FULL IMMERSION by Gemma Amor – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Full Immersion by Gemma Amor
Published by Angry Robot on September 13 2022
Genres: Adult, Horror
Pages: 351
Format: Finished paperback
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Full of raw emotion and tough themes, Full Immersion combines mystery and horror as a a woman attempts to heal from personal trauma.

Full Immersion surprised me in many ways and ended up being one of the most unique books I’ve ever read. Gemma Amor’s latest novel is an exploration of some very dark themes, including postnatal (postpartum) depression and suicide ideation. Based on the author’s personal experiences, the reader is taken on a journey of self exploration and discovery alongside a woman named Magpie, who has suffered a traumatic event and desperately needs help in order to recover.

The story opens with a mystery. A woman is walking by a river under a suspension bridge when she comes across a dead body. When she turns the body over to inspect it, she’s shocked to discover she’s looking at herself. How can this be? Who is the woman and what is she doing here? She can’t remember her own name or how she came to be beside the river.

Next we are introduced to two workers in a control room, a man named Evans and a woman simply called the Boss, surrounded by computer monitors and machines. They are observing a woman in a glass room who is suspended from the ceiling, held in a cradle of nets and pulleys and wearing a VR helmet. Soon it becomes clear that the woman in the room and the woman by the river are one and the same. Magpie has reached out to the Department of Virtual and Experimental Therapy for help. It is her last chance at recovery, as she’s been depressed and suicidal but cannot remember why. Nothing else has worked, and she fears if this experimental therapy can’t help her, she might as well jump off the Bristol suspension bridge.

Soon after Magpie discovers her own body, a stranger appears next to her. Something about him feels familiar, but she doesn’t know who he is. In fact, the man—who works for the Department and is called the Psych—is there to help her, and together they will embark on a journey, at the end of which Magpie will understand everything.

But there is a dark force stalking them, an entity called Stickman who is trying to stop Magpie from completing her quest. And when the virtual world starts to bleed into the real world, the observers in the control room find themselves faced with a horrifying new reality.

Wow, what a wild ride this book was! Gemma Amor is such a talented writer. Her prose is sharp and beautiful, her descriptions and metaphors are unusual and vividly descriptive. At one point in the story, Magpie recalls a memory of shopping for a wedding dress. With very few words, you can tell that this was a stressful experience for her, as one dress takes on monster-like qualities:

“The woman heaved it up onto a padded hanger on the wall, and let it go with an audible groan. It tumbled down like a waterfall, spilling its lacy entrails all over the floor. I’d stared at the enormous thing.”

I also loved the way the story switches back and forth between Magpie and the folks in the control room, who give a very different perspective to the story. We know that Magpie is in a virtual reality program and that her physical body is elsewhere, and the author does such a good job of making these sections feel so different from each other. Evans and the Boss are the mundane characters, grounding the story in reality. They supply some much needed comic relief as well, with plenty of back and forth banter as they go about the dull routine of monitoring Magpie’s vital signs and taking care of her physical body while she’s inside the program. But that routine starts to show cracks as things begin to go wrong—very wrong. I loved the feeling of dread as the two begin to realize that their carefully controlled session has gone off the rails. When the real horror strikes, it’s actually pretty shocking!

Magpie’s story is equally horrific. She truly believes she has committed a terrible act of violence in the past and that she’s being punished for it. Her despair is real, and it’s heartbreaking. Luckily she has the Psych guiding her and trying to show her the truth, but getting to the truth isn’t easy. There is one graphic scene in particular involving childbirth that was very hard to read, so do beware if that’s a trigger for you, but I thought it was such a great combination of real life horror with a touch of otherworldly terror thrown in for good measure.

Despite the moments of horror and the observations and antics of the Boss and Evans, Full Immersion reads like a very long therapy session. The reader is fully immersed (sorry!) in Magpie’s journey and experiences her emotions right along with her. What I mean to say is that this book is an intense experience, and I felt as if I were going through therapy. Magpie’s emotional state is beautifully and agonizingly depicted, and at times uncomfortable as she works her way through various memories and realizations. It takes a long time for Magpie to finally have a breakthrough, though, and at times the story dragged a bit during these therapy sessions. Although obviously in real life, this is the way therapy works.

But this is only a small complaint in an otherwise stellar story. I was trying to imagine how Amor might wrap things up, and I didn’t even come close to guessing! The ending is rather ambiguous, and I was left wondering what parts of the story were actually real, but I ultimately loved the way the story wrapped up. Sometimes I need firm answers in my fiction, but in this case I thought the story was stronger because the author doesn’t spell everything out for the reader. This is my first Gemma Amor book, but it won’t be my last. Readers who appreciate unique fiction and emotional themes will love this book too.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.