Book Review: The Croning by Laird Barron (2012)

The Croning features one of the most memorable opening chapters I’ve encountered in recent memory: a grimly whimsical (and slightly horny) retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, in which a royal spy tracks the fabled bargainer to a hinterland and finds that his quarry serves an esoteric deity called Old Leech. The strange god is a primordial cosmic entity who exists in some unknowable outer darkness but regularly makes their presence felt on Earth. The spy returns to his queen with the dwarf’s name, but when the fated day comes round, the hard-won knowledge has no effect, and the imp takes the queen’s child and then brings her and the spy to a bloody end.