Infernal Restraintsof Sound Mind Riley Reyes New __full__ -

What makes Reyes’s approach “new” is her rejection of the insanity defense trope. In most horror, the protagonist either goes mad (thus invalidating their perception) or remains sane and triumphs. Reyes’s narrator stays perfectly sane but never triumphs. The climax does not feature a breakdown or a revelation. Instead, the narrator finally understands that her restraints are self-fashioned, yet she chooses to keep them—because to abandon sanity would be to admit that she has been in hell all along. This is the truly infernal choice: a sound mind embracing its own prison as the only home it knows.

Riley sat across from him. His eyes were voids. infernal restraintsof sound mind riley reyes new