[AD // NETGALLEY ARC]
I was given Of Beasts, a novella written by M. Jane Worma, as an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher for my honest opinion on the book. It was tagged as horror and LGBTQIAP+, and my thoughts were that this might very well be up my alley.
This book is set in the US state Texas, and we have two main characters. There’s Dante, a young man of Protestant Christian faith, and Jude, the pastor of the small church Dante attends. The two has a very passionate relationship, but since they’re two men, they have to keep it secret.
One night their god starts to speak to them through visions in dreams. It turns out that Dante is the Antichrist, sent to Earth to kick off the apocalypse, and Jude is the loyal man of his god, who will do what his god tells him, even though that means taking the life of the person he loves.
The book started with a bit of a bang. To be frank, it started with a very spicy sex scene. Normally I’m not too crazy about sex scenes, but in this book it actually had a function. I don’t want to go into too many details, as I really don’t want to spoil it.
I was curious to see how I liked this book, as it’s very heavy on Christian mythology. I’ve talked on my YouTube channel previously, as well as here on the blog, about how I often feel like Christian mythology tend to be very overdone. It’s something I rarely am able to connect to, especially if there are a lot of deamons, possessed people, and such things. In this book, however, it worked really well. It was done in a way that was a bit different to most other books and films I’ve seen. Also, I much prefer it in horror, rather than in fantasy books.
As this was a novella, it wasn’t very long. That being said, I didn’t mind the length, it actually felt like the perfect length for the book. The pacing was well done. Also, I quite liked the writing style. I’m curious to what the author will come up with in the future.
The book is a debut story, and is to be published 10 February 2026.