For only thirty-one pages, Communion manages to cram a surprising amount into its story. Lil Blackwyn is grieving her mother, looking for God, hunting for something else entirely, and walking straight into a basilica where something deeply wrong is waiting for her. I liked the concept and the religious horror elements a lot, but I finished this wishing I’d gotten more time with basically everything.

Lil is already a lost and angry person when she arrives at a New York basilica that's been repurposed by an unusual contemporary Christian group. She's looking for some kind of meaning after her mother's death, but she's also there with a purpose. And what she discovers inside the church ends up being far more sinister than the other churchgoers could imagine.

The religious setting was easily my favorite part. There’s something about putting supernatural horror inside a place built around faith, salvation, death, and resurrection that just works for me. Add Lil's grief and desire for revenge, and there were a lot of ideas here that I wanted to dig into.

My biggest issue was simply the length.

Everything moves really quickly. At under 10,000 words, there isn't much room to sit with Lil's grief, learn about this strange religious group, or really sink into the horror before the story has to move forward. I understood what was happening, but I wanted more time to actually feel it.

Knowing this is a prequel to The Deusphage Series makes that make a little more sense. It feels like we're getting our first glimpse of Lil and this world rather than a story meant to explain absolutely everything. And honestly, it did its job there because I finished curious about what happens next.