The Captive by Kit Burgoyne review a literary novelist tries his hand at pulp horror

"The company's parasitic, money-grabbing, cost-shaving, data-siphoning activities stand for everything that is sinister and wrong with the conjunction of capitalism and state power. But the problem its opponents have is that the Woolsaw Group's activities are so far-reaching, and its public profile so blandly corporate, that the public can't be persuaded to pay any attention to its wickedness: it's the largest public service outsourcing company in the UK', which is so boring your brain just switches off."

"The hope of our wee terror cell, essentially, is that kidnapping the Woolsaws' daughter will wake people up by putting a human face on it. The abduction goes well Adeline is bundled into the back of a van in time-honoured fashion except for two things. One is that her kidnappers quickly realise that their hostage is in the third trimester of pregnancy; the other is that it turns out she's positively delighted to be removed from the bosom of her family, and doesn't under any circumstances wish to be given back."

"Adeline's parents aren't evil in the mundane Capita or Serco way Luke had assumed, but in a praying-to-the-Old-Ones, black-altar-in-the-basement-and-blood-on-the-tits way. Adeline has been artificially inseminated with the seed of The Long-Before (sperm-collection process not specified but described as complicated), and is now the unwilling brood mother for your basic antichrist. He is born in captivity just a few hours after the kidnapping. His demonic natur"

Luke, a nervous footsoldier in a revolutionary cell, prepares for his first operation alongside veteran Cam and fervent Rosa. The target is Adeline Woolsaw, a 23-year-old scion of the Woolsaw Group, a vast public-service outsourcing company whose parasitic, data-siphoning practices symbolize corporate-state collusion. The cell kidnaps Adeline to humanize corporate harm. The abduction succeeds, but the kidnappers discover Adeline is in her third trimester and is ecstatic to leave her family and refuse return. Her parents belong to an occult cult and have artificially inseminated her with the seed of The Long-Before, producing a demonic child born in captivity.

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