The Hollow Ear

I wanted to love this because the premise is brilliant and the opening paragraphs are superbly atmospheric, but overall the story left me a bit unsatisfied. The worldbuilding is strong on texture — Harrow House, the coil lamp hum, the S-1 recorder — yet the central rules about the voice-eating creature are frustratingly vague. How exactly does the listening stone bind hunger? Why is the salvaged spool effective? Those gaps made the climax feel more convenient than inevitable. Pacing also wobbles: the middle section repeats motifs of listening without advancing stakes quickly enough, so by the time we reach the sacrifice decision it lacks the punch it should have had. Still, the author has a real gift for mood and a terrific ear for detail; with a bit more structural tightening this could be outstanding.

Short and so freakin' eerie. Aiko is such a vibe — all quiet confidence and fragile courage — and Harrow House is basically its own antagonist. The little details killed me: Jonah’s damp hair and cigarette-smell camera bag, the kettle hiss, the recorder like a baby. The scene where she uses the listening stone felt like someone whispering in my ear. Loved the slow-burn tension and the way the ending made me think about what we owe our friends and what we owe ourselves. Definitely staying on my rec list. 😶‍🌫️

Tight, suspenseful, and unusually clever in how it uses sound as both weapon and language. The battle scenes are not loud set pieces but tense experiments in acoustic physics — binding hunger with sound felt plausible in the story's internal logic because of how well the earlier listening moments were established. I particularly liked the spool sequence: tactile, cinematic, and frightening without being gory. The only slight stumble for me was a desire for a touch more backstory on the creature, but that omission also keeps the focus squarely on Aiko's psychology, which is arguably the point. Solid, unsettling read.

There are books that use setting and books that use sensation; The Hollow Ear does both and then turns them into a character study. Aiko's way of measuring mornings by the hiss of a kettle and of cradling the S-1 felt so specific that the Harrow House stopped being background and started to haunt me. The second-landing pipe click and that singing stair nosing are small, expertly placed sounds that ratchet up tension without melodrama. I especially admired the moral ambiguity at the center: the creature's hunger is both literal and metaphorical, and Aiko's choice about sacrifice feels like an exploration of what it means to listen versus to silence. The pacing is patient but purposeful; the prose never overstays its welcome. Best of all, the sensory details stick with you—days later I still found myself imagining the coil lamp’s hum. A really fine piece of urban supernatural horror.

Okay, I went in expecting a spooky urban yarn and came out hearing things for the next two days — literally. The creature that eats voices is such a deliciously creepy idea, and the author milks it with little touches: the radiator note like a violin, Jonah's cereal-clink rhythms, and that eerie typewriter pipe. The salvaged spool? Genius prop work. It's atmospheric horror with some clever worldbuilding — no cheap jump-scares, just slow, surgical unease. If you like your horror to whisper in your ear instead of shout, this is for you. Also, big applause for the ending; it’s bittersweet in the best way. 😉

Quietly unnerving and very well observed. I loved Aiko as an unreliable kind of hero — more tuned listener than action protagonist — and the Harrow House felt lived-in: you can picture the patched plaster and smell the old rain. The moment she treats the recorder like a sleeping thing made me ache; it’s a small gesture that tells you everything about her. The climax where she must choose what to sacrifice lands emotionally because of those earlier details. Short, haunting, and unusual — recommended.

This story is an elegant exercise in sensory fiction. The setup is deceptively simple — a missing friend, an old tenement, a creature that eats voices — but the author uses sound as an organising principle so well that every line feels calibrated. I liked the way domestic objects become instruments: the radiator's violin-like shudder, the loose stair nosing that sings underfoot, the coil lamp's high hum. Technically, the pacing is tight; small scenes (Jonah showing up with damp hair and an idea, the coffee ritual, the recorder on the windowsill) accumulate until the climax, where the salvaged spool and listening stone aren't just props but keys to the plot's logic. My one nitpick is that the story leans heavily on atmosphere at times where I'd have wanted a smidge more explanation of the creature's rules, but honestly that ambiguity suits the psychological tone. A smart, tactile horror piece.

I rarely have a story grab my ears the way The Hollow Ear did. Aiko's relationship with sound — cradleing the S-1 like a sleeping thing, cataloguing the kettle's hiss, mapping the house by reverb — is such an intimate lens that the building itself becomes a character. That scene where the pipe clicks like a typewriter on the second landing gave me actual goosebumps; I could hear it in my head. I loved how the listening stone and salvaged spool were described as tools and talismans at once, and the moral weight of the final choice felt earned rather than tacked on. There's a careful tenderness to the prose even as the creature's appetite grows; the writing balances sensory detail and psychological dread perfectly. One of the most original urban horrors I've read in a while.