The Worm and His Kings

Written by Hailey Piper

Narrated by Allyson Voller

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fireside Horror
• Release date: Apr 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781669646457

Hailey Piper

Hailey Piper is a Bram Stoker Award-winning author whose works include Queen of Teeth, No Gods for Drowning, and The Worm and His Kings. She is an active member of the Horror Writers Association, with dozens of short stories appearing in Pseudopod, Vastarien, Dark Matter Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and other publications. An avid reader and lifelong Godzilla fangirl, she lives with her wife in Maryland, where they conduct secret mad science experiments.

Reviews for The Worm and His Kings

[Chris Kester · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've been looking forward to checking out a book by Piper and this was a great one to start with. I personally really enjoyed what I took to be references to Empire Records, though I might be way off base there. (Damn the man, save the Empire! It's Rex Manning Day after all.) Regardless, it was a great tale of love, betrayal, and cult/cosmic horror that left me ready to see what else Piper has to offer.

[Rachel · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow. This was unexpectedly pretty good. The summary intrigued me, but the story seemed pretty lack luster and one dimensional at the start with filler characters in some inane quest and it seems as though the author has never heard what a real conversation between people sounded like. The narrator also sounded extremely confused for most of the reading; her lilting sounding like she's always at the cusp of asking a question. Anyway I was going to rate this a 1 star but it's pretty short so I kept going. Then around the chapter where they found the broken king it got intriguing. And the ending was just pure poetry. To take a chapter out, it soothes my soul and fills an emptiness that's almost imperceptible. I was even confused when the outro mentioned other tales of "horror". This wasn't horror. It was sustenance. It feels like my soul has eaten and it is content. Thanks. I will check out other of the authors works or maybe listen to certain chapters of this again.

[Nina Quartuccio · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Wait...what... I had to listen to it twice and I still don't get it. Narrator was good, though.

[Oso Isko · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Good spooky story that intertwined the character's personal struggles with cosmic horror. Great prose and characterization.

[Brea · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An intensely detailed amount of world building in a petite novella. Amazing fantasy blends with harsh realism in a way most authors can only grasp at.

[Kel Wheeldon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There's a lot to love about this short cosmic horror by Hailey Piper.
It has all the elements that you would expect - cults, fanatics, sacred geometry, beings from across time and space - as well as some unexpected, and welcomed, character depth and queerness.

Usually when authors don't follow Lovecraft's approach to describing cosmic horror (by describing how indescribable a thing is) the writing starts to become messy and confused but Piper manages to describe the collision of space and time and the unexplainable in a very poetic, and understandable, way.

My only criticism is that the final third of the story felt a little slow, with the story lingering on some scenes for longer than felt necessary.

I listened to the audiobook version of this book and I found the narration and performance by Allyson Voller. There was a little bit of confusion towards the end with two distinct sounding characters sounding like each other at times but otherwise it was quite good.

[caytlain hewitt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not a bad story and a good premise for it as well. The only part is I can't tell if it's the author or the narrator who has the infuriating habit of adding the suffix ES to words That end in s to make it a plural or a possessive. For example, the word kings, the plural and the plural possessive of kings is kings not Ed.