Book Review: Lucifer's Star - Torres Cascado

 3/2/2025 10:50 AM CST

Dear Reader,

I swear to you. I SWEAR. I have not abandoned INLAND EMPIRE (I have, but I’m still committed) nor my Street Fighter and the Art of Craft blog (same as previous case) but they are both going to be long reads and will require a lot of time and effort that I have had to spend on other things.

Namely, I have some quick announcements.

You can get yourself a copy of The Selected Works of Edgar Allan Poe with a foreword by me. It is a production of Exploitation Media. I handpicked all the stories because they meant a lot to me growing up. Picking yourself up a copy will help support me and all my future writing (hopefully, other authors as well).

On that same note, I want to make the second soft announcement of the release of my short story, “Killer Mike and the Blood Slugs – A Night on the Town,” also through Exploitation Media. The official release date is 3/21 and you can pre-order it now, so that it shows up immediately to your digital bookshelf on release date. (Shh, this isn’t the official release announcement, it would be a shame if people got excited too fast, WINK).

This week I review a lovely story that just sort of fell into my lap like a wonderful surprise, “Lucifer’s Star” by Torres Cascado.

 

Though Small, She is Fierce

Review: Lucifer’s Star – Torres Cascado

My Verdict: Short and Sweet. Vert Impactful.

A welcome surprise.

This will be the first book that I have reviewed that I did not find in Books of Horror. This one found me. Cascado and I crossed paths through Threads, and one day not too long ago, I opened my Instagram DMs to see a message from Torres Cascado, telling me that as part of his venture into the English-speaking market he would like to give me a story for free and see if I liked it. Cascado also emphasized that it was a 10-minute read. There was a link, but always being suspicious of strange links, I did not click it, and instead looked the book up. Sure enough, it was on that big online platform, and sure enough, it was free.

I picked it up, let him know, but told him it might be a while before I get to it because my reading list is long. He emphasized again that I could read the story in 10 minutes.

I don’t remember exactly when, but I was burnt out on trying to do all this writing shit, and I decided to force myself to take a break and do some reading. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to make myself take a LONG break, so I only dabbled in a couple of chapters of some books I am in the middle of, when I saw “Lucifer’s Star” on my digital bookshelf and I said, “It’s a 10-minute read, why not?” I had no real expectations going in, except maybe that the story would be nebulous and poetic. I was correct about it being poetic, but the story is not nebulous, it is direct and effective.

How can I categorize this story. The only genre that fits is horror, though it is not a traditional horror story. Perhaps I would categorize this story as Emotional Cosmic Horror. There are recognizable elements of a horror story: a myth and mystery, protagonists dedicated to glimpsing the unknown, a lurking villain, and even a moment that made me squirm in awful anticipation, but these elements are not ultimately used to scare you. Instead, Cascado uses these elements to destroy you emotionally. This is not the kind of bleak emotional destruction that some horror veers toward, this is the kind of emotional destruction that filled me up with so much love and hope, on a grand scale, that I nearly burst.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot because “Lucifer’s Star” is indeed fairly short and pretty straightforward. Also, as of me writing this, the story is still free on that huge online platform, so I don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone who is already interested by what they have heard.

To paint a little bit more of a picture, I will say that the story centers around a myth, a mountain, a celebration with a forgotten meaning, and a handful of protagonists (including a father and his small daughter) who have dedicated themselves to something that others think them crazy for.

The only weakness I found while reading it was that the one moment of horror, though effective, is short lived and resolved too quickly. With a minor adjustment to the structure of the story, this could have been drawn out and had me terrified, making the emotional payoff that much sweeter. Now, with that being said, I am not sure I could have taken it if the emotional payoff was any stronger. I’m a bit of a softy though.

I am going to repeat. “Lucifer’s Star” is currently free while I am writing this, it is an effective and immersive story that left me teary eyed both times I’ve read it, and you can read it in 10 minutes. Grab yourself a copy and you will not regret it. If you’re anything like me, you might need a tissue.