By Andrew Glos, horror reviewer and all around good guy. Follow him on Twitter, and read his reviews at Horror Bound.

Something is wrong in the town of Goblin. Maybe it’s the cops with stilted speech who don’t walk right and wear sunglasses at night. Maybe it’s the topiaries spread throughout town, massive replicas of its most prestigious citizens. Or maybe it’s the strange midnight magic shows for kids. Or the fact that it almost always rains, irrespective of the weather beyond the town’s borders. Or it could be the gigantic hedge maze no one seems to know how to solve, but which promises a prize for whoever gets to its heart. Anyway you look at it, Goblin is just off.  

Josh Malerman is probably most famous for his 2014 book, Bird Box. His 2017 book, Goblin, sets a very different tone. It is composed of six novellas which manage to create a clever unity by the end. The last especially turned out to be an unexpected crescendo to the themes found in the previous five. 

Reading Goblin, I could help thinking about Stephen King’s ability to invent whole towns out of thin air. Malerman gets close to the same level of town building here. Goblin is a little less realistic, but that’s okay, because it is supposed to be. It’s more magical and bizarre than Castle Rock, and it really works for Malerman’s tone. You get a great sense of the town, its history and citizens, the institutions, shops, and prominent persons. I could smell the wet streets of downtown Goblin and when the last page was done, I wanted more. (If you’re reading this, Mr. Malerman, I mean it. More Goblin, please!)

The novella A Man in Pieces revolves around childhood, youth, innocence, friendship, and our expectations of what that should entail. And then, it twists those expectations into something horrifying. Kamp, the story of a reclusive bookworm and his landlady, is reminiscent of Poe with it’s claustrophobia, where a single location draws huge events and themes into its black hole. The protagonist seems to be slipping into an insanity as his obsessive learning, reveals the true history of Goblin. (There’s a nod to H P Lovecraft here as well.) Happy Birthday was probably my favorite novella. It manages to draw all the stories together, sucking them all in, explaining things you’ve been wondering about for pages, and then breaks your new-found knowledge into pieces as it dumps new mysteries upon you. 

Each and every story was charmingly different, continually refreshing the book as you go along, Honestly, I absolutely steamrolled through this 432 page book. I lost sleep. I didn’t eat. (So, maybe a weight loss opportunity?) I probably didn’t bathe. I know I ignored my family. And that, dear friends, is about the highest recommendation I can give to any book. If a book is slowly ruining my life and even killing me, then it is genuinely great.

More recommendations: Watch The Lovecraft eZine Podcast on YouTube!