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Nicholas Binge has a couple releases that I’ve been meaning to read (story of my life) for awhile now. His horror novel ASCENSION has been on my shelf for a few years & I’m super excited to get to it. And then he recently released the time-travel/crime fiction mashup, EXTREMITY, which I’m dying to get to.

But in the meantime, I’m always going to geek out over a new Nightfire release, so I jumped right in to Binge’s brand new novella, ABYSS! 

The tagline for this one is “Severance meets Lovecraft” and that honestly feels quite apt. 

While the bulk of the novella takes place in the Worst Office Ever, we meet protagonist Joe on the eve of his first day at his new job. The first chapter of this book captures a particular feeling so well that it’s almost unbearable: Joe is caught in an endless loop of scrolling on social media, realizing he’s up way too late right before his first day, unable to sleep, more scrolling, calculating the hours he’ll be able to sleep if only he FALLS ASLEEP RIGHT NOW. The more he scrolls, the more anxious he feels. The more anxious he feels, the less likely sleep becomes. Ughhhh we’ve all been there in one way or another, but this book really captures the soul-sucking experience of endless doom scrolling, anxiety, and loneliness in a way that made my skin crawl.

The specifics of Joe’s new job are vague, at best. Something something administrative  something something. But Joe needs the work, and Ponos was hiring. 

Scrambling to get to his first day on time, Joe arrives to find…a totally empty lobby. Not a soul in sight. After a strange/panicky phone call, Joe does manage to find his way to his office, and is told that most people are working from home that day. Settling in at his desk, Joe is confronted with WellBot, the company’s AI that is…alarmingly up in Joe’s business. What starts as concern from WellBot quickly starts to feel much more menacing.

As Joe’s strange days at work get stranger, more violent, and deeply unsettling, you begin to wonder if this job might not be the best fit for our hero after all. 

Cosmic horror can be a real challenge for me. I don’t tend to gravitate towards it, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned in a handful of reviews. I hate feeling lost or confused in a book, and cosmic horror is sort of built on the bewildering. On those moments where the reader feels 100% untethered from anything familiar, and is just thrown into the…abyss (sorry). But this bonkers novella really felt grounded, even in all its weirdness. There’s a real emotional core to the story, particularly where Joe’s relationship with his Mom is concerned. I don’t think we get to know Joe all that deeply, but you can’t help but pull for the guy as things begin to unravel. 

There’s an absurdist quality to the humor of the book, but it also really has something to say. It’s deeply anticapitalist, and shines an uncomfortably bright light on the sort of modern day obsession with “the grind.” ABYSS also really taps into the self-loathing that comes with that late-night doomscrolling session in a way that’s way too relatable.

And then there’s, you know, the soul-sucking tentacled beastie. As featured right there on the cover.

ABYSS was awesome! Fast-paced and addicting, and a great introduction to a new-to-me author, which is always a cool thing when reading a novella. 

Huge thanks to Nightfire for sending this one my way!