The first line of Hailey Piper's Twitter bio is "Make horror gay AF," so I suspected that she was an author I could vibe with based on our shared sensibilities alone. Even so, I ended up enjoying The Worm and His Kings more than I expected to from the first disorienting chapter. Piper drops you into Monique's search for her missing girlfriend with little context, but as you read on, you catch glimpses of backstory and lore that weave cohesion out of the weirdness, only to unravel everything in a breathtaking conclusion.