WOMEN SCORNED by Angela Alsaleem_Review

Women Scorned by Angela Alsaleem

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I would classify this book under the sub-genre “bizarre” rather than strictly as horror. At its heart hides a covert “Order,” founded some three hundred years earlier by a young student who had lost his beloved to death. Taking refuge in a hidden cave to grieve, he was contacted by the “Dark Lord,” and given orders, dreams, and visions. Over the course of three centuries, his beloved Eve’s spirit has been transmitted over and over again into new bodies, each body after the first being his own child, birthed by the successive Eves. Now the Dark Lord has promised it is time to bring together the spirit world with the realm of the living, and to do this, the female half of what he calls “Rory” must be retrieved; the male half has been incarcerated in the Order’s secret castle in Ireland for several months. The female half is Camilla, a young solitary artist brutally destroyed by a rogue cop, who wanders, mostly invisibly, and has now discovered she can steal the spirit from destroyers of women by capturing their breath. Following her is Libitina, whose burning desire is to become a pathologist, but who has been rejected by many medical schools, and so resorts to visiting hospital morgues and cemeteries, and eventually, stealing Camilla’s corpse.
“Women Scorned” is quite well-written, and although convoluted, makes logical sense according to its own premise. It is not designed for the faint of heart, as it does contain many instances and descriptions of graphic violence, torture, rape, murder, and repeated incest. However, for those who like their horror outré and flavoured with the fragrance of Grand Guignol, this is quite a story.




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