After his divorce, Michael had one anchor remaining: Zylo, his beloved dog and only companion. But when Zylo’s found disemboweled outside his home, his world unravels. The police dismiss his case, but Michael refuses to let his death be in vain.
Overtaken by grief and rage, he searches for answers only to discover something darker than Zylo’s death. The deeper he digs, the more unbelievable and disturbing it becomes: organ harvesting, a secret cult, and the worship of old gods.
A descent into obsession, loss, and the bonds we can’t let go, The Companions We Lose is a haunting story that asks only one question:
How much would you sacrifice for the ones you love?
Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe. I’m hear to talk about a novella today. Soooooo, here we go!
I don’t normally include trigger warnings (I don’t like getting them myself, unless I’ve specifically gone checking for them), but I do feel the need to be upfront about animal death here. Doggo, specifically, which I found very hard to read. The reason I mention it is because this story centres around a man whose dog is killed, and a lot of the book is spent discussing this. Unfortunately, this is the main reason that this story wasn’t for me (I’m so sorry, Micah, it’s not personal!).
I lost my very precious cat last year and I honestly haven’t recovered from it, so the worst case scenario type of book for me is one that elicits this particular kind of grief. The first quarter of the book is our guy on an absolute mission to figure out who did it and why, and because of that, we spend a lot of time dwelling on those details. We’re not talking gratuitous violence, just to be clear, just details in the aftermath, but I found it very difficult.
Further along, the story develops into a quite unexpected place as it takes a turn towards Nordic folklore, which I shan’t elaborate on because that’s going into spoiler territory, but those who enjoy this kind of folklore would probably get a kick out of it. We also have a cult, which ticks a box for me, because cults are one of my favourite horror topics.
Overall, I’m so sorry to say but this one was a miss for me. I do think that regular readers of the harder stuff in horror, like extreme horror for example, might enjoy it more than I did. I’m a bit sensitive for the subject matter, you see! Also, people who enjoy Nordic folklore (which isn’t a particular interest of mine) might like this much more than I did.
Please take my review with a grain of salt because this just boils down to me not being, at all, the ideal reader. If you’d like to check out the author or the book for yourself, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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