Puppet's Banquet, by Valkyrie Loughcrewe

30 Mar 2025

The Book

Puppet's Banquet
Pages: 116
Age Group: Adult
Published on 14 May 2025
Publisher: Tenebrous Press
Genres:
Horror

Synopsis:

Married couple Celia and Martin are brutally attacked on their drive through the Irish countryside. The attack leaves Celia with a violent schism in her mind, seemingly existing in two places at once: one the “real” world, the other a howling maelstrom of abstract monstrosity. 

Of her husband, there is no trace…until weeks later, when Martin is discovered in a hospital for rare and abnormal diseases, his body spliced together with that of an unknown woman.

And they are very pregnant.

My Review

Puppet's Banquet is a body horror novella, written by Valkyrie Loughcrewe, and published by Tenebrous Press. An incredible piece about body autonomy which delves and embraces the absolute weirdness to deliver an experience of a novella, playing with the reader and the perception of the story.

A novella where we have a small skeleton of a plot which is used to dive into madness and gruesome scenes: a married couple on a drive that are attacked, setting in motion the catastrophic events for both of them. Martin's body is torn apart and reassembled, putting in the mix parts of a woman's body, becoming pregnant; and Celia's mind is broken into two, one of them tenuously attached to the reality while the other is lost in chaos and madness in a different dimension. Both of our couple eventually get into a hospital for rare conditions, starting a weirder arc that engulfs the reader.

Puppet's Banquet doesn't hold the reader's hand, challenging them to keep their mind fully into the madness; unapologetically gory, shocking the reader through gruesome images, and making it a delight if you are for hard horror. Despite being a relatively short novella, there's so much contained in this little book.

With Puppet's Banquet we have another excellent example of what Tenebrous Press offers to the reader, challenging books that are absolutely outstanding, usually on the weird side. If you are a fan of extreme horror, impossible images and a great allegory on autonomy, give this book a try.

The Author/s

Valkyrie Loughcrewe

Valkyrie Loughcrewe

Valkyrie Loughcrewe lives in a bog, and is currently working on something gory and crawling with nightmare creatures. Whatever you do, don't look them up on Twitter—in fact, don't look anyone up on Twitter. Start raising homing pigeons! 

Val also makes diabolical industrial electro music under the name Surgeryhead and gnarly death thrash metal as Argento!