Praise for Spiritus Ex Machina

“Dark, lyrical, and grimly charming, Hessen’s prose is marvelous. In league with the literary forces that have inspired Aickman, Tuttle, and Dahl.”
—Laird Barron, author of Not A Speck of Light (Stories)

“Machines, dolls, and ghastly things animate von Hessen’s debut collection of somber horror tales…Von Hessen’s 14 stories herein tackle such diverse subgenres as the undead, body horror, and something more Lovecraftian…but there’s a discernible theme of identity that runs throughout the book… In every chilling moment and unexpected turn, the author’s prose is nothing short of intoxicating…Razor-sharp writing distinguishes stories that enthrall as often as they unnerve.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Von Hessen’s much-anticipated collection constructs a machine of strange encounters, twisted folklore, and an industrialized universe, an entrancing experience that injects lightning through your mind. Each story carries a near-tangible sense of knowing, held just out of reach, and by each finale you’re as likely to be left awestruck as mortified. A dreamlike dissection of the human condition and the madness we create for ourselves.”
—Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth

“Weird fiction has a problem—the abject. Sure, ghouls and tentacles and endless tunnels, but deviance? Audacity? Actual human weirdness? Relegated to subtext, to hints, to counter-readings. Weird fiction had a problem: the solution is LC von Hessen.”
—Nick Mamatas, author of The Second Shooter

“What a voice! LC von Hessen is like some perverse antiquarian puppet-master, delivering exacting prose that couples the cadence of Ligotti with the bright irony of a discourse on modern art. They inject a sense of timelessness via historical detail that fascinates the reader at every turn. Reading Spiritus Ex Machina is a surgical experience. Utterly cold, rich, unflinching, and unforgettable.”
—Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands and Invaginies

“LC von Hessen deserves your attention. Mordant wit, vibrant fantasy, keen insight into character, artful eroticism, and an authentically historic voice. Every piece in this collection will reward you.”
—Michael Cisco, author of The Divinity Student and Antisocieties

“LC von Hessen’s Spiritus Ex Machina is packed with exquisitely rendered sentences, the sort that demand reading aloud to the shadowy man across from you on the night train, no matter how violently opposed he seems to being spoken to. Comparisons to other authors of the weird are tempting, but ultimately too constraining. These stories are sui generis: playfully lurid, deliciously outré, magnificently dark. This book is a gift for the weird-minded reader of discerning taste.”
——Matthew M. Bartlett, author of Gateways to Abomination

“My description of LC von Hessen’s writing as the progeny of Ligotti’s bleak universe, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s macabre fairy tales, and Maria de Naglowska’s Satanic eroticism is only due to my inability to properly convey the uncanny ambiance of their stories. Here, marginalized people who have been far too rarely celebrated seek the allure of decadent liberation in a realm of carnivals, fetish clubs, city apartments, and rooms where transgressive experiments are inflicted. Spiritus Ex Machina is as carnal as a bite into the flesh of a black widow’s plump abdomen, and as dangerously seductive as eating a poisoned apple, razor blade tucked beneath tongue.”
—Christopher Slatsky, author of The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature and Alectryomancer

“Perverse and absurd. Ornate and crass. Erotic and deeply unsettling. LC von Hessen proves themself as one of our most thoughtful and talented stylists with Spiritus Ex Machina—a collection of outsiders looking in on a world stranger than themselves.”
—Carson Winter, author of The Psychographist

“Sometimes you encounter the work of a writer whose name you want to shout from the rooftops. LC von Hessen is such a writer. von Hessen expertly weaves the macabre, the grotesque, and the phantasmagorical into an intricate, artful black web. Count me among their new fans. I suspect there’ll soon be many, many more.”
—Matthew M. Bartlett, author of Gateways to Abomination