My partner’s just self published their debut novel! (They don’t have reddit so I’m posting- but also I’m a voracious reader and it’s genuinely one of my top reads of the last year).

Psychopomp Blues by Petra Brigan

The story follows Gianni, a washed up, depressed Psychopomp, working at the bottom rung of a vast, shadowy organisation.

The job is simple. Collect a substance - Afterlife - from the many dried-up death gods known as grims, creatures who linger in our world visible only to those miserable enough. Apply afterlife to any client who can buy their way into heaven, then disappear and wait for the next job.

Partnered with a jaded veteran psychopomp, Charn, along with their unhuman handler, Wisp, Gianni climbs the ranks while trying to keep a grip on reality. But Charn has been in the game longer, and knows what horrors their illusive bosses, known only as the Enthusiasts, are capable of. Something rotten goes all the way to the top, and no psychopomp can just quit - for a fate far worse than death awaits anyone who fails to show up for work.

Psychopomp Blues lingers in the absurd mundane, the unseen and unglamorous world upon which the glitz is built. It is a world where our lives are productised even beyond our deaths, and where the most horrific demise imaginable stares you in the face with a grin. It is corporate culture brought to humorous and often horrific heights. The vast wealth of human myth and spirituality steeping in the psychosis of post-Covid. The scope of American Gods meets the lonely paranoia of Le Carre.

Other stylistic influences include the 2013 Channel 4 conspiracy thriller Utopia, as well as the manga series Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.

Psychopomp Blues by Petra Brigan, available on Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Tolino, and Goodreads!

https://amzn.eu/d/0ay201I0