I love Hailey Piper’s stories. They are SO interesting and fun! This one is very occult & cosmic heavy. Very bloody. Also has queer & trans rep, which I love! Lots of religious themes. We have a character who is a preacher and lots of discussions about god, Jesus, Mary, angels, demons, etc. That won’t be for everyone but I ate it up.

Full review here: https://youtu.be/pGSxmXfwZTA10 s Josh Buyarski242 9

Bring in religious zealots, the old west. Annette is a wonderful protagonist and their travels in to heaven.

Hailey Piper is the cool aunt of cosmic horror and she always delivers!! 5 s Brennan LaFaroAuthor 20 books129

A terrific blend of religious mythology with the depth of character, twisty-turny plot elements, and no-holds-barred shock one expects from a Hailey Piper story. Properly uses the western as a setting/ingredient rather than a genre, Cruel Angels Past Sundown is a dynamic addition to the splatter western canon.4 s Tammy914 158

The nitty-gritty: A weird and bloody tale with plenty of surprises, Hailey Piper's latest is a nightmarish trip to Hell and back.

This is my first time reading Hailey Piper, and I’m not sure why it took me so long! Cruel Angels Past Sundown has such an interesting mix of elements, and it did not go where I was expecting it to go. The author mixes splatter western, body horror and even a touch of romance with religious themes, and the result is a bloody, scary story about one woman’s journey through Hell. This isn’t a comfortable read by any means, but Piper’s unique voice and skillful writing compelled me to read to the bitter end.

Annette Klein and her husband Frank live on a ranch and have created a happy but unconventional life together. But one evening, a naked pregnant woman carrying a cavalry saber approaches their fence. Annette immediately tries to assist the woman, leading her into the house and covering her with a blanket. What they don’t know (but are about to find out) is that the woman is infected with a plague of sorts and causes those around her to become lethargic and compliant. Minutes after they welcome her into their home, the woman follows Frank into the bedroom and guts him with her saber. Annette is horrified by the unexpected violence and blood, but her nightmare is just beginning. Hot on the heels of the pregnant woman (dubbed Saber by Annette) is a priest named Balthazar, who spouts religious rhetoric and carries a lethal looking dagger.

Annette escapes to Slim’s Respite, the local tavern, but Saber and Balthazar are still on the hunt and have followed her, intent on killing everyone in their path. Then a bounty hunter named Gloria shows up to help, and she and Annette find themselves on a very strange journey.

This story definitely falls on the “weird fiction” side of things. From the beginning, I felt a little out of my element, even though I’ve read quite a bit of horror over the years. Piper’s characters are unpredictable, which makes the story exciting to read, but also a bit challenging at times. Annette’s personal journey is the main focus, although she draws others into her orbit as she tries to evade Balthazar and later finds herself in a nightmare landscape and has to figure out how to get home. Piper’s visions of Heaven and Hell are frightening and hallucinatory, and she even adds cosmic horror elements to make things weirder.

I loved the relationships in the story. Annette and Frank were never able to have children—to Frank’s dismay and Annette’s relief—and this pushed them to experiment with an open marriage. Annette found comfort and love in the arms of several women, including Gloria the bounty hunter, but her love for Frank never wavered. During her horrific journey, Annette comes face to face with her feelings for both Frank and Gloria. Frank is now dead and she feels remorse at not being able to save him, and Gloria can’t understand why she mourns him so much. Even Balthazar, the evil villain of the story, offers Annette some insight into her relationships, and by the end she seems to have made peace with her choices.

The deeper Annette and Gloria go into Balthazar’s nightmare, the weirder things get. A lot happens in the last half of the story, and not all of it makes sense. There’s a scary angel who shows up (one of the “cruel angels” in the title), a sort of cosmic horror of an angel that probably doesn’t deserve the title of “angel” at all. As for Saber, she has her own journey, and she turned out to be a much different person that the scary, saber-wielding woman we meet in the beginning.

The last few chapters felt a fever dream, and I was rooting for Annette to make it out of her nightmare safe and sound. I was very pleased that the author chose a hopeful ending for her story, it made all the painful parts worth it. I’m very glad I read this book, uncomfortable as it was, and I cannot wait to read more books by this talented author.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.4 s Ashley Daviau1,907 953

I’m right in the middle with this one, I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it either. Some parts were incredibly interesting and at times I was thoroughly enjoying this novel and convinced it would be a five star read because there’s nothing I enjoy more than a good horror western. This one had some original and unique ideas that I really did enjoy but then one element in particular threw me off the story. There was just SO much god talk and preaching and I have a hard time with things that, I find it really hard to find enjoyment in that. I did really appreciate the LGBTQIA+ aspect though so definite points for that! So while the story was great, the preachiness prevented it from being as good as it could have been.1 JeffReadsHorror302 7

Possibly my book of the year. This also might be Hailey Piper’s best story. This one really struck me. There’s hints of Clive Barker, hints of CS Lewis, and a big helping of everything that makes Piper’s work so Incredible — body horror, queer characters, and the perfect mix of humanity and philosophy. Gonna be thinking about this one for a while1 1 comment AlanaAuthor 6 books29

A book that starts somewhat simply–a pregnant woman, a shady preacher, a couple on a ranch–and ends up somewhere no reader could possibly imagine.2024-reads ebook library-book1 Chloe BaileyAuthor 1 book12

I think maybe I was too tired when reading this because I had absolutely no idea what was going on for half of this book. I mean I was invested but so confused.

I really loved the religious horror, I mean you can never go wrong with a spooky preacher. I pictured the guy from poltergeist!

I d the LGBT aspects of this a lot and really d Annette, I wasn’t sure on some of the other characters. Their personalities were a bit dry. I think that can be the problem with shorter novels, it’s a lot of telling people that they are loving without showing them. We got a bit of it but not enough for me to care about anyone except Slim.

I LOVED the part with the angels and love how they were represented, I loved the cosmic element of this.
I think I am definitely going to read it again at some point, I think maybe I was tired and there was a lot going on so maybe it was my fault that I got a bit lost
Autor del comentario:
=================================