Visceral, lyrical, and deeply unsettling; an unforgettable collection.
Technology is the monster lurking just beneath the surface in Plant’s collection of seven eerie, quietly devastating stories. When an introverted man turns to a new dating app, he discovers some matches are too perfect, and some prices too high in “The Perfect Match.” When justice becomes a spectacle, a brutal game show show host finds himself at the center of the show in “The Chair.” A dying woman seeking eternal life in a digital afterlife confronts a chilling reality in “Haven.”
Even the brighter stories carry a chill. In “Demi,” a game developer creates beautiful virtual worlds but can’t quite stay away from reality. A writer escapes to the woods to overcome his creative paralysis, but the darkness he’s trying to write begins to close in on him for real in “The Rental.” An AI assistant upends a man’s life, only to lead him to a new beginning in “Are You Happy, Joe?” What ties these stories together isn’t just theme, but atmosphere: a near-constant low hum of dread that builds with each page. Plant favors slow reveals over twists, moral ambiguity over clean resolutions. His horror is relational and systemic; it’s in the way we trust devices more than people, in the way our screens know us better than our families do. The book doesn’t ask, “What if?” It asks, “How long have you known?” Intimate, clinical, and terrifying.
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