🪦 DROPPED 🪦
Lesbian vixens from another dead world thread through moon-drenched cornfields and opulent drawing rooms in this literary horror remix of iconic gothic sagas.
Agnes is wasting away. In a bed of velvet and silk, she dreams of death—and Mary.
Mary—a wraith with bloodstained gown and mouth—drips mystery and menace. She materializes beside a lake, beneath a pear tree, outside the window. She turns servants feral and plunges the manor into anarchy. Since her arrival, nothing is right. The maids snarl. The nights grow strange. Agnes swoons.
Her brother, Arthur, calls it a sickness. A curse. He stalks the halls with scissors in his fist. He wants purity and order. He’ll strike out the unintelligible. He is not the only one. Others have begun to stir—jilted lovers, disgraced doctors, moralists with sharpened knives. The disorder is spreading. It’s riotous. Contagious. They’ll purify the world in flame.
Written partially through footnotes and with a mystery of interwoven red text, Agnes, We’re Not Murderers! is an atmospheric gothic vampire journey for fans of Kathe Koja and Mark Z. Danielewski.
The concept is cool but I found it overly distracting already by the first story. I’m not a stranger to highlighted words or secondary stories in footnotes. I am frustrated by being told to turn to X page to know X constantly.(1)
There’s a weird flow to the writing, as if the writer themself were a bit distracted by the footnotes as well. It feels weird to read. Not altogether there. I wasn’t a fan and I gave it up by the end of chapter one, which by the way began on page 18, unlabeled.
(1) I am the type to always mind a footnote and a directive. the footnotes often led to another footnote and another direction to flip to another page. I was frustrated as I flipped and flipped and flipped through the entire book per the footnotes directions. “I’m still in the first story! Let me read!”
