The Worm and His Kings

By: Hailey Piper

Narrated by: Allyson Voller

New York City, 1990: When you slip through the cracks, no one is there to catch you. Monique learns that the hard way after her girlfriend Donna vanishes without a trace. Only after the disappearances of several other impoverished women does Monique hear the rumors.

A taloned monster stalks the city’s underground and snatches victims into the dark. Donna isn’t missing. She was taken. To save the woman she loves, Monique must descend deeper than the known underground, into a subterranean world of enigmatic cultists and shadowy creatures. But what she finds looms beyond her wildest fears - a darkness that stretches from the dawn of time and across the stars.

©2020 Hailey Piper (P)2021 Fireside Horror

The first truly Modern Lovecraftian horror?

Hailey Piper's tale about cults of unspeakable old Gods and shitty exes is incredibly clever, in that it asks one of those questions that cosmic horror should ask all the time. If this horror is so Unknowable, what does it say about the people who claim to understand and indeed worship it? It's a refreshing perspective and it's all the more interesting that the Horror remains scary even through all of this. Monique is a truly singular horror protagonist, and a blast to experience this wild and scary world through.

A delightful cosmic horror story!

There’s so much atmosphere and world building in this novella I couldn’t stop listening! It’s fast paced and entertaining the entire way through.

The characters… I can totally relate to Morgan

This is a great story, I love the Lovecraftian feel of the story. Loved the story!

Not bad, ending not to my taste.

Though I was disappointed I hesitate to grade it too harshly, as it is still top 5 cosmic horror books I have ever read/ listened to and I’m at 27 now so it’s not too shabby.

Overall Much better than the hack job done by other supposed “critically acclaimed” cosmic horror writers like Cronning (Laird Barron) who stuff their books with meaningless fluff. But not nearly as good as the fisherman (John langan) or revival (Stephen king) .

The cannon should have been fleshed out more and the ending was a little too neat for my tastes in a cosmic horror.
But the details and personality was really developed in the characters and the representation was good too.

Honestly felt like it should have been a multi part book or it could have been much longer , bc like I mentioned earlier, the cannon needed a little more fleshing out and while the ending could have been good I felt like it needed more background buildup to make it truly satisfying.
7/10

A wonderfully angry cosmic horror story

I fell in love with this book almost immediately, and became more so as it went along. It’s set in 1990 New York and tells the story of a young woman seeking her lover, who disappeared without a trace months before. Monique’s search takes her both physically and conceptually into darkness and buried secrets. It culminates in one of those pure expressions of anger at human and cosmic injustice I can recall. And the narration makes it even better, catching the nuances of Monique’s exhaustion, the peculiar cheer of the world’s nicest doomsday cultists, and the hammering horrors that wait for her. Absolutely too-notch all around.