Woom
by Duncan Ralston
A man checks into the same motel room where his mother died years ago. He hires an escort named Shyla and asks her to listen to his stories. The stories escalate. The room itself seems to be doing something. This is extreme horror that commits fully to that designation.
“Some places hold the pain in their walls, in the carpet snags, in the cracks of the ceiling and chinks in the baseboards.”
What It Actually Felt Like
Woom is extreme horror and it does not apologize for that. The stories being told get darker and more disturbing as the night goes on, and there is a story underneath all of it, a real reason things are escalating, which is what keeps this from being pure shock content.
I finished it going I don’t know wtf I just read but it’s actually a good story wrapped in a very disturbing shell. Worth saying though: the book has received criticism for how it depicts Black characters and that’s a real note. As a Black reader I noticed it too.
The Honest Part
Extreme horror means exactly that. Read the content warnings and take them seriously. Also the representation issues are real and worth knowing about going in.
Who This Is For
Extreme horror veterans who can sit with deeply disturbing content. This is not a starting point for the genre, at least I hope not. I did find this title on r/ExtremeHorrorLit and it was listed in the “starter pack”… so there’s that. Come back to it once you know you can handle the gruesomeness of it all.
⭐⭐⭐ Twisted, disturbing, oddly compelling. Also: read the warnings.
Tags horror, extreme horror, novella, content warnings: graphic violence and sexual content, mood: deeply unsettling
