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Apocrypha Sequence: Deviance by [Shane Jiraiya Cummings]

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Shane Jiraiya Cummings

Apocrypha Sequence: Deviance Kindle Edition

by Shane Jiraiya Cummings (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

39 ratings

Book 1 of 5: Apocrypha Sequence

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Explore the darkness within the human heart ... Set foot inside the morgue at Stratton Memorial Hospital, a place where the scales of life and death have tipped in the wrong direction, and wander the city beyond, where fantasies of sex, drugs, and violence can become frighteningly real. Redemption may be found under a scalpel, in an alley, or sometimes, by embracing the darkest corner of the soul.

The Apocrypha Sequence is a series of dark fantasy collections with interwoven themes and interconnected stories from Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Australia's master of the macabre. Also in the Apocrypha Sequence: Divinity, Inferno, and Insanity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is must read stuff and puts the Author in the same league as Brit wunderkind Clive Barker circa Books of Blood. --Jeff Ritchie, ScaryMinds

About the Author

Shane Jiraiya Cummings has been acknowledged as "one of Australia's leading voices in dark fantasy". Shane is the author of the forthcoming Yokai Wars series (Circle of Tears, Clockwork Legion, and Blight of the Underworld) and the dark fiction books The Abandonment of Grace and Everything After, Shards, the Apocrypha Sequence (Deviance, Divinity, Insanity, and Inferno), and the Ravenous Gods cycle (Requiem for the Burning God and Dreams of Destruction). He has won the Australian Shadows Award and two Ditmar Awards, and he has been nominated for more than twenty other major awards, including Spain's Premios Ignotus.
Shane is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and former Vice President of the Australian Horror Writers Association. When he is not writing, Shane is an editor and journalist by day. By night (and on weekends), he can be found indulging in hobbies such as playing the guitar, photography, sword fighting, and testing the limits of his cruiser motorcycle.
In his youth, Shane was trained in the deadly arts of the ninja, and the name Jiraiya (lit. "Young Thunder", after the legendary ninja Jiraiya) was bestowed upon him by his sensei.
Shane was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. He lived for many years in Perth, Western Australia, and Wellington, New Zealand, but he has returned to his old home town to revisit the ghosts of his past.
More information on Shane (including his free fiction) can be found online at jiraiya.com.au.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004JU0ZJS
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 18, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1113 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 68 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #3,581,656 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #8,663 in Horror Short Stories
- #54,734 in Single Authors Short Stories
- #97,813 in Short Stories (Books)

Customer Reviews:
39 ratings

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Shane Jiraiya Cummings

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Shane Jiraiya Cummings has been acknowledged as "one of Australia's leading voices in dark fantasy". Shane is the author of the forthcoming Yokai Wars series (Circle of Tears, Clockwork Legion, and Blight of the Underworld) and the dark fiction books The Abandonment of Grace and Everything After, Shards, the Apocrypha Sequence (Deviance, Divinity, Insanity, and Inferno), and the Ravenous Gods cycle (Requiem for the Burning God and Dreams of Destruction). He has won the Australian Shadows Award and two Ditmar Awards, and he has been nominated for more than twenty other major awards, including Spain's Premios Ignotus.

Shane is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and former Vice President of the Australian Horror Writers Association. When he is not writing, Shane is an editor and journalist by day. By night (and on weekends), he can be found indulging in hobbies such as playing the guitar, photography, sword fighting, and testing the limits of his cruiser motorcycle.

In his youth, Shane was trained in the deadly arts of the ninja, and the name Jiraiya (lit. "Young Thunder", after the legendary ninja Jiraiya) was bestowed upon him by his sensei.

Shane was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. He lived for many years in Perth, Western Australia, and Wellington, New Zealand, but he has returned to his old home town to revisit the ghosts of his past.

More information on Shane (including his free fiction) can be found online at www.jiraiya.com.au.

Customer reviews

5 star		45%
4 star		23%
3 star		17%
2 star		10%
1 star		5%

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JoanneG

Excellent Short Story Collection by a very good writer

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2015

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This is the first time I read anything from this author. It won't be the last because these are very well-written stories. They are chilling at times, somewhat humorous at others, and the collection of stories works well together.

The first story is about a deaf man who can hear things no one else can.
The second and third stories are set in a hospital morgue and these are the ones that are strange and vaguely humorous. The first is about an autopsy on a woman who may not be dead and may not be human. The second is about two dead men, stuck in the morgue with their corpses, wondering what comes next.

The fourth and fifth stories are basically about good vs. evil. The fourth story is set in a seedy part of town, complete with prostitutes, drug addicts, and people struggling to survive. There are a series of murders and then a stand-off between the evil murderer and the good man, who may be more than a man.

The fifth story takes place during a plague that is wiping out humans. It is a terrible disease and described vividly. One man discovers what it takes to survive. This again is a story about the struggle between good and evil with a slight twist at the end about the nature of man.

A lot of the reviews have said the fourth story is their least favorite. I think I liked it the most because the characters were well-developed and you can feel the desperation in their struggles to survive. Evil turns out to be represented by the ugly refuse of the desperate, while Good is represented by a man who tries to save the people on the streets by taking the fight to Evil. The good man's identity is not known, but there are hints as to who he may be.

Excellent stories and an easy-to-read writing style by someone who is a very good writer make this a collection of stories that is definitely worth the time to read.

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One Bad Story Nearly Spoils the Collection

Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2014

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Short story collections often offer readers a mixed bag... some good, some fair, some poor. Most collections can survive a clunker, but when the longest (by far) story in the collection is the weakest (by far), it leaves readers with a bad taste.

"Deviance" by Shane Jiraiya Cummings is a collection of five short horror stories, which, according to the author "explore the darkness within the human heart," Three of them are set in the same hospital, a fact that wouldn't be apparent to most readers, unless they believe there's only one hospital in the world where creepy, supernatural events take place. Be that as it may, the hospital stories are the best ones in the collection.

The first story, "Hear No Evil," is the best in the book and reminded me of a good "Tales from the Crypt" or "Alfred Hitchcock" episode. A man goes temporarily deaf following a workplace accident, but he starts to hear a scream no one else can. The story establishes its atmosphere quite well, capturing the man's isolation and sense of helplessness, and there's a good surprise ending payoff.

"The Cutting Room" appeared in a short story collection by Scott Nicholson, but it also evokes some good imagery and involves some supernatural images. This story is set in the hospital morgue, as the local medical examiner and his novice assistant start to prepare for an autopsy and gradually realize their "corpse" is pretty active for a dead woman. The mood is more tongue in cheek in this one, but, as with "Hear No Evil," Cummings does a good job of setting up the story's atmosphere (although a story set in a basement morgue is creepy enough anyway).

"Interlude, with Lavender" is an exploration of what happens after we die. Unlike the other stories in the collection, this short short story is not a horror story, per se, but rather the author's attempt at showing his vision of the afterlife, sad but slightly sweet and wistful. It's thoughtfully written, and the tone stands in distinct contrast to the other stories.

"Dark Heart Alley" is a novelette that's considerably longer than the other stories in this book. It's also considerably weaker. Set in Las Vegas, "Alley" describes one harrowing night on the streets for a young prostitute, Miri. She's just trying to get through the night safely, a task which has recently been made considerably more difficult by a serial killer who's been dubbed Mr. X, who has been killing street people in rather gruesome fashion. Obviously, there's plenty of potential here, and Cummings attempts to depict the all-too-real horrors of life on the streets for the hookers, junkies, mentally disturbed, and others who wind up there. His attempts at describing real life horror fall completely apart when the killer is revealed to be what may be the silliest supernatural creature ever invented by a horror writer. The ensuing battle between good and evil forces will leave readers scratching their heads trying to figure out just what happened.

The last story, "Wrack" is, almost of necessity, an improvement over "Alley," but it provides a different view of life in the aftermath of a horrible, plague-like illness. The disease, called the wrack, kills large chunks of the population in a rather horrific fashion, but the story limits itself to the nameless narrator, whose wife or girlfriend (the story doesn't specify) is stricken. As she weakens, we learn more about the narrator's personality and history and that a global catastrophe doesn't change basic human nature, good or bad.

All in all, there are three good stories, one bad one ("Dark Heart Alley") and one excellent one ("Hear No Evil"). If the stories were all of equal length, I'd give the collection four stars, easily. However, "Dark Heart Alley" is substantially longer than the others, and rather more difficult to get through for readers. If the book is read at one setting, as many will do with a book this short, "Alley" winds up destroying a good bit of the mood the author had built up previously. I still like Cummings' work and the collection, but I wish he had consigned "Dark Heart Alley" to "rejected story alley."

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Apocrypha Sequence: Deviance Kindle Edition

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Shane Jiraiya Cummings

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