Sefira and Other Betrayals

John Langan’s newest collection, Sefira & Other Betrayals (published by Hippocampus Press) intertwines literary fiction with mythological gods and demonic deities, with a dabble of weird, providing readers with a fantastic collection.Sefira & Other Betrayals is Langan’s third book released in the last six years, following his critically acclaimed and well received novel, The Fisherman in 2016, and his previously published collection The Wide, Carnivorous Sky (also well loved and received) in 2013.The stories vary from literary horror involving demonic deities, like a succubus (“Sefira”), the Devil (“At Home in the House of the Devil”), and a vampire of a different type (“The Third Always Behind You”), to weird things that you wouldn’t expect to be terrifying, like balloons (“The Unbearable Proximity of Mr. Dunn’s Balloons”), and something similar to that of the shape of a jellyfish (“Bloom”), to the old gods, like Kronos, the father of the thunder and sky god, Zeus (“In Paris, in the Mouth of Kronos”).Sorry, I’m rambling… There’s just so many things in this book that I could praise and go on about. It’s that good. So, I’ll wrap it up.All the stories in Sefira are wonderful, digging deep into the characters and revealing the different layers that betrayal can be, in different times and settings. However, my personal favorite of this collection is “The Unbearable Proximity of Mr. Dunn’s Balloons,” the story that made me wonder the most where Langan was going with the story until the end, in which everything tied together to give a satisfying, albeit bittersweet, ending.I highly recommend you purchase it, especially if you’re already a fan of Langan’s work.

Contemporary art, visual, audible, and literary, is nothing but exhibition after exhibition of self-mutilation. Raw, cruel, bloody. If you live in that mud, you might enjoy these stories. I only read Sefira, that was enough, my soul now needs time to heal.

This precisely why I read weird fiction. Many a plot twisting surprise pivoting on a sharp points of betrayal. Langan has found his voice and it is a piercing howl into the darkness. Buy it. Read it. Tell your friends. Spread the news like a virus. John Langan has arrived.

While Mr. Langan is certainly a talented writer, the majority of these stories suffer terribly from "neverendingness".The writing is good, the concepts are good, but the execution is severely lacking. The Third Always Beside You felt like it was 500 pages of the same thing, page after page, and the ending was nebulous and eye-rolling. Not much bang for the buck, and waaaay over-written.

Dizzying collection of masterful horror writing from one of the greats. Uncannily weird setups which follow through in unexpected ways. We will be talking about Langan long after my time on Earth is done.

Probably the pinnacle of literary horror writing.

I'm not a writer or book connoisseur in any capacity. As such my sole criterion for rating this collection of stories is solely their ability to keep me interested in reading through them and to have a vested interest in the protagonists.So, do get this book and enjoy some time spent revisiting some of your own betrayals as witnessed through the eyes of another.

I love this author's work. John Langan gets better and better. A Lovecraftian for the 21st Century!

I loved The Fisherman so much. It could be one of my favourite ever books, and I know I'll read it again and again. I was looking so forward to it. However....though I didn't expect quite the same thing with this being short stories...I just didn't think that much of it. The title story had promise but I was really put off by the main character doing "roundhouse" kicks every five minutes. That really pissed me off. It was like an episode of Buffy. I read the next story though and that didn't do it for me either, so I gave up, irritated that it wasn't working its magic as the fisherman had done. I'll probably carry on at some point and give it a go. I don't know. I've just read on Twitter that Johns got a new book coming out. Short stories again. I wish I could be excited about it. Maybe I was just expecting too much. Oh I don't know. Anyway, 2 stars for the stories I read.

This is an excellent collection of creepy short stories.