The Maker's Box by David Barclay

 




Emily has been obsessed with the occult since her mum died, collecting every pagan curio and oddity she can find. Then on the night of her 16th birthday, her father gives her a piece of real magic; a beating human heart inside a wooden box. If the gift weren't strange enough, his instructions are even stranger; You'll need to feed it to keep it alive. 

The box needs her blood, and in exchange, shows her wondrous and rousing things. Desires she never knew existed. But as Emily's father lapses into addiction, as she grows weak with blood loss she realizes all too late the box has desires of its own. 

The Maker's Box is a contemporary dark fairy tale of magic, obsession and madness.

The Maker's Box by David Barclay is a very dark tale about a dark heart. It is the second novella to be released by Aphotic Realm the home of dark and sinister fiction. I really enjoyed reading Nightcrawler by P.A.Sheppard and knew I was in for something really dark!

On her 16th birthday Emily is given by her father a box. Inside is a heart still beating. Her father trusts her to look after it and tell no one. This is a heart that belongs to someone really special. All she needs to is give it a little blood every now and then.

Soon Emily and the heart form a strange connection. It speaks to her and understands her desires like no one else. The heart must be fed from Emily's own blood and soon inhabits her dreams. 

It doesn't take long for her friends to become concerned about Emily, especially Noah once she tells him of her strange dream about a magic man named Lock. He becomes even more fearful for his friend when he discovers at the library that this man is real.

I really liked this tale, it was unusual and probably one of the darkest tales I have ever read. Emily, the main character is so sweet and innocent and watching her feeding and caring for the heart like most girls her age would care for a cute bunny was just so sinister! You really want someone to step her and save her from the heart and from her father who clearly has secrets he's hiding from his only daughter. 

Emil's family has a very dark history which has been kept hidden from her, can she figure it out before it is too late? 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Stone Road by G.R.Matthews

Image
I was introduced to this book as part of Fantasy Faction's Book Club where we all get together and discuss our favourite books. This time the administrator chose a title that had been self published. Out now via Amazon Now I'm going to let you in on a little secret, that yes of course there are a lot of really bad self published books out there, but there are also some really good ones. Since buying a kindle I've bought numerous self published titles for as little as 49p and have enjoyed most of them. Recently I read The Lady of the Helm by T.O.Munro and that was really very good. I'm going off track a bit here but if you love fantasy fiction and want to read really amazing self published fiction then head over to Mark Lawrence's site where he hosts the annual SPFBO - The Self Published Fantasy Blog-Off in which top bloggers read through the top 273 self published fantasy  novels to determine an overall winner. So back to  the Stone Road by G.R.Matthews.
Read more

Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste

Image
For fans of Mexican Gothic, from three-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes a novel inspired by the untold stories of forgotten women in classic literature--from Lucy Westenra, a victim of Stoker’s Dracula, and Bertha Mason, from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre--as they band together to combat the toxic men bent on destroying their lives, set against the backdrop of the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, 1967. Reluctant Immortals  is a historical horror novel that looks at two men of classic literature, Dracula and Mr. Rochester, and the two women who survived them, Bertha and Lucy, who are now undead immortals residing in Los Angeles in 1967 when Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Combining elements of historical and gothic fiction with a modern perspective, in a tale of love and betrayal and coercion,  Reluctant Immortals  is the lyrical and harrowing journey of two women from classic literature as they brave
Read more

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

Image
This epic tale is a fictional memoir of Uhtred, son of Uhtred who's destiny was forged in battle between the pagan Viking warriors and the pious Christian Anglo-Saxons in 9th century Britain. "My name is Uhtred. I am the son of Uhtred, who was the son of Uhtred and his father was also called Uhtred. My father’s clerk, a priest called Beocca, spelt it Utred. I do not know if that was how my father would have written it, for he could neither read nor write, but I can do both and sometimes I take the old parchments from their wooden chest and I see the name spelled Uhtred or Utred or Ughtred or Ootred, and I look at the deeds which say that Uhtred, son of Uhtred, is the lawful and sole owner of the lands that are carefully marked by stones and by dykes, by oaks and by ash, by marsh and by sea, and I dream of those lands, wave-beaten and wild beneath the wind driven sky. I dream, and know that one day I will take back the land from those who stole it from me." (Taken from
Read more