The homeless are being taken from the streets of the city; when she wakes in the morning to find herself painted red it sends Gabriel Travente on a journey to discover herself…
There are ceremonies and rites which occur at various times in the world’s history, and they have the power to change the course of everything we accept to be true. Times when the esoteric meets the rational in a struggle for supremacy and ultimate dominion of the world. These ceremonies are bloody affairs, filled with debauchery.
The Architecture is only one.
We are the design … we are the flesh …we are sanctified.
Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe! Today we’re talking about a novel with some Clive Barker vibes. I don’t know when I started saying “vibes” like this, but here we are. And it’s apt. Anyway, we start with a nasty little voice that we can quite safely assume is some sort of evil entity. As openers go, I loved this. It’s very rare that we get this type of narrative perspective, and as someone who quite loves fiction laced with demons, I was all here for it. Then we move to Gabriel, who tends to wake up covered in someone else’s blood, with no memory of where she went or what she did during the night. I thought this was a pretty intriguing way to open a story, because there’s no doubt about what Gabriel’s basically been up to, really. If Gabriel herself isn’t the mystery, then what is, exactly?
Along with Gabriel and the horrible entity, we follow Gabriel’s sister and boyfriend (Rosalie and Sam), a police detective interested in why homeless people are rapidly disappearing, and small group of homeless people who are targeted. It was juuuuuust not too many characters for me, and once I got to know them, I had no trouble swapping perspectives. They were all pretty likeable (except for the demony demon, of course!).
Where this book really excelled for me was in its Barker-esque depiction of what was happening to the missing people, and what they were being used for. The imagery conjured was like something right of Hellraiser or Books of Blood, and I absolutely revelled in these scenes. Kind of like the horrible entity, now that I think about it. I set aside time pretty much every day to read horror fiction, but it is so rare that I come across this type of horror, this specific type of visceral imagery. If I have a criticism of the book, it’s that I could have done with way more of this. I mean… story-wise, I don’t know how Flewitt could have worked it in… but still, I wanted more! I’d be so excited if the author released a short story entirely dedicated to elaborating on the architecture (hint hint please Paul!).
I’d recommend this to horror fans (obviously), especially if you like good, old-school, terrifying images! If you’d like to check out the book or author, there are some links below for you:
Happy Goat Horror 
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