Fantasy body horror - "The Blade and the Bloodwright" by Sloane Leong
BogiReads brings you the daily speculative reading recommendation of editor Bogi Takács.
Today's recommendation -
Author: Sloane Leong
Title: “The Blade and the Bloodwright”
Venue: Lightspeed, Aug 2023 (ed. John Joseph Adams, Wendy N. Wagner)
Type: Short story – 6213 words
Themes: Fantasy, body horror, blood magic, archipelago, warfare
Where to read: Text free to read + Audio popup on the same page
Sloane Leong is one of the people who have had so much awesome work recently that I struggle with my self-imposed rule of not repeating an author in 3 months. (Amal Singh is another example, I still need to pick which one of his to recommend!)
For today I decided to choose this piece from Sloane Leong, a genre mashup of classic heroic fantasy and body horror in an archipelago setting inspired by Hawaii. This is a really gory story! To the extent I’m surprised it was published in Lightspeed and not Nightmare or another horror venue, but the fantasy elements are equally strong. This is an odd combination, but it really works for me.
I thought all the body horror made for wonderfully visual storytelling, the author is also an accomplished comic artist, so that’s possibly why :) I recently blurbed the second volume of Prism Stalker, so that’s still a recommendation in case you missed it.
Take care,
Bogi.