I read this novella for the indie novella competition, SFINCS. The following review is my own personal opinion as a judge and does not reflect the views of the team as a whole. Find out more about the competition here and my team, The WIPs, here!
Parasitic Omens by Jessica A. McMinn is an intriguing, twisty fantasy horror about a weary investigator getting entangled in a plot of child kidnapping and murder sprinkled with a gruesome possession-slash-experimentation of sorts, leading us into the cruel world of monsters, warlocks, and dangerous cults on the gaslamp-lit streets of Copperton.
From the first pages, the novella is confident and efficient in depicting a world where the paranormal seems to be perfectly normal: witches, concoctions, ghoul-haunted woods, and spells and rituals are not at all unheard-of here, and especially not to investigator Lawrence Reed, who is a frequent visitor of Briar Loren, owner of the bar Dripping Bucket and dealer of clues and secrets about supernatural activities and crimes. Now, too, he is on an errand for Briar, however, encounters more than what he’s bargained for when he observes an abomination birthing itself from the dead body of a little girl in the outskirts of the menacing, magical forest of the Taschenwilde. When no one seems to really care about the monstrous crime and its implications, and Briar even advises Law to leave it well enough alone, our detective, of course, does what we really love in detective stories like this: he does not leave it well enough alone. And as he tries to unravel the whys and hows of the horrible death of this lost girl, he sheds light on something much bigger than he previously imagined: a plot of greed and fanaticism that could destroy the already hard lives of the good people of Copperton.
This story gave me everything it promised in those first pages: grit, gore, mysteries, twists, and emotion. I really like how it managed to tell a compact, logical, interesting detective story on very few pages, and even though Law’s character needed the whole span of the book to develop enough so I could get close to him, I’m happy to report that he certainly did. He is the classic gritty, jaded, but truth-seeking detective whose everyday, grimy outside hides a gentle heart, but there is enough here to make him interesting and human. There is also a lot of lore and worldbuilding compressed into the story, but it never felt too much or too little as the author managed to expertly balance our understanding of the world with what mysteries and enigmas she wanted us to ponder on. There are many interesting creatures, powers, and players in and around Copperton, and if this really becomes a novella or novel-series, Parasitic Omens, even with its smaller scale, is a perfect taster for all of it. And in the end, both Law and Briar (and a third, very interesting character we encounter) stayed with me as characters with great dynamics that I enjoyed to follow, and I’d love to read more about them. Many things mentioned also turn out to be cool little details to wonder about and I expect them to maybe come into play as the series progresses.
All in all, I enjoyed the novella very much. It is a satisfying, well-rounded, monstrous little story that hooks you in for more with capable, immersive writing, keeping to the expectations and rules of the genre but providing all of it with a sure hand and a gusto for storytelling that carries the reader through it all. I definitely recommend this one to lovers of the supernatural investigation genre, and as the author says in the blurb, to those who love the mood of Bloodborne, the video game.
Helyna L. Clove 
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