LoveReading Says
Exploring the traumatic themes of post-natal depression and feelings of suicide with necessary boldness, Gemma Amor’s autobiographical debut novel achieves what speculative fiction does best - Full Immersion is fiercely thought-provoking endeavour. As raised in the author’s deeply personal foreword, it grapples with questions around “the value of a woman’s life”, “the value of human life”, and “how willing we are sometimes to let that life fall to the wayside”.
When Magpie finds her own corpse, a stranger helps her drag it from a Bristol river and she’s driven to investigate what happened to her. Haunted by fragmented memories of the life she led with her husband and child, and under the surveillance of an experimental therapy programme, she’s later forced to flee the sinister Silhouette predator as her unravelled identity is assaulted by the programme.
With a palpable sense of time running out, and a potent portrayal of trauma, there’s also a sense of empowerment, of fleeing monsters, and taking flight to find freedom.
Joanne Owen
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Full Immersion Synopsis
A traumatised woman with amnesia finds her own dead body and sets out to uncover the truth of her demise in a race against time, sanity, crumbling realities and the ever-present threat of the Silhouette.
What can you do when you’re reeling from trauma but you’ve tried it all? Counselling, yoga, pills, meditation, art, healthy living… none of it makes a dent. What’s left?
Magpie is out of ideas. She’s desperate enough to try anything. Just when she thinks her life can get no worse, she discovers herself, or rather her own dead body, partially buried in the mudbank of a river. A man stands by, a familiar stranger. What does he want? And why can’t she remember getting here? Why can’t she remember anything?
Unbeknownst to her, two pairs of eyes watch from behind an observation screen, in a room filled with computers and sensors. An experiment is unfolding, but is Magpie the subject, or practitioner? Reality becomes a slippery concept. And beyond the glass is something worse still: a hint of an outline, shaped in darkness…
Magpie realises all too soon that her journey has transformed from healing to survival. She must become the hunter rather than the hunted, with her missing memories the prey.
In turn brutal, beautiful and absolutely terrifying, Full Immersion is the latest speculative horror from Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, Gemma Amor
**Content Warnings** suicidal ideation??; post-natal depression; implied acts of violence towards a child; birth scene
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780857669810 |
| Publication date: |
13th September 2022 |
| Author: |
Gemma Amor |
| Publisher: |
Angry Robot an imprint of Watkins Media |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
352 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Horror and Supernatural Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Gemma Amor Press Reviews
Amor writes passionately and convincingly about Magpie's pain. The result is a bleak but powerful portrait of survival at any cost.
- Publishers Weekly
"A brave, timely and important book."
- Gareth L. Powell, author of Stars and Bones
Astonishing and totally unique, Gemma Amor writes so fearlessly that it feels as if she were baring her soul in Full Immersion. An intricately crafted and superbly rendered vision of horror-fantasy from one of the genre's most brilliant and devastating voices.
- Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
A deep dive into the horrors of depression, Full Immersion takes readers on a harrowing journey into the character of Magpie, a woman grappling with a horrifying history she can barely remember, now lost within herself. There, a host of terrors play out in unexpected, gruesome ways. Told through duelling POVs, Ms. Amor's writing is tense and sharp, reminiscent of Kealan Patrick Burke, Jeanette Winterson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Fans of both psychological and body horror will find much to enjoy here!
- D.K. Stone, author of Fall Of Night
Powered by dread from the very beginning, Full Immersion is a full-throated scream in the heart. Gemma Amor wields an ever-tightening emotional vice, constantly questioning and challenging the malevolent unreality we accept as our lives. A harrowing inward odyssey.
- Hailey Piper, author of Queen of Teeth
Raw, personal, confrontational, and timely, Gemma Amor bares her soul in full for a book that will rock you to your core. Charting a metaphysical landscape of pain and real suffering, Full Immersion is nothing less than a klaxon call confirming one of the most daring and fearless voices in contemporary fiction.
- Kealan Patrick Burke, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Kin and Sour Candy
"With Full Immersion, Gemma Amor offers you an incredible journey into the dangers and possibilities of the human mind. It's shocking and unnerving and heartbreaking and, ultimately, hopeful in a way that makes you want to jump for joy. It will reawaken you to the possibilities - and depths - of our souls."
- Nick Kolakowski, author of Absolute Unit and Boise Longpig Hunting Club
Gemma Amor's raw, dreamlike novel, Full Immersion, crept under my skin in the most delicious way. A modern-day fairy tale where the princess must save herself, this book will unnerve you and break your heart. An important, timely story.
- Meagan Jennett, author of You Know Her
All of Gemma's work is vivid and visceral, but Full Immersion will invade every space of your heart and mind. The hurt is terrifying as it jumps off the page to create haunting images of catastrophic proportions. If you are not a Gemma fan already then you will be after this one. I felt every word.
- V. Castro, Bram Stoker Award nominated author of Goddess of Filth
The body horror is visceral, and the virtual reality component will cause readers to constantly question what's real. Readers of Amor's latest are in for a creepy, unsettling narrative, with strong shades of Sarah Pinborough. Recommend to those who enjoy films like Inception and Memento.
- Anita Siraki, Library Journal
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