FULL IMMERSION by Gemma Amor

Gemma Amor has been crafting horror short stories for quite a while and published some of her longer works independently, including the creepy, excellent White Pines. Full Immersion is Gemma Amor’s first “traditionally published” novel and is a banger of a story. It is a very personal novel about mental health, guilt, trauma, childbirth, and motherhood.

What can you do when you’re reeling from trauma but you’ve tried it all? Counselling, yoga, pills, meditation, art, healthy living… none of it makes a dent. What’s left?

Magpie is out of ideas. She’s desperate enough to try anything. Just when she thinks her life can get no worse, she discovers herself, or rather her own dead body, partially buried in the mudbank of a river. A man stands by, a familiar stranger. What does he want? And why can’t she remember getting here? Why can’t she remember anything?

Unbeknownst to her, two pairs of eyes watch from behind an observation screen, in a room filled with computers and sensors. An experiment is unfolding, but is Magpie the subject, or practitioner? Reality becomes a slippery concept. And beyond the glass is something worse still: a hint of an outline, shaped in darkness…

Magpie realizes all too soon that her journey has transformed from healing to survival. She must become the hunter rather than the hunted, with her missing memories the prey.

In turn brutal, beautiful and absolutely terrifying, Full Immersion is the latest speculative horror from Gemma Amor.

A woman, Magpie, finds her own dead body and a vaguely familiar man at the location of her “death.” Her guide is a “friend” as they enter what she thought was her home, but turns out to be a gallery with markers or symbols her life, each of which unleashes a set of difficult memories. This “friend” is actually a Psych in this environment. Magpie volunteered for a form of therapy to help ease the suffering postnatal depression and experiencing suicidal thoughts. In this therapy, she is being observed by the University of Bristol’s “Department of Virtual and Experimental Therapy.” She is suspended and experiencing a simulated reality. They are able to see her reactions, as well as a glimpse of what she’s seeing, and are in direct communication with the “Psych” who is guiding her and drawing out the painful memories.

The novel is told in parallel narratives; the aforementioned simulated reality with Magpie and the “real world” where two members of Bristol’s department are observing her. We get some great characterization of Magpie, obviously as she is the start of the book. However, there are some glimpses of the observers, one is clearly in a higher position of power, directing the therapeutic exercise. The first thing that came to mind with this dual narrative dynamic was the recent classic horror movie, Cabin in the Woods. Magpie’s observers aren’t quite as cynical and at least seem to be there to help Magpie rather than actively trying to kill her. We see people observing/controlling a simulated environment and people living in that simulated environment.

Amor pours her soul into this novel, it is raw, full of emotion, and incredibly honest. That feeling comes through in every word of the novel, even outside of the forward. There’s a science fictional aspect to the novel with the Virtual Reality element, but a mounting dread both in the simulated environment and with the observers has the novel creeping and creeping towards horror. The bouncing between the observers and what Magpie was experiencing in VR made for a very gripping read, building tension on both sides that made it tough to set the book down.

That creeping dread also unfolds more layers of the story, some nuance in the beginning of the novel that leads to potent revelations as the novel draws to its conclusion. I also found some parallels to portions of James Wan’s divisive 2021 film Malignant. What makes some of the novel so horrific is just how real of a place from which the emotion arose. I thought the conclusion a little more open ended than I would have liked, but it made sense based on the events that preceded that finale.

Full Immersion is an incredibly potent novel that wraps you up in its emotion and conflict and isn’t easy to experience. Difficult themes of depression and suicide are on full display and Amor’s storytelling ability and ability to conjure powerful imagery builds a great deal of empathy into Magpie.

This a novel that will stay with you.

Recommended

Trade Paperback | 351 pages (with glossary)
Angry Robot Books | September 2022
Author Website: https://gemmaamorauthor.com/ Twitter: @ManyLittleWords
Review copy courtesy of the publisher