Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast by Jonathan Winn
Crystal Lake Publishing (January 2016)
212 pages; $12.99 paperback/$3.99 e-book
Reviewed by Frank Michaels Errington
2016 is only a few weeks old and already it’s showing signs of being a banner year for horror.
Whether you’re snowbound or it’s too cold to venture outside or you’re just looking for a great read, Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast will keep you warm and entertained for hours.
From the description of the book on the publisher’s website:
One building. Five floors. Five doors per floor. Twenty-five nightmares feeding the hunger lurking between the bricks and waiting beneath the boards.
If that’s not enough to drag you kicking and screaming through the front door, let me introduce you to the tenants on the first floor.
“Apartment 1A – Lucky” – A powerful and jarring story of a Chinese child named for a silent screen goddess who ended her life with a fistful of sleeping pills at the too-young age of twenty-four. Little Ruan would grow to become a legend known as Lucky. “Lucky the Killer, Lucky the Devil, Lucky the Shadow.” Now in her eighties, the story is told in retrospect as Ruan interacts with the ghosts of her past.
“Apartment 1B – Bullet” – A story of a man with a new tattoo which leads to all kinds of problems. Here’s just sample of what Jonathan has to offer here. ‘
“I do tats,'”she’d said. Goth chick with a Daddy’s Girl Gone Bad vibe. Hair fifty shades of black. Bangs chopped with a razor. Big eyes rimmed with black. Skin whiter than rich kid coke. Dark blue smeared on her lips. Metal in her ears, nose, chin. Her small bright teeth chewing dollar store blue from her stubby nails.
This story reads like a very strange trip, indeed.
“Apartment 1C – Click” – This apartment is occupied by Colton Carryage, son of a wealthy Senator, wealthy enough to get his son off from some very nasty business that occurred during Colton’s time at college. Unfortunately, Colton didn’t seem to learn his lesson; if anything the experience has turned him into something even more twisted and disturbed.
“Apartment 1D – Anniversary” – This line pretty much says it all: “I met my beloved Benjy one month, married him the next, and then we spent the following fifty years happily trying to kill each other. By choice.” This is a somewhat lighter tale of the various failed attempts over those fifty years.
“Apartment 1E – Umbra” – After sorta accidentally wishing her folks dead, Umbra is dropped off to live with her Gran on Eidolon Avenue. We learn more about the building through this story as Umbra seems to develop a relationship with a stain on the wall in her room.
Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast is not for the casual reader. This is a series of stories which require the reader to become immersed in the writer’s world or risk becoming lost with little hope of finding one’s way home. This is a very disturbing building, occupied by the most depraved tenants, each worse than the last. Often, the line between reality and insanity becomes blurred to the point of being gone completely.
If anything, Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast left me wanting more, and from what I understand the author is planning to deliver just that with the second feast.
Strongly recommended, but with a warning for mature content.
