Have you ever started looking something up, purely out of curiosity, and then realized three hours later that you fell down a rabbit hole without even noticing? That's what reading this book is like, except the rabbit hole has been nicely pieced together for you, and when I say "nicely put together", I mean these wizards at Archive of the Odd formatted Cat's vision into a book I never would have imagined possible.
A dark tale of conspiracies, fan theories, kidnapping, torture, and murder unravels in a very similar pattern to hunting this story down on the internet yourself. There are no clearly drawn plot lines spoon-fed to us in the chat forums, text messages, or blog posts, so readers are drawn into this mystery as deeply as the rest of the characters caught up in the web of speculation. The creator of an extreme horror graphic novel, Riley, has dug into some remote corners of the web to research the infamous red rooms: online streams where people can pay to watch (and sometimes choose) the torture of a kidnap victim. Her story follows one such victim, who takes back the reins and dishes out some violence of her own.
Now though, there's a sadistic criminal who appears to be pulling inspiration from Riley's story, and it raises the ever-present question of how much creators can really be held accountable for what other people choose to do with the content they've released. It's a very slippery slope, and I think especially in the horror community, it's a debate that's easy to be invested in!
The ending is the best kind of ambiguous. I have no doubts that everyone who reads it will walk away with a different interpretation of what has occurred, and I can't wait to see the theories start making their rounds! Pre-order or request an ARC here!
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