A Macabre Scavenger Hunt: Tim Waggoner’s Lord of the Feast

Some time ago, a cult tried to bring their filthy god to life. They sought the destruction of the Omniverse, whatever that might mean, and through the gruesome grimoire Liber Pravitis Itineribus (The Book of Depravity), found a means of doing so. But when the god was nothing like what they thought it would be, was in fact a bloodthirsty infantile being intent on sowing destruction and bestowing no favors, they stopped it the one way they knew how. Dismembering the thing. The pieces proved impossible to destroy, so they were scattered among the survivors. This way they could prevent anyone from reassembling and trying the terrible ritual.

Now, however, at least one member of that cult is interested in doing just that. Caprice runs a brothel (The House of Red Tears) that offers select services to a special, limited, and homicidal clientele. It’s the easiest way she can think of to assemble the souls of sacrifices for what is to come. When she is ready, she dispatches her nephew Ethan to find the pieces for her … and kill any of the traitors who might be guarding them.

Ethan assumes he is up to the task. However, he may have met his match with his cousin Kate.

She is not interested in the cult’s activities. She was a child when they had their initial failure and has few memories of that night. Instead, she is a good kid who’s been tending to her grandmother and grandfather—the latter has been stricken by a supernatural plague, which has rendered him boneless, yearning for death, and possessed of spooky mental powers.

Soon enough, Kate will be pulled into the horrific events and serve as the one steward and guardian of the dead god’s body parts who never wants them to unite. With the help of beloved partner, Lee, and a torso-obsessed serial killer called Haksaw, she will have to stand against Ethan, his great aunt, and a collection of murderers and monsters who skulk just out of sight of the normal world.

The fate of the Omniverse is in their hands. If they triumph, then the god will never walk again. If Kate fails, however, it will destroy everything. No pressure.

I’ve been reading Tim Waggoner’s fiction off-and-on since his initial books for the Leisure line of mass market paperback horrors hit stands back in the ‘00s. Like Death, Pandora Drive, Darkness Wakes, as well as the exemplary A Nightmare on Elm Street tie-in novel Protege (for the Black Flame imprint of the Black Library) are wonderful examples of surreal, gory, sexy horror. They are each explorations of the limits of dark fantasy fiction in the spirit of Clive Barker’s fantastique visions. While the author’s range of interests and novels have shifted over the years, moving into heroic fantasy, urban fantasy, media tie ins, Bram Stoker Award winning non-fiction, and even the occasional science fiction piece, a book like Lord of the Feast comes along every now and again to remind us of his roots in the fantastique.

This latest novel is a wonderfully gruesome read, a world built around the concept that a vast majority of the characters who have any inside knowledge of the dark powers at work are the most dangerous of outsiders. So, we get thrill killers aplenty, sexual adventurers who take their kinky fascinations into realms de Sade only dreamed about, and strange creatures who can exist in our world only because they wrap themselves in social invisibility. That said, there are a handful of characters who remain on the light side, whose bodies may be twisted by exposure or proximity to the hideous horrors at play, but who nevertheless do not indulge evil desires. And then there is Kate, our protagonist, a young woman who was accidentally born to cultists and who is taking care of her grandparents though relatively untouched and unaware of the specifics of their actions. She was alive at the time of the lord’s first manifestation, dubbed That Night because of its sinister significance, but she only understands things in a general way if at all. She is not a killer, she is an innocent, and yet she and her partner are the shining lights in this world of darkness. Sadly, she gathers stranger sorts around her, but that’s kind of to be expected.

One of the joyful touches in the book is the wonderful army of ideas for strange locations, beings, creatures to be found here. Many of the worst monsters are human, but there are also inhuman beings aplenty, including Ragmen and Dog Eaters, to keep readers on their toes. There is a bar whose patrons and employees are all Shadow touched (sometimes looking dead, sometimes alive, sometimes in states in between depending on the night), and one of the most intriguing book repositories I’ve encountered in genre fiction. Mundane horrors rub shoulders with mythic ones, and while there is a cosmic horror insignificance at play in the text, Waggoner has fashioned his own mythos instead of cribbing deities and ideas from the Lovecraftians. His is a unique spin on this stuff, the kind of book that bubbles over with horror and dark fantasy ideas the way Philip K. Dick’s sf overflows with cool speculations and quirky notions.

The gory horrors and depravities are as omnipresent as what we might expect from Edward Lee’s output around the era of Succubi or Creekers. Not that Waggoner is all that interested in observing sex acts or perversions. They are there, all right, because that is The House of Red Tears’ raison d’etre. The language brings up the sex and sleaze with very few actual scenes of kinky activity on the page. However, if the main storyline gets a little too gentle, Waggoner introduces one of the Interludes. These are quality views of the body parts Caprice and her people collected back Then, recounted as quality short stories, slices of life, death, and more from the world. They are more than capable of bringing little teases of monstrosity and personal horror along the way. So, Kate’s journey does not have to be an unrelenting excursion into Hell. She gets breathing time to catch up with her family, her partner, learn about the torso obsessed hobo she’s aligned with…

Some readers may find themselves unenthused with the idea of a novel built around this sort of quest pattern. Essentially, the protagonist and her cousin rival are seeking out body parts in much the same way Castlevania II sent Simon Belmont in search of the scattered pieces of Dracula. The book does not adhere to the macabre scavenger hunt antics with a video game’s unshaking focus, however. It’s a story first and foremost, giving us characters to like, those to hiss at, those to fear for, and those we want to see get their just desserts. The search for these components merely provides a frame work, a rationale for our characters to get involved and hustle. However, it’s pretty much a given from the get-go that the climactic action will include enough of the pieces coming together to give us a bloody glimpse of the monster god in action. It’s as grim and nasty a version of Chekov’s gun as we’re likely to see. Waggoner delivers to expectations while also throwing in some clever surprises and twists both along the way as well as in that final encounter.

Lord of the Feast is an entertaining mix of bloody horror and honest emotion and a welcome return to the surreal, gruesome horror hijinks that Waggoner’s longtime fans know and love. With a strong main storyline as well as several clever, wonderfully constructed interludes, it brings some intriguing worldbuilding, some enjoyable characters, and plenty of creative mayhem. All told, this Feast is a bloody good time.

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Thank you to both Flame Tree Publishing and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Lord of the Feast is available for pre-order in paperback and eBook editions.

“A Macabre Scavenger Hunt: Tim Waggoner’s Lord of the Feast” is copyright © 2024 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Cover image taken from the Flame Tree Publishing eBook edition, released in 2024.

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