First, to be clear: I absolutely loved this story. The body horror and physical deterioration is beautifully executed - the teeth; oh, God, the teeth! - and reminded me, oddly, of Ian McEwan's Cement Garden in the atmosphere of claustrophobia and slowly-insinuating decay it conjured. And the creepy child is, happily, extremely creepy. The Lovecraftian monstrosities pulling the strings and the Prim-esque universe they inhabit are revealed in short, elliptical snippets, rather than through wholesale explanation, which for me gelled perfectly with both the novella format and the deliberately self-contained narrative structure - and kept the door open for Burke to explore them and/or their motivations in future stories. (Future stories I will definitely be reading). Overall: great stuff. Highly recommended.
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