The Book of Lost Innocence
Glenn Taylor
And Then What Happened (2025)
ISBN: 978-1069571106
Reviewed by Demetria Head for Reader Views (11/2025)
The Book of Lost Innocence by Glenn Taylor is a compilation of nine dark fantasy tales with a mixture of myth, horror, and tragic romance. These tales all have some form of shattered ideals and corrupted dreams, and each unfolds like a fable. For example, “The Tale of Jack” talks about a man who is “neither too nimble nor particularly quick” but a simple man. He started walking one day and continued until he ended up on a boat departing the continent. He never stopped walking or traversing other countries until one day, when he ended up in a marketplace. He sees a tiny, dark doorway in the corner and a man beckoning for him in front of it. Along the way, he bumps into a woman who warns him that nothing but bad magic comes from that shop. She even tried to seduce him with something else she thought might interest him, but to no avail. His curiosity about the dark shop was too strong.
The narrative shapes so beautifully, and it’s so interesting that you can’t stop reading. As the story moves along, the man asks him to tell him what he desires, and he says it’s to be rich. He gives him a trinket, and Jack sets sail on a ship that leads him across a desert. He runs into a man who recognizes the trinket and bows to him, thinking he’s the lost king of Alethea. He follows the man to the palace, where he shows the shiny metal, and everyone chants, “All hail the return of the king!” As the years pass, the old man who owned the dark shop arrives at the palace to make sure Jack keeps his end of the bargain. The old man did not want Jack’s riches; he came for something quite more valuable. I think readers will drop their jaws when they realize the ending.
Across the anthology, Taylor has created some very distinctive atmospheres. One tale, “Dread,” is about a man named Solomon and a woman named Mary who climbs all the way up the hill to see the thing that her elders told her and others about when they were children. She wonders if this is truly the thing that haunts their dreams down below in the village. But she climbs all the way up anyway. They begin talking about destiny, and Mary tells Solomon it’s when the inevitable happens. She then proceeds to tell him her destiny is to see him dead, and commences stabbing him. But what Mary did caused a disaster for her village down below. I enjoyed reading all of these tales because they each had tragic but valuable lessons to be learned. It reminded me of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series and The Twilight Zone.
To briefly tease readers with one more of the stories in The Book of Lost Innocence and what they can expect, there is one titled “Bad Love.” I am confident that readers will enjoy “Bad Love,” where the Queen of the Damned is so tyrannical. She’s spent so long slaughtering villages and conquering their lands, but she was still overcome with an aching emptiness. This magic pool shows her a future where she is still revered and powerful, but it also shows her a simple man eating, and his name is Xamathus. The Queen calls for him specifically after he barely survived his village being attacked. The Queen makes a deal with him after capturing him and his friends, but not before killing some of his friends in an effort to break him. But readers will be surprised how a deal can change people in the blink of an eye. This was actually one of my favorites, but all of the stories in this compilation are worth reading.
Taylor writes in a poetic and cinematic fashion, and both are done with great success. Every tale moves moderately but lingers at the right emotional choke points. Each tale escalates with deliberate conclusions that are inevitable. They build dread and tension before landing with a shocking and tragic ending. But it’s all earned. The author sets the tone in each story with vivid details of the main characters and their environments. Readers are immersed in the landscapes of hills and intricate palaces.
Readers who appreciate the gothic sorrow of Claire Legrand’s Furyborn or the dark, mythic style in Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun will find Taylor’s collection a worthy companion. The Book of Lost Innocence explores the cost of power, the fragile human, and the hunger for transcendence. All nine fairy tales have some emotional undertones, but they have gone feral. The Book of Lost Innocence by Glenn Taylor is for readers who crave fantasy with emotions, and that is mythic and has some moral teeth. It is a masterpiece.