The Unholy Trinity by L. Marie Wood horror book review

The Unholy Trinity by L. Marie Wood

The Unholy Trinity by L. Marie Wood

As Woods says in her afterword, she writes stories that “linger with you long after you’ve put the book down,” and she’s right. I’ll still be thinking about some of these stories a while from now, and glancing periodically over my shoulder.

The Unholy Trinity is an omnibus combining three collections of flash fiction from L. Marie Woods, Caliginy, Phantasma, and Anathema. I had not read any of Woods’ work before but I wanted to check out this collection because I had heard of her work and I enjoy flash fiction. Woods has published several novels, many short stories and been nominated for and won many awards.

The cover for The Unholy Trinity is simple, but effective: a pale golden skull composed of a multitude of keys, representing the multitude of stories inside this volume. It is an unsettling way to set the scene for the 99 tales within.

Even though all the stories are horror flash fiction, there is still a good amount of variety in subject matter, length, and style. With that many stories, it would be difficult for them all to resonate with me, and I admit that many of them were not to my personal taste. A number of the stories were more on the extreme horror side of the spectrum, and featured detailed sex scenes. There is nothing wrong with that, but those stories are a harder sell for me, personally. I also felt that many of the stories ended rather abruptly, as though they wanted to be longer. 

Even so, Woods’ writing style is unique and often captivating.

She has a lyrical style of writing that draws the reader in and the stories she tells include classic tropes (vampires, haunted houses) and new horrors. In one touching piece, “Room 3708”, the horror is the inevitability of aging and loss, as told through the lens of a woman losing her husband to illness. As someone who has firsthand experience with losing loved ones to sickness and old age, this story particularly touched me.

Other stories in The Unholy Trinity that were genuinely scary, such as in “The Interview,” Will has sacrificed everything to land his dream job as an anchor. His first big interview is with someone unexpected, and when they start talking, I found myself pulled right into the tale. In “My House,” a young woman comes home to find something terrible has happened to her family. As Woods described her exploring her house and discovering what happened, I felt as though I were walking the dark hallways at her side. And in “Baie Rouge,” Sandra is mourning her wife, when she gets a surprise visitor, and I was delighted by an unexpected callback to an earlier story, “The Dance”.

The Unholy Trinity is a collection that is better read slowly, over time, than all at once. The sheer weight of the horror in the 99 stories is a lot to take at once, and I had to pace myself as I went along. As Woods says in her afterword, she writes stories that “linger with you long after you’ve put the book down,” and she’s right. I’ll still be thinking about some of these stories a while from now, and glancing periodically over my shoulder.

The Unholy Trinity by L. Marie Wood

The Unholy Trinity by  L. Marie Wood
The Unholy Trinity by L. Marie Wood

Dive into the terrifying worlds of L. Marie Wood. These stories range from quiet horror, hinting at the things buried there in your psyche – the thing that will come out to play after dark, and visceral horror that leaves no doubt what lies in a bloody heap in the middle of the floor.

The Unholy Trinity combines L. Marie Wood’s horror collections, Caliginy, Phantasma, and Anathema into one frightening volume of quiet, extreme, and dark horror, psychological thrillers, and rousing suspense that will keep you teetering on the edge of your seat.

Strap in.

You’re in for a wild ride.

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Author

  • Melody E. McIntyre

    Melody lives in Ontario, Canada and writes short, speculative fiction that has been published by several small presses. She is also an avid reviewer who writes reviews and articles for The Horror Tree, as well as on her blog. Melody is a member of Sisters in Crime and is the secretary for the Ontario chapter of the Horror Writers Association. She earned her Master of Arts studying Ancient Greek and Roman Studies and often infuses her work with elements of Greek mythology. In her day job she works as a legal assistant and in her spare time, she loves reading, embroidery, and martial arts.

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