A review by drewsof
A Lush and Seething Hell: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by John Hornor Jacobs

3.0

Conceptually I really wanted to love these stories, and there are absolutely things to write home about about each of them -- but ultimately I was disappointed. Both stories have terrific setups, involving (respectively) expats from a South American dictatorship who must deal with a strange manuscript and the forces that seek it, and two Library of Congress researchers separated by a gulf of ~75 years as they both explore the recordings of folk music from the South. The cosmic horror potential is great! And both stories do have terrifying turns... that also somehow feel undercut by the prose around them. I was looking for Laird Barron and got something far short; alas.