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Book: “Abyss” by Nicholas Binge
Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, May 2026
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: Severance meets Lovecraft in this surreal tale of corporate horror and existential dread.
Joe always had potential, but he doesn’t expect much, and he hopes that his new job as an admin assistant won’t expect much of him. But when he enters the offices of Ponos—a company he’s never heard of and knows nothing about—he discovers that potential is exactly what they want from him.
A feverish dive into the inhumanity of both late-stage capitalism and the crippling anxieties of modern life, Abyss adds a new level of meaning to ‘wage slave’.
Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!
I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of novellas lately, or at least more than usual. Sometimes novellas can worry me in the same way short stories do in that it can be trickier to convey a story with a more limited page count, but it obviously can be done, and I’ve had a pretty good run of novellas as of late. “Abyss” by Nicholas Binge is the most recent one, and I was able to get through it in about a day. Not only because of the length, but how fast paced it flowed as a horror story about not only dimensional monstrosities, but also the monstrosities of corporate culture and late stage capitalistic greed and exploitation.
I’ve made mention before that cosmic horror isn’t exactly a sub-genre that I delve into often, but “Abyss”‘s hook was too good to pass up, and as a Lovecraftian kinda tale it is pretty good at hitting the components that are expected. There is a slow building unease as our protagonist Joe starts his new menial job at Ponos, a corporation he isn’t familiar with but will pay the bills. From the jump there are strange things about it, like the complete lack of people outside of a few oddballs he stumbles upon, an over enthusiastic A.I. ‘assistant’ who keeps messaging him in stranger and stranger ways, and the skittishness of his higher up. As the job goes on the tension rises, as the reader follows Joe into creepier and creepier situations until he his fully confronted with a cosmic threat that is not only running this lucrative and powerful company, but is possibly using the blood of the workers to fuel itself. I like the high strangeness of the being and the creepiness of the peons that are trying to please it, with a solid backstory to why it is here contrasted with a stodgy and boring but also threatening corporate setting. I know “Severance” is how people are comparing, but I kept thinking about “Office Space” as a horror story, and that’s a good thing.
The true beating heart of this novella, though, are the satirical elements and messages that Binge puts forth. The main metaphor at hand is that the cosmic being that is being fed at Ponos has been put in place by the wealthy to maintain their power and to suck as much from the workers as possible all in the name of profits, and while that’s certainly a cathartic and relevant bit of satire, it’s kind of an obvious one when it comes to a story like this. For wholly understandable reasons we’ve seen a lot of commentary about the uber wealthy and their money hoarding within horror stories by sacrificing and downplaying the working class, so much so that it’s a little obvious. But there is a whole other point in “Abyss” that is connected to Joe and the story at hand, and that is the concept of the isolation and ennui of modern worker life, especially post pandemic. We live in a time where technology should theoretically make it all the easier to connect thanks to social media and varied means of communication. But Joe’s life is incredibly isolated, as he goes to work, goes home and dicks around online, and that’s about it. He isn’t really in touch with his mother and doesn’t seem to have any in real life friends. One of the main defenses against the horror and ruin at the hands of the cosmic in this is the idea of connection, with tech making it harder to connect under guise of bringing people together. That, to me, was a far more interesting avenue to explore because it felt so emotionally resonant.
“Abyss” is sure to please those who like cosmic horror as well as satirical observances of modern late stage capitalism. It’s a fast read, so consider adding it to your list!
Rating 7: The satire is a little on the nose but the message at the heart resonates. Add in some fun cosmic horror and a nefarious corporate setting and you have an enjoyable horror novella.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Abyss” is included on the Goodreads list “Horror to Look Forward to in 2026”.
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