 Boasting a title that burns itself into your imagination, Joanna Koch's terrifying novella keeps the fire going right from the first page to the bittersweet end. The prose is phenomenal, turning everyday objects and occurrences into tiny nightmares or alien objects pulsing with unwanted life. We're first introduced to Adira as she struggles to hide from her overbearing mother, and each miniscule moment of her life is transformed into something threatening thanks to the vivid, surreal imagery and descriptive language used. The tension from page to page grabs you and refuses to let go, appropriately enough for a book with hands in the title. Not only are the titular hands a recurring image but there are more fantastical glimpses of spiders and all-seeing eyes, angry dragons and shifting insectile forms, as Adira is forced into increasingly disturbing situations at the hands of her family and others. Reality swims in and out of the narrative like a thousand acid flashbacks, accentuating the panic and fear Adira feels to the point where it's almost dizzying, sending you lurching from page to page so fast you have to slow down and retrace your steps from time to time. This is all in the first fifteen pages or so, after which the plot veers wildly in another direction, wrong-footing you again and opening up a whole different world beyond the one you've already witnessed. This framing of what happened before is not only surprising, but it's also here that things start getting truly bizarre, drawing in metaphysics, philosophy, occultism and a generous sprinkling of The King in Yellow mythos to make for a intelligent, fascinating mind-fuck. To say more would delve too far into spoilers, but it's the kind of book that even if you're not talking about it to others, it'll be chatting away to you in the back of your mind for days afterwards, whispering reminders of its horrors. Imagine a mix of of Annihilation combined with the apocalyptic body horror of Akira, and the aforementioned Robert W. Chambers story, distilled down into a punchy, inventive novella. That's what you're in for here. It's engaging, heartbreaking and horrific. Don't read the back cover, just pitch straight in and prepare to be blown away. Review by Ben Walker  Three Women, One Battle A world gone mad. Cities abandoned. Dreams invade waking minds. An invisible threat lures those who oppose its otherworldly violence to become acolytes of a nameless cult. As a teenage girl struggles for autonomy, a female weapons director in a secret research facility develops a living neuro-cognitive device that explodes into self-awareness. Discovering their hidden emotional bonds, all three unveil a common enemy through dissonant realities that intertwine in a cosmic battle across hallucinatory dreamscapes. Time is the winning predator, and every moment spirals deeper into the heart of the beast. "I'm awestruck by Joanna Koch's nonstop spellbinding, almost paralyzingly inventive and yet propulsive, ultra-focused prose. The Wingspan of Severed Hands is a truly amazing find." - Dennis Cooper (The Marbled Swarm, The Sluts) "Koch's latest novella is what might have happened if Robert W. Chambers had been a surrealist with a penchant for body horror. A strange trip to Carcosa offered in thickly evocative language, The Wingspan of Severed Hands is a highly original hallucination." - Brian Evenson (Song For the Unraveling of the World, A Collapse of Horses) "Joanna Koch is a stunning and talented writer, and their new book, The Wingspan of Severed Hands, is a horror story that opens new vistas in the genre." - Jack Zipes (Literature and Literary Theory: Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion AND LITERARY THEORY: FAIRY TALES AND THE ART OF SUBVERSION)   Comments are closed.
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