Johnny Compton established himself, through books like The Spite House and Devils Kill Devils, as a rising star in the horror world, adept at channeling a certain blend of Southern horror elements into his fiction. His early novels are brimming with Southern Gothic atmosphere, but they also pack a noir punch, and they often dig deep into supernatural concepts, allowing Compton to put his own spin on haunted houses, vampires, and more.
With Chimera Skin, Compton sets more traditional horror elements aside for an ambitious new direction, blending post-apocalyptic fiction with sci-fi and body horror to achieve a lot in a very short page count. This is Johnny Compton as you’ve never read him before, with the same attention to character and emotional weight that made him a must-read horror author in the first place.
Swanson is a mutant, a former government scientist whose mind and body have been merged with others to form a startling hybrid of multiple people in one gargantuan form. He has extra eyes, extra fingers, new organs that change the way his body moves and feels, and a brain crowded with memories that aren’t his own. He’s also quite possibly the last hope for what’s left of the...