With only a few weeks left in the year, 2025 still managed to thrill me with a brilliantly strange and unexpected sapphic sci fi novella: Landlocked in Foreign Skin by Drew Huff. Thus, my novella kick continues. What can I say? Things have been hard lately and sometimes you just need a confection, oozing and tentacled as it may be.
Released in January 2025 by Huff themselves, Landlocked in Foreign Skin put this author on my radar. I’m shocked that they’re unagented—per their website, which I did creep upon. Quite frankly, that’s a small crime. I was poleaxed by this weird, horrific work and feel compelled to spread it to others. You’re welcome.
The novella contains several types of horror: deep sea, alien, space, body, homophobic future end stage capitalism, and they all collide in a disgusting, scintillant work of beauty that crackles with originality. From the very first page all the way to the end, I was mouthing, “What the fuck am I reading?” in the best way possible. Reader, I was transfixed. Huff built a convincing world within the scant pages of the novella. And the body horror? Perfection.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, be sure to read the many trigger warnings; there’s enough there to disturb anyone.
In a tale reminiscent of the selkie myth, told from a delightfully alien point of view—think the titular thing from The Thing—the narrator’s skin has been ripped from her body and stolen away by Dame Isobel, the wealthy, tortured scion of galactic nobility.
Humans call the narrator’s species Fishermen, as they exist in the deep waters of radiation-ridden Europa. Without her skin, encoded with millions of genetic memories, the Fisherman cannot change her form. She’s trapped with the mad Dame Isobel.
Nothing is as it seems, and disturbing mysteries begin unfolding. The novella holds its tension and breathless pace throughout, changing forms a few times with its twists and surprises. There was a brief moment of disorientation as secrets came to light, but I held on, and it was so worth it.
Like every good horror story, the worst part is never the gore or the “monsters;” it’s always the people. I won’t say more, because the rest is on you to uncover.
This one stung and got under my skin, no pun intended. It ain’t perfect, but it’s new. Fresh. Exciting. It told me a story that hurt, that convinced, that intrigued, and most of all, that bled. It cracked something loose in me and it’s going to haunt me for a while.
Look, I know my book reviews are mostly vibes-based, but you have to trust me on this one. If you’re into Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea and want something less opaquely literary and more vicious, or you’re looking for something Andrew Joseph White adjacent, this is the novella you want.
It is not a happy book by any means, but it is visceral and gruesome, and exactly the kind of cathartic mess that might be helpful to you in late stage capitalism. Read it when you can handle something bloody and brutal, something where no one ends up with a happily ever after.
Content warnings: Self injury, suicide attempt, suicidal ideation, homophobia, violence, body horror, gore, LGBTQ conversion therapy, brain damage, profane language, explicit sexual content
Susanne Salehi (she/they) is an Iranian American writer and editor who writes queer heroes. They are a 2025-2026 Poetry Coalition fellow and a 2025 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellow. Her work appears in Fruitslice, Frazzled Lit, and the anthologies By Her Sword and Nearest and Dearest (forthcoming). They hold an MA in medical anthropology and an MFA from Emerson College. She also collects silly tattoos—Frog & Toad and the screaming possum are her favs. More at www.susannesalehi.com.
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