Read This: We Will Speak Again of the Red Tower

We Will Speak Again of the Red Tower, a collection inspired and infected by Thomas Ligotti’s impeccable story, “The Red Tower”, fully captures the unease, the unnaturalness, and the sheer weirdness of the original. Some tales are grounded in reality as we know it before spinning off into the monstrous. Others are adrift in strange alternate spaces from their opening words. 

Every one is a disturbing, mysterious treat.

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“The Project Files Recovered from the Wreckage of [REDACTED] State Hospital, Future Site of RedTower Industries” by Joelle Killian takes a clinical approach to the spreading malaise among the patients and staff of a doomed psychiatric clinic.

“Conversations From Whence You Came” by Carson Winter turns the landscape itself into a surreal nightmare of familiarity, disconnection, and inescapable ties.

“You Know Where It’s From” by Jack Klausner describes the culmination of a long search for something that remains indescribable despite it being exactly what the narrator knew they wanted.

“Jar of Arms” by Joe Koch meanders across an increasingly more surreal and dangerous landscape, with shifting perceptions and a shockingly grotesque conclusion.

“Tolerance” by Rhiannon Rasmussen tries to objectively quantify the ineffable color of the Tower using accepted measures, only to discover that it was never a hue at all. 

“We’re Selling an Experience” by C.J. Subko is perhaps the lightest in tone of the stories, with a snooping journalist investigating the weird edges of consumer culture before they are swallowed up by it.

“[_] he [__] a[__] r[_] of th[_] [_] e[_] [___] r [__] [__] o[___] [_____] t[_]” by TJ Price finds the tower gifting a community with poisonous dreams, inexplicable children, and a new purpose.

“Draft of Ligotti’s Children: an Exploration of the Fictional Realities ‘The Red Tower’ Creates” by RSL is a metafictional lit crit of other works in this collection that explores the fictional realities to the point of madness.

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We Will Speak Again of the Red Tower lives up to what its title promises. Each of the eight stories here finds a different path into the world where the Red Tower holds sway, and exploits the strange energies to deliciously grotesque effect. I recommend it.