TL;DR: A sweaty, blasphemous queer religious-horror novella where a sadistic small-town pastor and the (maybe literal) Antichrist keep trying to fuck their way out of destiny, and the universe keeps sliding a knife between their ribs anyway. It lands as a nasty little fever-dream with real teeth, even if the bigger apocalypse machinery sometimes revs louder than it pays off.

M. Jane Worma is a NYC-based queer horror writer whose public vibe is basically “gross queer horror, come get your communion wafer dipped in motor oil.” Of Beasts is a debut that plants a flag in the “romance as damnation” corner of the genre, doing the CLASH Books thing where the feelings are intense, the bodies are fragile, and God is either absent or actively being a messy bitch.

Dante is a Protestant kid in deep Texas who is already living as a secret, and Jude is the town’s pastor, older, magnetic, and cruel in that controlled, righteous way that makes you want to throw a hymnal at him. They’re together in private, feral, taboo, and mutually addicted. Then the dreams start. Not metaphor dreams. End-of-days, voice-from-beyond, “go to Jerusalem” dreams. Jude hears the command that he will slay Dante, the Beast will rise with a mortal wound, and the world will bend. Dante wants out. Jude wants out. The problem is the prophecy does not give a shit what either of them wants.

Worma commits hard to the intimacy as horror angle. This is not a “spooky church, spooky Latin” book where the priest stays pure and the devil stays symbolic. It’s a book where theology is foreplay, guilt is a kink, and love looks a lot like a hand closing around your throat because it is easier than admitting you’re terrified. The relationship is the engine, and it’s gross in the way it should be gross, not for shock points but because power and desire and secrecy do that to people. The whole thing has this rancid sweetness to it, like you’re licking honey off a razor blade and telling yourself it counts as dinner.

The writing is lean, hot, and dream-slick. Worma writes bodies like they’re both sacred and disposable, which is exactly the right frequency for this story. The POV stays close enough that the reader gets trapped inside the characters’ spirals, the kind where you keep making the same choice because the alternative would require a self-respect you do not have in stock. Pacing is mostly sharp, with scenes that snap from tender to violent without warning, which mirrors the relationship and the prophecy. Where it wobbles a bit is the scale. When the story gestures at “the world is watching” and “this is a phenomenon,” it occasionally feels like the camera pulls back too far for a novella built to thrive in claustrophobia. The best parts are the small ones: the private bargains, the fear sitting in the corner of the room like a third person, the sense that the characters are being herded.

The thematic punch is basically: can you choose anything when your whole life has been shaped by other people’s rules, other people’s hunger, other people’s God. There’s a thick thread of shame and longing, but also a quieter one about agency, especially for Dante, who reads as someone who has been taught that his body exists for someone else’s use, whether that “someone” is a man, a church, or fate itself. The horror machinery turns prophecy into an abusive relationship. The aftertaste is cold stone and stale breath, the question of whether escaping the end of the world is still a kind of doom if the only escape hatch is disappearing.

Of Beasts sits comfortably in the recent wave of queer horror that refuses to behave, where love stories are allowed to be sick, complicated, and morally ugly without needing to be “redeemed” for polite company. As a debut, it’s confident about tone and taboo, and even when it doesn’t fully cash every big-apocalypse check it writes, it absolutely delivers on atmosphere and emotional damage.

A grimy, compelling little hymn to doomed desire that nails the intimate horror and stumbles only when it tries to be bigger than its own tight, mean chamber.

Of Beasts by M. Jane Worma,
published February 10, 2026 by CLASH Books.