The Face of Pain
Tim Waggoner
Lefthand Path Press (December 8, 2025)
Reviewed by Carson Buckingham
The Face of Pain is the weirdest book of Tim Waggoner’s that I’ve read so far, and I mean that in the absolute best possible way. The depth of imagination that was poured into this short volume was astounding, not to mention chilling. It is a nightmare come true, and you will not be able to put the book down…at least, I couldn’t.
My review will differ somewhat this time, as I intend to review not only the author’s work, but the publisher’s as well. The author’s work being the ‘Good” part of ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” The publisher…well…I’ll get to it in a bit. But on to the story.
Tricia Everhart, a young woman desperate for motherhood, has been having horrifying nightmares, in which she finds herself lost inside a medical facility called the Red Tower, with plaques on the doors like: The Blinding Room and Organ Exchange, and doctors called Winterblood, Vomitus, and Fleshcoat. Oh, and let’s not forget Nurse Skullcrack. In her night terrors, she is given treatments there, most notably by a living silver scorpion called Argent, and lately, the results seem to be carrying over into her waking life.
Something is growing inside her. Her doctor calls it cancer, Tricia calls it a baby. Could both of them be right?
Dr. Winterblood abducts Tricia and takes her to the Red Tower, where she is trapped, her abdomen swelling far too rapidly for a normal pregnancy. But time behaves differently there. Dr. Winterblood tells her that she is the vessel carrying The Face of Pain, who, when born, will be the instrument of destruction for the entire human race and reality itself.
This short book is so tightly written that it’s nothing less than unnaturally excellent. The intricate plot moves along at a pace that never quits, and the characters are so well-drawn and plausible that they jump off the pages at you. One gets so immersed in the story that even the most lunatic situations somehow make complete sense—and that is the magic of Tim Waggoner—molding the surreal into something that seems eerily normal. I can see this book becoming a classic and being taught alongside Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury. The Face of Pain is a ‘must-have’ for any horror fan worthy of the title, or for anyone who just enjoys plain old exemplary writing.
Now…
…on to the publisher.
Lefthand Path Press has a great deal to learn about formatting a book properly, because The Face of Pain looks like something you would see created by a first-time self-pubber who really didn’t know what she was doing.
The page numbers were as surreal as the book in that the title page is numbered as page 1, and the numbering continues through the front matter, until the first page of text, which is page 9! Just so you know, book page numbering style starts with unnumbered front matter (title page, copyright, dedication) or uses lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, iii), with the first chapter starting on the first right-hand (recto) page as Arabic number 1. Odd numbers are always on the right and even numbers on the left (at least they got that right). The publishers could have learned all of this by running a Google search if they didn’t know. So why didn’t they? This is ground-floor, basic knowledge if you are a book publisher. Geesh!
The book is printed in what looks like 14-point type, which doesn’t bother me too much, as I have older eyes, but it is not identified on the cover as a ‘large-format’ book.
The gutters are shockingly large—1 ¼,” and the page margins are completely inconsistent. The verso (left) page margins were 3/8,” and the recto (right) page margins were “3/4”.
Though the dinkus, or scene divider (in this case, an illustration of barbed wire), was centered on the page, as is correct, the absurdly wide gutters made it appear off-center.
The only elements I liked about the physical setup of this book were the cover and the illustrations. Lefthand Path Press clearly has a long, long way to go. Perhaps they should use both hands on their path…and maybe a flashlight…
That being said, please do not let my annoyance with the ‘publisher’ deter you from purchasing this superbly written book. Grab a copy of The Face of Pain for yourself and anyone else who enjoys a hair-raising dive into medical horror. The writing and the story will knock your socks off, as folks used to say in the dinosaur age that I am from. And once you get into the story, you’ll be able to ignore the abysmal book formatting and the feeling that you are looking at the Mona Lisa in a K-Mart frame.
5 out of 5 stars for Mr. Waggoner and his brilliant writing.
-1 stars for Lefthand Path Press and their elementary-school formatting.
