The premise to this sounded super interesting but unfortunately I had to DNF this,I couldn’t get into this and I had to just finally put it down.

"Full Immersion" by Gemma Amor is a gripping speculative horror novel that delves into themes of trauma, memory, and survival. The story follows Magpie, a woman who has tried various methods to heal from her trauma without success. Desperate for a solution, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery, only to wake up and find her own dead body partially buried in a riverbank.

Interesting book that sits on the border between psychological thriller, sci-fi novel and body horror. There is a real mounting sense of tension as the book progresses, with some extremely well thought out sequences.
That said, I took a star off as I'm not a fan of ambiguous endings. That's just a personal preference but something to consider going in.

After reading a few of Gemma’s shorter works, I became a huge fan. I read everything of hers that I could get my hands on and when this was announced I knew I had to get my hands on it, it didn’t disappoint.

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Full Immersion - Gemma Amor

The Foreword to Full Immersion hit me like a ton of bricks to the gut, it’s incredibly honest and personal. I’ve had the odd chat with Gemma over the years and would have no clue of the struggles she has endured - I mean honestly, why would I? I’m just a chap that enjoys reading her books, but it just a reminder to check in on your friends and love ones because you never really know what demons they maybe struggling with.

Full Immersion follows Magpie, our protagonist who enrol’s herself in an experimental VR therapy for her depression after suicidal thoughts plague her and her navigation between what is real or not in the treatment itself.

This is more Sci-Fi than horror, but is filled with traumatic and very real subjects that don’t get talked about enough.

It’s quite a slow burn, which is fine, it helps build the tension in my opinion.
I felt the ‘outcome’ was a little far fetched, but as per usual Gemma’s writing is fantastic.

I ended up listening to the audio book, narrated by Gemma herself, which she did brilliantly and again really added to the personal/autobiographical tone of the story.

Thank you Gemma Amor, Angry Robot & Netgalley for sending Full Immersion my way

A study in grief and depression. This book affected me more than I expected, truly an work of art!
Beautifully and brutally written emotional science fiction infused horror.
Amor is truly one of the great writers out there..

If you want to read a book that starts with a gut-punch and never takes you off the emotional roller-coaster, then your next read should be Full Immersion by Gemma Amor. Our protagonist, "Magpie" has written a letter, an obvious desperate plea for help. She has done something terrible and she doesn't know how to cope with herself and her life.
And that letter is the gentle uphill part of the roller coaster. What happens next is the ride itself.
The idea of therapy through virtual reality simulation is terrifying on its own. Magpie has so much going on beneath the surface, is so far in her own depths of depression, that when she finds her own body washed up under a favorite walking location, she's barely even shocked. Like anyone who is trapped in their own mind, she's almost grateful for it, thinking the world is much better without her.
But what happened to her? How did she die?
It's impossible not to become enthralled in Magpie's story. Despite the enigmatic way she feeds information to the reader, she is struggling, she is in pain. Of course, I was left with one question I couldn't quite shake that kept the pages turning: what did she DO? She has some self-loathing for something she has done, something most of the memories around her have something to do with, but the "what" keeps the pages turning.
The mystery element is brilliantly done. Getting just enough information to form a theory, only to have a wrench thrown in, or a surprise visit from The Stick Man put the mystery on pause.
Oh, have I not mentioned The Stick Man yet? Well, it's only the second most terrifying thing about this story. Long, lanky, shadowy THINGS tend to really freak me out, and adding a little bit of weird tech horror in there really drove this home as one of the scariest things I've read this year.
I kept reading on, though, even when it was well past my bed time in my badly lit apartment while I was all alone, despite the fear of being attacked by a Stick Man of my own (my brain is weird, okay??).
The writing here was really the winner. Through all the twists and turns, through all the techno-strangeness and uncanny valley of what's happening around Magpie and her companion, the real story, the real horror, comes from the mystery around Magpie herself. In uncovering the terrible events she's suppressed, to finding out the truth of it all. The writing had its hooks in me and refused to let go, even when I was basically just crying onto my Kindle almost begging to stop myself for the night. Magpie had a story I needed to see through to the end. The author made sure of that, and her brilliant writing brought everything together, just as it always does. All of the horror elements - from the Stick Man to the attitudes of "the Boss" and the tech, Magpie's companion, and of course, Magpie's big mystery, all worked together in perfect harmony to bring this story to a shocking and heartbreaking conclusion.
I've been a fan of Gemma Amor since her very first story on The No Sleep Podcast, but this was somehow on a whole new level, bringing so many forms of horror together in a mastery of both visceral horror and grief horror.

Excellent, well written medical horror story that twists into a creature feature. Great dialogue and great plot. Reading this story was like watching a black and white horror flick from the 50's. Very cinematic and could easily be a multi-media play. As I was reading this I got another Gemma Amor novel. Very impressed with Ms. Amor's work.

This book just blew me away. I've been thinking about it since I finished it months ago because I've just never read anything like it. Truly a new approach to the not-uncommon horror subgenre of motherhood, and the ending was BRILLIANT.

Content Warnings** suicidal ideation​​; post-natal depression; implied acts of violence towards a child; birth scene

Fascinating, iwould highly highly recommend. The highlight of the book has to be the brilliant storytelling – it was unbelievably unsettling and unputdownable at once.

A woman named Magpie discovers her own corpse. Right from the start, we’re inside her head as she sets out to discover just what on earth is going on. We also learn Magpie’s body is inside a lab as part of a strange experiment, as the POV switches between those observing the tests and Magpie herself.

FULL IMMERSION is the author’s own response to post-natal depression, and things get quite dark for much of the story. The first half gets a bit repetitive, but that’s easy to forgive, especially when things start getting weirder and wilder, leading up to a finale that feels like an episode of THE X-FILES gone off the rails. Major kudos here for “The Stickman,” who is surely to give most readers a serious case of the willies.

This sci-fi/horror mash up has a lot to say, and delivers the creeps on a grand scale.

4/5

Full Immersion has a lot going on. It touches on multiple genres such as murder mystery, horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, and it blends them all together well. The concept is captivating: Magpie finds her own dead body in a virtual reality session, and the story moves between her VR experience and the events in the real world of the lab monitoring her. The depiction of trauma and post-partum depression felt very real. This is a haunting book and I loved it very much.

An original and intriguing book that revolves around the often unspoken darkness so many people experience. Unflinching and deeply meaningful, there are horror and sci-fi elements that make this book impossible to pigeonhole. I recommend taking note of the trigger warnings for this book.

This novel is deeply complex, and entirely compelling. I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by the author, Gemma Amor, and I can’t imagine a more perfect voice to bring such a deeply personal story to life.
Magpie, this is how we know her, has signed up for an experimental therapeutic program involving virtual reality. She wakes in a strange place and almost immediately discovers her own body, beneath a suspension bridge, clearly having jumped. A man appears shortly after – her friend – and we begin the slow, deeply detailed descent into this new world, where she tries to unravel how she died, and why she is in this strange place, with this strange man. Such a narrative could have been confusing, but the details and the research that clearly went into this render it seamless and easy to follow.
What Magpie doesn’t know is that on the other side of glass panels, a tech and his boss are monitoring progress, tweaking programs, and caring for her physical form as she makes her way through a maze of memories, experiences, and objects culled from her past in search of her solution. Their careers depend on her success.
Magpie’s mind is very dark, and powerful. Despite attempts to guide her, things topple from the rails as she grows more confident and powerful. Stalked by a dark creature from her nightmares, rediscovering memories as she goes, Magpie plunges herself, her new friend, and the program into deeper and deeper darkness, seeking a light at the end.
The narration is spot on. Characters are distinct and have their own agendas. You can feel Magpies pain, and her triumphs. Truly a wonderful book.

Reading Full Immersion was a blast, in two senses. First, it's a gripping, compulsive, skin-crawling SF-horror, the like of which I have rarely seen - so reading it was superb fun. But in another sense of the word, "fun" is hardly the word. Experiencing Full Immersion was like having a shockwave hit me. It felt like being across the road from a collapsing building - except that the immersion lasted most of the book. I don't think I have ever read a story with a more apt title.

The impact of Full Immersion comes from a number of factors, only some of which I can pin down. There's the claustrophobic atmosphere. The story largely takes place in just two rooms, a control room and a treatment room where a woman called Magpie is confined, trussed up in wires, tubes and a harness - while in a full VR simulated environment designed to tease out the motivations for her catastrophic mental health crisis. While in the simulation, Magpie can roam free through endless created vistas, though in reality, she's closely confined.

There is the small cast; the patient, Magpie; a nurse; couple of techs - Evans, and the Boss; a "psych"... and a monster. Building on this sense of enclosure and isolation I might have a stab at defining this book in terms of the Gothic, if it wasn't a waste of time for such a genuinely different story - Full Immersion in a genre in itself - but really, those are relatively minor factors in the book's impact.

More, there is a sense in reading the story of being washed in a tide of horror, despair and loss - all bound up with how Amor takes Magpie's crisis as the central ground, the keystone of the arch, of this novel. Magpie has been through some truly traumatic events - the book concerns themes of suicide, harm to a child, birth (a graphic scene, as birth is!) and post-natal depression. She is still going through traumatic events - though now in that basement, after she reached out in desperation for the experimental "treatment" offered there.

Which isn't to say she's altogether on board with the idea, as you'll see. As Full Immersion blends reality, obsession, guilt, and a truly insidious foe, the story alternates between Evans and his Boss - she definitely has her own purposes here - and Magpie desperately trying to get her shit together to meet the challenge of this new and unsettling environment. It's a painful read, in many respects, and may be too strong - or raise too many ghosts - for some. But it's written with a great sense of empathy and of compassion, opening up aspects of life which many of us (perhaps thankfully) are unaware of.

It's also a book that refuses to deal in easy answers. Yes, there is progress here - bought with much pain. But Amor refuses to allow her characters a happy-ever-after ending. All that pain, anguish and guilt won't just go away, she seems to be saying. It's out there. You may meet it. You need to be ready, but you can't be.

All in all, a stunning book, definitely one of my favourites this year so far.

Psychology is one of the youngest social sciences, and there are times when people are still testing new techniques to try to get a result from their patients. This trial and error throughout the history of psychology has caused some normal practices in the past to be viewed as unethical and/or cruel in hindsight, but the excuse is that some experiments go too long or too far because the data is needed. Data is needed to help future patients. This is the case in Full Immersion, the newest novel from Gemma Amor. The main character, Magpie, writes to the Department of Virtual and Experimental Therapy at the University of Bristol, to volunteer for their experimental therapy, simply because she thinks about jumping off the Bristol suspension bridge every day. 

The story that follows is filled with mystery, sci-fi, and some horror, most of it because the therapeutic techniques that starts the beginning go beyond the data that had been previously gathered. This turns Maggie's session into an experiment. The further Magpie gets into the virtual world, the more the lines between the imaginary and reality blurs until they become nonexistent. This is when the ethics of do we stop because it is dangerous or do we keep going because it is beyond the previously gathered data.

The way that this story is constructed makes everyone's complete focus on Magpie, the patient, really the only person who’s health is monitored. The only other characters are the therapist helping Magpie and the two technicians, Evan and his female boss, both on the outside but who are also supposed to be in control. With Magpie being the main focus of everyone else, and the setting being solely in the virtual world and the basement at a university, there is a tension that this claustrophobic situation naturally presents. By the end we do not know if we are trapped with Magpie or trapped with Evans and the Boss. We just know we are trapped, and like all of the characters, all we can do is hope for the best. This is the best kind of horror, one where you are led to believe that there is no way for anyone to get out. 

There is someone out there that might be helped by this novel, someone who has been struggling with the same problems as Magpie. Someone might get help after reading this because the biggest takeaway from Full Immersion is that we are not alone. We may feel alone, but we are not alone. There are people who are struggling and that there are people that can help. The potential importance of this book in someone’s life far outweighs what anyone thinks about the plot, the characters, or the ending. I can say that I liked the story and the characters. I can say that the writing is great, and the story unfolds in a way that are interesting and exciting. I can say that it’s a good sci-fi and horror novel. None of these things compare to how Full Immersion can be a help for someone who is going through the same situation that Gemma Amor found herself in after the birth of her child. 

It is no secret that Gemma Amor wrote this novel for herself when she was struggling with her own postpartum depression. (There is a good two part interview with her on This is Horror). She says that she did not plan to get this novel published, but when Angry Robot approached her, she decided to give them this. She is also happy with the way that Angry Robot has taken a book with extremely sensitive subject matter and made it into a novel that honors and respects the subject. In all of the advertising and marketing for this book, respect and empathy has been shown toward the books difficult themes. It is like it is an honest conversation and not exploitative. I have been reading and collecting Angry Robot books since I saw the original cover of Edge by Thomas Blackthorne in 2010, and I am happy that they have published Full Immersion.

I received this as an ARC through NetGalley. I also received a physical ARC from Angry Robot. Both of these were given in exchange for an honest review.

Gemma Amor’s sci-fi horror novel perfectly blends the horrors of postpartum depression with supernatural/sci-fi horrors. Magpie is desperate to escape her suicidal ideations and finds herself penning a letter to an experimental group in hope that they can fix her. The only issue is that the researchers aren’t prepared for Magpie’s fear to manifest in a true identity ready to devour and destroy everything that comes in its way. This book expertly describes the malaise that often comes with motherhood and how still today many women face these same issues alone drenched in shame. This was an emotional and scary ride – kudos to Amor for having the balls to write something so deeply personal and share it with the world. But I feel like the world is better with such an important book like this available. I recommend this book if you love horror and sci-fi genre blends and seek horror with a ton of heart and soul.

*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Angry Robot for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

The forward really set this book up. So glad it was there. Very touching. Truly terrifying and I will be recommending to friends who enjoy sci fi and horror.

"It's therapy. And the purpose of therapy is growth. Emotional growth, and the absolution of severe emotional disturbances."

(I did read the ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, Angry Robot Books, so it's entirely possible this quote did not make it into the final print, but if it didn't, it should have.)

FULL IMMERSION by Gemma Amor is a fast paced thriller that begins with a woman finding her own dead body, prompting her to set out on a journey to discover the events that led to her death. Accompanied by a new friend, this woman, Magpie, traverses through memories of her past in an attempt to shed light on the puzzle pieces of her life. The journey turns into a race against time as Magpie discovers that not only is reality crumbling around her, a terrifying being known as Silhouette is relentless in its pursuit of its prey: Magpie and her new friend.

Talk about a page turner! I read this book in less than 24 hours - it was so interesting to read about the technological techniques used, but when I first encountered the sinister presence of the Stick Man, Silhouette - I was HOOKED. The mounting dread and suspense kept my eyes glued to the pages to see what would happen next - in addition to being keenly intrigued to learn about Magpie and her past events that led her to where she was when we met her - discovering her own body.

FULL IMMERSION has many elements that will delight readers of multiple genres: fantasy, horror, and science fiction to name a few. I read the book description and thought I was going to be reading a good story about a murder mystery and it turned out to be so much more than that. I even caught myself with the book in my lap, realizing I had stopped reading to mull over how much we don't know about the mind - what it's capable of - and how terrifying the not knowing is. I loved how Gemma Amor's creative genius took my imagination down into the abyss and turned it loose into the murky depths....with Silhouette.

In an interesting twist, I found that I didn't really like any of the characters. I was more interested in the techniques being employed (you'll just have to read it to see what these are, it would be a spoiler for me to detail them here) and once I got a taste of the fear of Silhouette, I was hooked. At that point, Magpie became a means to an end for me. The setting, of which again I can't detail due to spoilers, I found captivating and if you're a gamer, you will too. (Especially Mario fans, lol) The one thing I actually did not jive with - the ending. For me personally, it was too easy? That may not be an accurate description...hmmm...mayhaps I was salty it was over so fast? The ending was open-ended, so the reader can use their discretion to imagine what happened next, but I reckon I was looking for a final type of resolution. Horror and Sci Fi fans will likely disagree with me here because it's actually just the right ending for those genres. Ugh! Now I'm reconsidering - ha! That's when you know it's a good one my friends!

Wow. I am at a loss for words. I truly had to just sit and stare at a wall after finishing this book. It is honestly hard for me to put into succinct words why I really liked this book and why I would recommend it, but just know that it is deep, raw, and real af. It made me want to look back at my own life and choose to see my mistakes in a different light or to even take a hard look and be able to recognize that they probably weren't mistakes at all.

I feel like I don't read books like this often but I really should. This felt like an episode of Black Mirror while simultaneously feeling like my own diary. I've never connected to a main character more.