Behold the Void

By: Philip Fracassi

Narrated by: David Stifel

Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's Summary

Behold the Void includes nine stories of terror that huddle in the dark space between cosmic horror and the modern weird, between old-school hard-edged horror of the 1980s and the stylistic prose of today's literary giants.

Revenge takes a monstrous form when a scorned lover acquires bizarre, telekinetic powers; a community swimming pool on a bright summer day becomes the setting for a ghastly nightmare of sacrifice and loss; a thief does bloody battle with a Yakuza for the soul of a horse god; a priest must solve the mystery of a century-old serial killer or risk the apocalypse; a newly-married couple discover that relationships-gone-bad can be poisonous, and deadly; a child is forced to make an ultimate choice between letting his parents die or living with the monsters they may become; and when a boy is trapped on a beach at low tide, he must face death in many forms - that of the rising water coming to consume him and the ghost of his dead mother who wants him back, reaching for him with dark, longing arms....

©2017 Philip Fracassi (P)2017 Journalstone Publishing

most excellent

loved it! i'll for sure revisit this book when some future purchase disappoints; both narrator and author make me jealous with their talent.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Philip Fracassi is not to be slept on...

There is nothing I can say more accurate or appropriate to any one about to dive into this collection of short stories & novelettes - each one crescendoing and ending with their wonderful central characters being forced to face impossible revelations about the world and the chaos of it all that brought them to their final moment alive - that would be worded better than Laird Barron’s introduction to this debut publication. (For those new to the world of good horror literature, Barron is a heavyweight champion who makes the likes of Stephen King look like children’s books - so Laird’s giddy and enthusiastic preamble was honestly shocking for me to read as I prepared to see what this “Void” had ready for, and just as Barron stated, Fracassi has obviously been winding up for years, and this is as big of a statement as one could ever dream of from any horror author’s first volume of short stories.)

Not since John Langan’s, “The Wide Carnivorous Sky,” has there been a new name on the mainstream weird fiction/occult horror block worth obsessing over. Philip Fracassi, you HAD my curiosity, but now you have my full attention!

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Unbelievably Awesome!!

This is one of the best books I have listened to years! The final story is best in my opinion. I have read all of this authors books and can’t wait for many more.

Excellent horror that gets better as you go

In the world of horror, few stones have been left unturned, but this book manages to find that black mold that is terror, fuels it with creative nightmares and lets it creep into our bones. Well written and performed.

Fantastic stories

What did you love best about Behold the Void?

Fracassi has a rich and frighting imagination, reminds me of vintage Stephen King

Who was your favorite character and why?

Fracassi is great at developing memorable characters in a short amount of time. I'd say my favorite was the boy in Mandala, the final story in the collection

Have you listened to any of David Stifel’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I have not

Who was the most memorable character of Behold the Void and why?

It's a collection of short stories, so there are many characters to choose from. I think the one that stayed with me the most was the lead character in Surfer Girl, it's a terrifying look into the mind of a potential serial killer

Any additional comments?

Highly recommend

Story is great, narrator is not, unfortunately

I don’t like to be rude about narrators, I’m sure they’re good people, but the one who read this story shouldn’t be doing this. He didn’t have the right tone for people’s quotes, nor the correct emphasis on words within each statement! I was re-reading every spoken line again to myself in order for the story to make sense. That was hella frustrating. I might use non grammatically correct words like ‘hella’ but I have a common sense ability to know exactly how a line needs to be read for the specific situation. He read every exclamation the same way no matter who it was or what they said. It’s like he wasn’t even paying attention. Please. Get a different narrator.

0 of 1 people found this review helpful

Didn't like this

What didn’t you like about David Stifel’s performance?

The narrator sounds like Deputy Dawg as read by a computer voice simulator. There's a weird halting character to his voice and the narration is replete with weird pauses.

Any additional comments?

Some of the stories were OK, but I didn't like them enough to get me past the weird narration.

0 of 1 people found this review helpful

Just extremely boring stories.

What disappointed you about Behold the Void?

To be fair I only made it through 2 of these short stories, but I wasn't going to waste any more time on this book - just the most mediocre stories, supernatural elements just tossed at the wall with no creativity or signs of narrative cohesion.

What could Philip Fracassi have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Fracassi needs to go back to the drawing board and rather than just hammering out stories about random seeming scary events build an actual coherent universe that we can be interested in and care about.

What does David Stifel bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The reader was fine.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Extremely disappointed with the low quality of storytelling, literally significantly worse than what you can listen to for free on youtube or horror fiction podcasts any day of the week.

0 of 5 people found this review helpful

Fantastic book but I struggled with the narrator

Philip Fracassi is one of the most promising voices of the new wave of horror authors, up there with Laird Barron and John Langan, but I have to admit I struggled with the narrator. He's not bad, but there's a certain strange laziness to the narrator's voice that sounds both robotic and laggy at times, which I found detracted from the stories being read.

Overall though, well worth the time!

Cinematic storytelling with a hint of Stephen King

Great selection of stories with some original and unexpected ideas. Very cinematic in scope with emphasis on character despite the short story format. you can tell Fracassi is a screen writer. His work reminded me of King in places, especially the last story, but it is still unique enough to be its own thing.