The Worm and His Kings review

You ever read a book and it change how you look at horror ever again? Change how you look at your own work as writer and know you will never reach this level of beauty and greatness but you are so happy to exist in the same world and reality as this book? Yea… Just normal thoughts after reading The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper.

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.

This book grabbed me by the throat and still has not let go. I think about it daily and I read it almost 2 weeks ago. Sadly, its also one of those books that I have a really hard talking about – a symptom of reading weird horror btw in case you don’t already, be prepared to have people stare at you as you babble about cosmic terrors and characters that you are in love with. Those stares might not be kind and will almost always be concerned.
That said, I am deeply, madly, heart-breakingly in love with Monique and ready to add her to the altar of horror goddesses alongside Mother Ripley, Saint Amanda Young, and Samara of the Waters.

The hardest thing I face when talking about this book is not spoiling it. Like a worm in the earth, this story twists and squirms and is very different in the end than how it begins. Even when I guessed at one twist correctly, it coiled in on itself, pulling me with it, only to ascend at the very last minute with something wholly unexpected.
When it was all over, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, in awe.

I know folks reading this will be like “What the hell are you babbling about? Just give me the review already!”
I am trying, ok!?!

The Worm and His Kings is both a world rending cosmic horror story that puts the work of crusty bigots who birthed the genre to shame (not that they weren’t already shameful) but is also a look at the (sadly very real) personal horrors of being gay, trans, and homeless in New York City in the 90s (or really, any time, if we want to be fucking honest here). Monique faces medical trauma, a past of child abuse, being in a relationship where there is a power imbalance, and life on the street with grit and resolve that I’ve seen soldiers at war aspire to. Even with all of this, her focus is on her love, her never ending love for the woman that she lost and like Orpheus will go into the underworld to rescue. Unfortunately, what she finds is a cosmic cult complete with brainwashing and the knowledge of something their human minds cannot fathom.

I highly recommend The Worm and His Kings for fans of weird, cosmic, Lovecraftian, eldritch horror that want not only a modern take but one that spits in the face of the bigotted boys club with not only proof that women and LGBTQ+ authors can write it just as good but BETTER than they could have fathomed.
Hailey Piper…well there’s a reason indie horror is always talking about her and her work. There’s a reason she makes all the horror lists. There’s a reason she is considered so many people’s favorite horror author – now mine too.
She owns this genre and is now one of those authors where if I see her name on a book, I am grabbing it.

Where is my review for the sequel, Even the Worm Will Turn?
Probably not going to find it here. As hard as it was to write about The Worm and His Kings without spoilers, it is impossible to write about Even the Worm Will Turn without spoiling huge chunks of the first book. Just know its just as grabbing, just as mind blowing, just as emotional. Its a book that deals with weird time and dimension stuff (shit I normally hate and do not feel smart enough to read, USUALLY) and still makes it a personal love story about a woman who faces both past trauma and the need here and now to do something extraodinary. Also Highly Recommend…in fact, go ahead and have it ready for when you finish The Worm and His Kings.

Hailey Piper has a third book in this series coming out this year. Its called Song of the Tyrant Worm and I am stunned that it exists after the way the first two books end. I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

In the meantime, I’ll be reading her whole back log of books.