Sister, Maiden, Monster is the feminist Cronenberg I didn’t know I needed. Gleeful, gory, and unrelenting.” Grotesque body horror and apocalyptic pandemonium as only Snyder can deliver. Reader beware: Sister, Maiden, Monster is not for the faint of heart!”— NICHOLAS KAUFMANN, bestselling author of The Hungry Earth Holy cannoli, I don't know what I was expecting when I opened this book, but I was in for a WILD ride. SISTER, MAIDEN, MONSTER is a post-pandemic, apocalyptic, eldritch horror festival of a book. Think COVID but way... way... WAY... worse. The body horror and slow, creeping sense of your own physical self slowly turning against you is mesmerizing in the best and worst ways possible. Told in three parts, Lucy A. Snyder's Sister, Maiden, Monster charts of the course of mankind's transformation through the eyes of three women. The first, Erin, is a recently engaged desktop support specialist who finds her body all but decimated by PVG. Savannah is a sex worker turned serial killer cannibal for the elder gods. Mareva's body, meanwhile, is prone to producing benign tumors even at the best of times, but in the face of PVG is forced to reconcile with even more horrific possibilities. Visceral, gory, and deliciously unhinged, Sister, Maiden, Monster is a fast-paced, disturbingly relatable pandemic horror that I absolutely devoured and never wanted to end.

Oh, and did I mention that in addition to Erin's milder diet of things like bananas and applesauce, she eats brains? You’re early! I was expecting the robbery around six thirty.” His tone was cheerful but held an anxious edge. Sensuous, sinister, and sinewy; a blood-and-brains splattered shotgun-blast romp through the apocalypse that will simultaneously excite and disgust readers with equal pleasure.” — Philip Fracassi, author of Boys in the Valley No, I guess not.” I stared at the table, feeling a little stunned. And deeply touched. None of my previous boyfriends had ever done anything like this. Not even my family had thrown me a big party like this for my birthdays, not since I’d turned ten. Part of me was thrilled, but another part awkwardly wondered if all this was really for me or if I’d suddenly crossed over into the life of some other, more fortunate woman. “Wow, you went all out.”Wow, what a ride! Lucy Synder has delivered a gory creation mixing various types of horror – cosmic, pandemic, body, maybe even a smattering of zombie as well, as a new virus is raging through humanity and society and changing people physically and mentally in a novel which follows the changes that happen to three women – Erin, Savannah and Mareva in a story that is bloody, violent, and doesn’t pull any punches as they are transformed into something… other. Finally, in part three – “Mater Calamitas” – everything moves up a gear and into full body horror territory as the lives of Erin and Savannah collide with Mareva, the final protagonist or final girl, perhaps? Here, we get the story of meek and reclusive Mareva whose body is covered in tumours which require to be continually operated on, and her condition makes her important to the future of the world even if she likes the part she has to play or not. Lucy Snyder has successfully written a novel riddled with body horror, erotica, and repulsion. Snyder has stitched together the darkest most disturbing thoughts a person might have, religious doomsday prophecies as well as left over anxieties related to covid-19. Within this novel, Snyder doesn’t just ask the question “what if…?” when it comes to the end of the world… she answers it, in the most horrific possible way.

Sister, Maiden, Monster is the feminist Cronenberg I didn't know I needed. Gleeful, gory, and unrelenting.” — Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors The ideas in the third part of the book were excellent and I wish she would have cut out or maybe drastically reduced the first two story lines and expanded a lot more on the third section and really found a solid ending, even a cliffhanger of an ending where you're left wondering and this book could have been GREAT. It felt like too many moving parts that almost fit, but not quite. Fans of Synder’s work may recognise Erin and her circumstances from her 2014 short story“Magdala Amygdala”, a title she keeps for the first part of this novel.This is viciously twisted and gory, and at times you will think, "Did I really just read that?" It is also incredibly creative and intriguing since Snyder delves into depths of depravity that most authors wouldn't be comfortable delving in to. I love it for its uniqueness and just how much fun it ends up being to read. Your words to God’s ears,” he said. “Anyhow, let’s talk about something more cheerful. How was your day?”

Snyder also introduces elements from Robert W. Chambers’ book, The King in Yellow, such as descriptions of the lost city of Carcosa, the Yellow Sign, and the Stranger in the Pallid Mask. Side by side with all the eldritch cosmic tentacle monsters, this seems to place Sister, Maiden, Monster firmly within Lovecraft’s Cthulu Mythos. This changed the tone and context of the book for me personally and left me feeling a bit confused. As much as I love Lovecraftian horror, I’m not overly familiar with anything outside of what the man himself wrote. I had to Google the Yellow Sign to try and make sense of the ending, and I’m still none the wiser really. Timely, sharp, sexy, and gory…this might just be Snyder’s best, and that’s saying a lot.” — Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home A mutant hybrid of weird science and cosmic horror, Sister, Maiden, Monster is deliciously cerebral and unflinchingly feminist. Violently beautiful, this novel is a tale for our times. Resounding.” — Lee Murray, Bram Stoker Award-winner and author of Grotesque: Monster Stories If you survive PVG, you could end up suffering from a ‘deficiency,’ leading to you needing ‘supplements.’ You could also remain infectious, even if your symptoms of the disease have faded. If you are unfortunate enough to require ‘supplements,’ you might be required to consume human blood… or worse still, brains. Centering around the deadly—and thankfully fictional—PVG virus (polymorphic viral gastroencephalitis), Sister, Maiden, Monster is structured as three vignettes, each concerning a woman with a pivotal part to play in the ongoing apocalypse. Though there is little to connect Erin, Savannah and Mareva in their day to day lives, they’re all infected with PVG. It’s not long before their symptoms start manifesting in vastly different, horrifying ways.A Type Two means that if you were given daily supplements of vitamins and survived the initial severe onset of the virus, you could survive on fresh human blood, so you would become a vampire. Or you could drink fresh animal blood, or pasteurized. However, Type Threes are those who need to eat, as the author describes, "a nice fresh bowl of raw brains." Erin is a Type Three. Because of this, she is also far more prone to violent psychotic episodes if she doesn't regularly get raw brain material to eat.