This weekend’s reading list brings two very different thrills: Nick Cutter’s The Dorians, where a mysterious “second chance” for the dying turns into body-horror catastrophe, and Lorenzo De Felici’s Red Roots, which starts with a teacher’s nightmare and a kill
A second chance sounds like relief—until it isn’t.
In Nick Cutter’s novel The Dorians. Gallery Books’ story arrives with a premise that’s almost too neat: five people on their deathbeds are interrupted by a mysterious person offering “a second chance at life. ” specifically through an experimental treatment that could restore their youth. The book wastes no time pushing that question into the open—this sort of thing always goes well for everyone involved. right?—and then starts taking the idea apart.
The description turns the promise into something colder. It points to a “high-tech harnessing of an ancient and extraordinary biological agent” with “no conscience. ” driven by “the will to survive.” From there. The Dorians builds momentum the way familiar horror stories do: a bright idea. a confident unlock of something hidden. and then the slow realization that nobody fully understands what they’ve set loose.
The early pages, the reviewer says, carry echoes of Alien: Earth. The story follows a young genius with bad people skills who uncovers the secret to enduring youth. That discovery—treated like progress at first—quickly gives way to both moral catastrophe and literal catastrophe. There’s also a note of pure visceral menace: the book includes “real shudder-inducing body horror. ” and it’s the kind that makes you keep going even while you’re bracing for what’s next.
If The Dorians is the one that dares you to look away, Red Roots is the one that dares you to keep up.
The first two issues of Lorenzo De Felici’s comic series. published by Image Comics. deliver a different kind of shock—one page at a time. The reading experience described here isn’t about building tension in a straight line. It’s about acceleration and confusion that feels deliberate: every time the reader turns a page. they find something new that sparks the reaction. “wtf is going on?!”—and the tone makes it clear it’s “in a good way.”.
The first issue sets the tone by offering no clear map. The reader says they had no idea where the story was taking them at any step of the way. and then the second issue—coming out this week—only intensifies that feeling. The setup is disorienting in its own right: two characters whose lives seem unrelated. One is a teacher who makes a horrifying discovery in her home. The other is a guy on a killing rampage. When those worlds collide, the story doesn’t simplify. It gets stranger.
Read together, these picks land on the same emotional note from opposite directions: one book makes a promise and turns it into a nightmare; the other makes you wait for sense, then quietly removes your certainty instead.
The Dorians Nick Cutter Red Roots Lorenzo De Felici Gallery Books Image Comics body horror experimental treatment comic series weekend reading