To Rouse Leviathan

“[A] landmark collection.”
— Asimov’s Science Fiction

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About the book

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Matt Cardin has distinguished himself by writing weird fiction with a distinctively cosmic and spiritual focus. Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti, Cardin explores the convergence of religion, horror, and art in a cosmos that may be actively hostile to our species. In this substantial volume, Cardin gathers the totality of his short fiction.

In tales long and short, some substantially revised from their original appearances and including a new novella co-written with Mark McLaughlin, Cardin rings a succession of changes on those fateful words from the Book of Job: “Let those sorcerers who place a curse on days curse that day, those who are skilled to rouse Leviathan.”

Praise

“With flavors of both Brian Evenson and Jeffrey Ford, Cardin’s work adumbrates the ineffable unease and deracination that derives from realizing that humanity’s place in the Universe, far from being privileged, is more likely cursed. . . . [A] landmark collection.”
— Asimov’s Science Fiction

“To Rouse Leviathan is one of those rare books that produces in a reader the most important reaction one can have to a work of, let us say, the literature of abomination. This reaction takes the form of a question: ‘From where could this marvel have come?’ Each one of Matt Cardin’s stories carries the message that there is an ‘elsewhere’ that, by its nature, to quote a scholar of this realm, is both appalling and alluring. Without question, Cardin is no dilettante in the conception and expression of that which we would not know and yet, if our lives are to partake of mysteries that alone can give them meaning, we crave to know. To offer some satisfaction for this awful and wondrous craving is the gift of this book.”
— Thomas Ligotti, author of Teatro Grottesco and The Nightmare Factory

“In Matt Cardin’s fiction, characters struggle to understand a supernatural that may be opaque to itself. In detailing their efforts, Cardin draws on language and imagery from religious texts, re-purposing and recharging familiar tropes and references. The result is an experience of the darkly numinous. Put these stories on the shelf next to Ligotti, Gavin, and Cisco.”
— John Langan, author of The Fisherman

“To Rouse Leviathan is an extraordinary omnibus by an extraordinary writer. Matt Cardin carefully balances the religious, the philosophical, and the horrific to create deeply unsettling tales that gnaw at your sense of existential security.”
— Simon Strantzas, author of Nothing Is Everything

“Sometimes a collection grabs me from the first story. THIS collection grabbed me from the preface. Well worth your time.”
— Mike Davis, creator and host of Lovecraft E-zine

“This volume deserves to be shelved in your place of highest honor, a fair companion to Lovecraft, Ligotti, and whomever else you consider to be a master of the craft. Matt Cardin’s brand of horror is Lovecraftian in some ways, it’s true, and Ligottian in many others, but I suspect it won’t be long now before we refer to it simply as Cardinian.”
— The Miskatonic Review

“To Rouse Leviathan is a must-read for those who enjoy interrogating the shadow of faith.”
— Sublime Horror

“Matt Cardin is one of the most vital figures in 21st-century Horror. To Rouse Leviathan is a landmark volume, one that I can turn to again and again with increasing appreciation.”
— Richard Gavin, author of Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness

“Cardin has an eerie and disquieting knack for finding the most morbid and disturbing passages in the holy books of the world’s religions. . . . There are many moments of thoroughly disquieting awe. . . . [This] might be the future of horror.”
— Darrell Schweitzer for The New York Review of Science Fiction

“What I learned from reading Matt Cardin’s collection To Rouse Leviathan is that [theology and cosmic horror] can, in fact, mix—and it’s incredibly unsettling when they do. The stories in this collection suggest that the only thing more terrifying than an absent deity is one whose motivations and goals are entirely alien to a human mind.”
— Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“This is a multi-course feast, a table brimming over with sumptuous, dark masterpieces of theologically infused cosmic horror, psychological terror, and bizarre, intimate character studies and confessions. . . . To Rouse Leviathan is a book to experience, to study, to marvel at, and—in those exquisite, uneasy moments in which we keenly feel we are part of Cardin’s terrifying fictional world—to live in.”
— Jon Padgett, author of The Secret of Ventriloquism

Buy now: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | Hippocampus Press