Book Review: Issues With Authority by Nadia Bulkin

“Beauty is the light shining through the human soul.”

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Composed of two novelettes and a novella, Issues With Authority immerses the reader in visceral, horrifying narratives of transformation, belief, violence, and power. Pulsing with rage, the writing is layered and absorbing, while the storylines are distinctive and diverse, demonstrating the author’s creativity, reach, and prowess in exploring and exposing humankind's foibles.

Cop Car tells the story of cult-born Carly Parrish, a girl with disturbing interests, special skills, and psychopathic tendencies. With a unique narrative structure (mysterious first person and third person points of view in tandem), it’s a chilling, violent, symbiotic, and predatory account of masks, vessels, psychics, and tethers littered with sweet cherry cordials and scathing commentary on humanity’s tribalist inclination and fatalistic reality.

Your Next Best American Girl follows pageant contestant Veronica Muenster in her undying quest to fulfill her dream of being crowned Miss Americana. Oozing with gag-worthy body horror, the story gives new dimension to beauty’s subjective, superficial, and absurd nature, producing an appalling journey of control, release, addiction, and commitment; flaws, favors, scabs, and sores; and craters, crust, fungus, and blight. Fair warning: don’t snack while reading this one!

Red Skies in the Morning is a brutal, sci-fi/dystopian chronicle where sisters Selene and Hannah Denton inhabit a world riddled with chain curses raging beyond the government’s control (think The Ring meets Alien). It’s an intricate and bloody story of loss and anguish surrounding bonds, shells, choices, and sacrifices; zeroes, zombies, killers, and monsters where humanity is doomed, dehumanization is routine, and death may be the most rational option.

Thank you to BookSirens and Ghoulish Books for providing an eARC of this forthcoming collection for review consideration. Issues With Authority is a searing trio that makes this reader eager to experience more of Nadia Bulkin’s work!

🖤Amanda