp inside of us.

And for the people in this book, well they have a whole lotta wasp inside of them.

The Queen surprised me for a number of reasons. I didn’t go into this thinking I’d love it anywhere near as much as I did. I’m stuck in the mindset that nothing will ever come close to The Troop and how truly horrific that book is. While I still think that’s the case, The Queen didn’t reach those levels of oh my god please I have to stop reading before I throw up, it made a pretty good goddamn attempt. So yes, to answer the question on everyone’s minds, the gore and body-horror was fucking brutal. Disgusting, upsetting, vomit-inducing. It goes without saying that having wasps lay their eggs inside of you and subsequently have them hatch and crawl out of your skull, doesn’t make for pleasant reading. However, it does make for entertaining, and if you’re actually insane like me, fun reading. Once again, Nick Cutter managed to combine body-horror and animals (this time with a focus on insects) to make something truly revolting, and I am forever impressed and a little concerned by his talents.

But it wasn’t just his gore this time around that I loved. It was of course the plot and the characters that really stuck with me. I thought Margaret was a phenomenal final girl. Likeable, easy to root for, smart enough that I believed she thought of her ways to survive, and generally pretty fucking funny. I loved her points of view, and i genuinely wished I was her friend. The same goes for Harry, her companion for most of the books events. Equally hilarious and engaging, I was absolutely devastated by the end of his story. He was so damn cute!

Obviously I also have to mention Rudyard Crate. While he is a very stereotypical crazy rich dude who uses his wealth to make his strange bug fetish come to life (now I’ve typed it out it doesn’t sound that stereotypical actually) he was written so masterfully it didn’t even matter. His backstory was haunting, his reasoning utterly mental but by god did I have fun with his chapters. I love it when you can tell that authors are having the time of their lives while writing, and this was clear with Rudyard’s entries. Big up Nick and his eat the rich mentality.

I think the best part of the book for me was that it centred purely around friendship. I thought that the tragedy of Charity and Mags’s relationship with one another, how age and life in general can break apart even the seemingly strongest of bonds, really hit me. I have friends from childhood that I’m lucky to still have, and I can’t imagine life without. But it’s true that for a lot of people this is not the case, and teenage-girlhood is fucking hard enough. I’m just very impressed that Nick Cutter got this so right.

Overall, The Queen gets 5/5 stars. A hilarious, disgusting but sort of thought-provoking look at growing up.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange of an honest review. Thank you!
I need to say it out loud: this wasn't ment to be MY book. I wanted to love it but I couldn't. I loved The Deep from the author (one of my favourite sci-fi horror book) but in The Queen it was to much. I understand why it is a great book but this rate needs to show my subjective opinion. I'm sorry but the storyline and the gore was not for me...

Nick Cutter's "The Queen" is bound to leave some people unsatisfied: it's not written in his usual style; and what is this, a grown man writing in the voice of a teenage girl? Plus, a horror book that combines many literary formats, from mobile phone messages to magazine articles, and without ever resting on a definite moral viewpoint? And to top it all, the novel is chock-full of scientific details about insect life, long-going infodumps about nasty, freakish ant and wasp behavior! So, mixed feelings are to be expected.

I can only speak for myself (obviously), but I loved the book. It may be at times long-winded and longer than it needs to be, yet the themes of friendship, ambition, small town claustrophobia, and the ambiguities of moral monstrosity, both in the scientific field and the plain, biological one, are handled with such mastery, finesse and control - I for one committed to the book pretty early, unable to take my eyes away from the page. Figuring centrally are two girls, besties forever, one of which undergoes an experience of self-revelation and the other achieves her dream of leaving home, her bestie included, for a bright future. Little do they know of what has been really going on all their years of friendship; little do they realize that growing up together, literally side by side, does in no way guarantee true knowledge of one another; not even knowledge of self. The book builds upon this premise by introducing a background story of eco- and sci-fi horror, one which explodes into bug gore and body horror extremes unlike any decent sci-fi book you've ever read.

The author himself mentions both the movie Alien and King's "Carrie" as prominent influences (I'd add his "Firestarter" as well), and yes, the visuals and the plotlines (incredibly complex, but never confusing) take their inspiration from the insect-like xenomorph and the girl discovering her uncanny powers; but it develops them into an original and messy (in a good way) mix of creature feature and teenage love massively insightful and hugely entertaining. Indeed, the imagery is absolutely other-wordly and unearthly, the atmosphere eerie and the past incidents leading to the story of the book compelling and told in a curiously troubling way, reminiscent of those "rubbernecking" accidents on the road. I as a reader did feel uncomfortably close to the story, watching the girls' friendship transform into a horrific accident, casualties scattered all over the place.

If you enjoy sci-fi horror, with strong body horror and coming-of-age overtones, and can appreciate deep insights on female friendship, teenage mentality, and the vagaries of self-knowledge, then this is definitely the book for you. I urge you to give it a try.

"I can't remember when this new person crept into me, but I think loneliness put her there. The kind that twists you out of shape, making you a sad, mangled version of who you'd been. People didn't like to be around that version, even the ones I know loved me. The old me understand why that is. I'm no fun anymore. I'm like a, a ... a glowing plutonium rod. Stay close to me long enough and you'll get sick."

Nick Cutter's new horror novel is begins with Margaret Carpenter, as she wakes up one morning, she finds an Iphone has been delivered to her by her best friend Charity. Problem is she's
missing and presumed dead by many. Charity and Margaret are life long friends, they are about to learn of a deep dark secret that will set off a chain of disturbing events. Charity now wants Margaret to learn the truth about everything, this will lead to a devastation Margaret could not have seen coming.

It has been a while since I picked up a Nick Cutter book, I kind of know what to expect after reading some of his previous ones like The Deep and Troop, however the further I read The Queen the darker and more messed up it became.

I am not a fan of bugs of any kind so knowing what I know now I can see why this one literally made my skin crawl. The author does great work in providing vivid imagery of the horror as it unfolds. I can only imagine the faces I was pulling while reading those bits 😆

I enjoyed how messed up this story was, it takes you on a twisted journey with an outcome that is unhinged.

Goddamn, Cutter knows how to be downright disgusting! As a fan of The Troop alongside his other previous work I thought I was well prepared, still had to stop and breathe through my mouth a few times.

I did enjoy this novel but it is long, much longer than it needs to be for the repetition I encountered. On the upside this left plenty of room for Cutter to develop the relationship between Cherry and Plum (aka Margaret and Charity).
I actually saw someone else say there were too many nicknames in The Queen but aside from these two simple ones there's just silly things like Har for Harry so it didnt faze me.

Whilst I think Cutter did an atrocious job at writing modern day teenager dialogue, the emotions and behaviours behind them made for a perfect coming-of-age horror. The typical pain of two young girls breaking away from an all encompassing childhood friendship to become their own people.
Or in Charity's case NOT.

I enjoyed the well loved high school tropes, the small cast of outsiders vs the popular kids, the invested english teacher and the friendly janitor. All rolled together to make a wonderful suburban backdrop to utter HORROR.

Now the rich-man-bad antagonist is easily done, but in this case it is truly bizarre. We spend a lot of time coming to understand not only what The Queen is but why she came to be. The 'why' is where my problems begin and the purpose of this creation... well, there are no words for that, safe to say neither of them make any sense.

We follow the perspectives of Margaret and Rudy both past and present as they receive instructions delivered by text and voice messaging on a mystery phone, (the formatting of the ARC on kindle is a disaster for this -not considered in my rating of course) but where does the trail lead? And who or what will they find at the end?

Not my favourite Cutter novel but still a bloody good one. If you weren't scared of bugs before you will be after this!! Plus plenty of other content warnings besides, look em up if you need them.

When Margaret Carpenter finds a new iPhone on her doorstep she switches it on and discovers a text message from her best friend, Charity Atwater. However, Charity is a missing person and presumed dead. What follows is a bizarre chain of events as Margaret and friend Harry try to search for the truth about Charity's disappearance.

Well, this was certainly a weird one! Whilst I loved Nick Cutter's The Deep and The Troop, I found it difficult to be equally enthused with The Queen. It was a good story with lots of blood and gore but I didn't connect with it in the way I'd hoped. It was surreal and odd. Although sluggish at times, I did enjoy it but it wasn't quite what I'd expected.

I have mixed feelings about this one. It’s a fantastic concept and I love the ‘body horror’ genre - of which there are very few decent authors! Having enjoyed Nick Cutter’s previous novels I had high hopes for this one - and in parts it lived up to my expectations. The description of the ‘ant incident’ which inspired the ‘creature’ for example was so vivid and horrific.

However, I have to agree with the other reviewers regarding the slightly erratic / bizarre writing style . Obviously the whole concept is a little left field but I found it a bit jarring.

Overall I’d give a 3 star rating but would love to see a return to Cutter’s more traditional writing style.

I loved the concept of this, it's something i've never read about before which is always refreshing to find a new idea. This was equal parts creepy and thought provoking, I think we can never know what some of the richest people in this world are doing and/or experimenting with, and I don't think it's completely impossible that someone would try this in the real world, which makes the whole thing even creepier.

This was quite the ride! Some parts were rather gory and graphic, other parts felt a bit sluggish to get through. Overall a good read, the author is incredibly good at describing and setting a scene, he conjures up some really vivid imagery which I love.

This is an author I admire, so I was really excited to be offered an arc for this work.

Sorry to say my excitement was short lived. Very hard going, wild and manic. And at times I really struggled for it to make sense. The premise was great, but the delivery not so much so.

Not my favourite by Cutter.

2.5*

Thank you NetGalley and Quercus Books.

Nick Cutter's latest novel has a great story within it. But some interesting narrative choices make this an at times borderline unreadable book.
On the surface it sounds great - a body horror about a madman's quest to create a human/insect hybrid told through the lens of a teenage girls whose friendship is transformed (literally) when one of them develops into an insect queen.
Unfortunately, the book is written in a largely manic style that's overbearing compared to the story.
I'm a massive fan of Cutter's other work, particularly The Troop and Little Heaven, but the narrative style made this a tougher slog that it should have been.