I put this down to go and do something else. Then I came back for a sneak peek that lasted the rest of the book.

The cover was striking, and the main reason I picked this up. The text is clear, even in thumbnail and gives a haunting on edge feeling that accurate represents the genre of the story. There is no stand-alone Table of Contents, only the Kindle automatic one, but at 43 pages it really does not need it. The back matter is again nicely done: it’s simply an author bio and page link, with none of the ads, begging letters, or preview samples that often stretch a book well above its published length. In a forty-three page book you get a good forty pages of story, and that is actually a very nice thing to find. It is written in British English (the author is from Yorkshire) which makes it another nice find.

If there were formatting or grammar issues I did not notice – I was too caught in the story. A man wakes up in a house with total amnesia…and then the house speaks to him. A concept that I feared would be a cheap version of Demonseed is instead given its own very distinct spin by the author, and I am not going to spoil it. Although it is part of a series, it stands on its own as a self-contained story. The only hint of the series is the sequel hook at the end, which could as eaily be taken for a nice horror twist.

Over all this is a good quick read with numerous twists and turns. Oddly it actually slows down once the main character discovers other people, and the author is at their best in scenes with one or two characters, really bringing to life their thoughts, dreams and reactions. The dialog in particular is very strong.

An excellent short story.

4 stars.