Craig manages to create a staggering array of different atmospheres, settings, and tones in the thirteen stories, drawing on myriad tales, cultures and tropes in quick succession, but never losing the specificity of each tale.

A lot of stories here as well as being surreal fantasy horror pieces involve resolutions of this kind of inner conflict by the protagonist. My favourite story was definitely the last one but I still just didn't connect as much as I wanted to.

Raw Pork and Opium was a story in here I found particularly interesting, because I've never seen the format used before, and I'm all about experimental stuff, and collections with a range of styles in. It's fantasy/light horror with a liberal sprinkling of trauma that makes some of the stories highly arresting, some of them sweet and some of them just very good fun. effortlessly erudite (the range of reference points is dazzling) and shot through with occasional shafts of wisdom, albeit of a downbeat kind: "love is just handing someone a piece of yourself you'll never get back and waiting for them to break it". Craig takes figures and tropes familiar to the horror genre – the vampire, the undead bride, the haunted book in a dusty library, demons, possession, haunted houses – but skilfully integrates them with the sensibilities and concerns of readers today. Craig is clever about subverting expectations — I went back a couple of times and read the story again after finishing it just to see how the tale ended up where it did.

In some way in a lot of these stories there's this element of characters thinking they're in control, when they're absolutely not, and they're totally in denial and there's a refusal to accept powerlessness or lack of authority. This is really only for those who think horror is based on apathy, alcohol and drug abuse, sex (including kinky stuff) and a general dislike for any and all people, because aside from the disdain most characters feel for their fellow characters and the horrifying sex scenes, this isn't scary. She squeezes into the dark space, pursuing a dot of light on the other side of the wall, beyond which, the neighbour’s party thrives. She holds her breath and tries to squeeze further along, her left arm outstretched towards the light, such as it is, a glow from the kitchen”.

You have this story telling you about the demon's past, their relationship with their friends, their guilt over lying and presenting themselves as a human to people they've genuinely come to like, and then talks about shame as a negative emotion. In the thirteen darkly audacious stories of Parallel Hells we meet a golem, made of clay, learning that its powers far exceed its Creator's expectations; a ruined mansion which grants the secret wishes of a group of revellers and a notorious murderer who discovers her Viking husband is not what he seems. It was what I had once loved about the past, the intimacy of studying other human beings and uncovering what had long remained secret, without any messy interaction. Alongside his work at Insider, he is also studying for his MA in Literature and the Arts at the University of Oxford. Each one enigmatic and strange so much so that I sometimes had difficulty understanding exactly what was going on.