Red X

By: David Demchuk

Narrated by: Salvatore Antonio, David Demchuk

A hunted community. A haunted author. A horror that spans centuries.

Men are disappearing from Toronto's gay village. They're the marginalized, the vulnerable. One by one, stalked and vanished, they leave behind small circles of baffled, frightened friends. Against the shifting backdrop of homophobia throughout the decades, from the HIV/AIDS crisis and riots against raids to gentrification and police brutality, the survivors face inaction from the law and disinterest from society at large. But as the missing grow in number, those left behind begin to realize that whoever or whatever is taking these men has been doing so for longer than is humanly possible.

Woven into their stories is David Demchuk's own personal history, a life lived in fear and in thrall to horror, a passion that boils over into obsession. As he tries to make sense of the relationship between queerness and horror, what it means for gay men to disappear, and how the isolation of the LGBTQ+ community has left them profoundly exposed to monsters that move easily among them, fact and fiction collide and reality begins to unravel.

A bold, terrifying new novel from the award-winning author of The Bone Mother.

©2021 David Demchuk (P)2021 Strange Light

Critic reviews

“Demchuk’s unconventional approach to storytelling holds readers close, speaking directly to them and sharing in the terror.”
—Quill & Quire

“Can a horror novel be too disturbing? David Demchuk’s Red X begs that question, not because of any excess of gore or violence but because of its singular and unflinching dark vision. That’s a good thing — too much contemporary horror fiction plays for easy shocks and even easier sentimental tears, and Demchuk is clearly after something deeper.”
—Toronto Star

“[Red X is] a book full of heart and righteous fury, an urban nightmare with some retro-horror stylings that sidesteps that genre’s usual pitfalls of splatter and pessimism to deliver a story of emotional heft and guarded optimism. While it’s relentless and can be incredibly disturbing, there are also moments of beauty, hope, and a certain melancholy. It’s a complex, disturbing, challenging, and compulsively readable work that commands your attention, and indeed deserves it.”
—Tor Nightfire

Disappointing

The book was all over the place and pace was grueling slow at times. Overall story was not very clear, no direct ending just missing something.

Layers upon layers

An absolute haunting, and it would only have been better reading in October. I loved the infusion of horror, gay history, and the timeline aspect of the book. If you like horror, this is a must read. Gay men would definitely appreciate it.

Vulgar but good.

Not for anyone who doesn’t like vulgar or graphic words but I found that the book was well written and kept me listening but by the end I felt it could have been shorter and I found the ending underwhelming. It’s a good one time read.

Lush Horror Story

This delicious and sinister little novel was a delight. Loved reading about characters with whom I could identify, and was genuinely creeped out at times. I liked the narrator shift although I was skeptical at first. Found myself imagining optioning it for a movie adaptation…

I don’t know how I feel

The story is great and there are spooky moments but I hated the author insertion into the story, breaking up the momentum

Please, don’t waste your time or credits.

Currently, I have less than two hours left in this story, and the only reason I’m still here is because I’ve spent this much time already. Do yourself a favor and skip this story. This is a jumbled, incoherent mess of a book, so self aggrandizing and shallow, it’s a marvel anyone actually published it.

There are moments where the author speaks, bringing any story momentum to a grinding halt, as he speaks about his upbringing and past, while giving no relevance to the story he has written. The characters are all throwaways, as they’re so underwritten, you don’t care about any of them. What are supposed to be reveals or shocking character moments fall completely flat, because so little time is spent with anyone, you’ll find yourself wondering “who?” more times than you can count.

This is not a good story. It is not a good idea. And this author not a good author. I’ve not read any other works, though a high school creative writing course could craft a more compelling, thoughtful narrative.

And to make it worse, using this as some sort of work for the LGBTQ+ community feels like a slap in the face, and as someone in the community, I am fairly insulted at this. It feels almost pandering, while being fully self serving to the author who has not true voice or endgame in mind.

I’m going to finish this story, and I will not enjoy it. But I’ve wasted a credit, so here we are.

This book is okay, it needed a directors touch.

I wouldn't take this away from the narrator, they tried to convey the story being told and it was a queer horror telling of a creature/monster story going for the beautiful and broken. I liked that aspect of the story.

What took me away was the halt of the story of the author trying to put their life into the book, like I am not reading this to read a biography, I am listening to this for queer horror. and it would be at the end of each chapter or somewhere in the middle. if the author wanted to tell his life story I would have placed it at the end of the book instead of the middle of the story taking the reader away from the space the author created, What took away even more is that sometimes the life story of the author didn't match or have any input onto what was going on in the story.

If I could get this story but someone cut or ripped out the biography aspect of the story and giving more to the characters, and their connections and fleshing it out a little more to get me to emotionally connect to them, I believe I would have enjoyed it a lot more.