Reviews

“DRILL is a dense yet mystical cosmic horror novel serving as a meta mask for an elaborate magical ritual… Scott R. Jones is a sorcerer and DRILL is him flexing his literary muscles and crafting a narrative that will leave an everlasting imprint on your psyche.” —Grant Wamack, author of Bullet Tooth

“In this unforgettably strange and unique book, told in a narrative voice that’s as vivid and intelligent as it is vulnerable and possibly unhinged, Scott R. Jones has made a fascinating accomplishment. DRILL merges the relatability of everyday life and its anxieties, uncertainties, and grind, with the deeply imaginative metaphysical and weird. Made all the more compelling for its high level of self-awareness and layers of metafiction that make the experience even more mind-boggling than it already is, this work is among the most unabashedly unique reading experiences I’ve had in quite some time. It’s an angry book, depicting the traumatic effects of cults on family dynamics across generation lines, but there’s an undeniable righteousness to the rage, a sympathetic vulnerability, and a desire to either destroy or heal—tied as that is to the novel’s supernatural underbelly and existential stakes. I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything quite like DRILL.” —Cody Lakin, author of The Family Condition

“DRILL is a literary sigil and hyperstitional wave generator in the form of a weird fictional and metafictional autofiction that seeks by its own direct avowal to serve as the author’s Moby Dick by way of Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs, with a pervasive infusion of religious and occult obsession. But even that, with all its spaghetti on the wall, is not sufficient. Probably nothing would be. And maybe that’s the point. DRILL strives to be not a book but the shareable interiority of a specific human being in process of metamorphosing and self-exorcising in the service of the ultimate metaphysical hit job that also happens to be simultaneously and absolutely idiosyncratic, singular, personal. It’s a portable mind meld with Scott R. Jones, a transmissible subjectivity you can plug into at any point. Whether you download it or it uploads you is difficult to say. And maybe that, really, is the point.” —Matt Cardin, author of To Rouse Leviathan and What the Demon Said

“Scott R. Jones is a master of creating fully-realized characters who must navigate worlds where the unimaginably weird has become disturbingly normal for them. In DRILL, Jones immerses us in such a world. His autofictional narrator’s conversational, sometimes confessional stream of consciousness gels into a dark and strange personal history tainted by horrors both otherworldly and all too familiar. DRILL twists family conflict, religious fervor, and ravening cosmic forces into a richly-detailed and compelling novel of loss and vengeance, resonant and deeply felt… DRILL digs into the hunger that motivates everyone—from cult members looking for safety and salvation, to a god that exists as a parasite devouring the humans it infects, to the narrator himself, consumed by loss and thirsting for a revenge that may not satisfy. I highly recommend it.” —Erica Ruppert, author of Imago and Other Transformations

“Having gnawed away the rotten roots of orthodox cosmic horror until the way was cleared for new growth, Jones comes at us in his final form with DRILL… and all that came before seems so quaint before such a pyrotechnic display of batshit insane ideas and intimate, lacerating characterization. This one will leave a hole in your head and heart you could drive a car through.” —Cody Goodfellow, author of Unamerica

“DRILL is like nothing you’ve ever read before. That is, of course, the kind of tired, trite proclamation that gets bandied about complacent critics too hungry or horny for deeper reflection. But you tell me of another book that combines righteous fury, feverish insight, pitch black humour and delirious prose to such compelling effect. I’ll wait. Oh, and I think it might just kill a deity.” —Kenton Hall, musician and filmmaker