It's always refreshing when a first novel dares to break new ground, avoiding the normal themes and monsters of horror, and Adam Pepper's first effort, Memoria, strays from the usual enough to deserve praise. Pepper posits a portion of the human brain called Memoria where memories are stored, but further proposes that there is a collective Memoria which stores all memories of all humans and, furthermore, that people can be sucked (or suckered) into this world—which looks suspiciously like a Christian hell, complete with suffering souls—while floating away from their corporeal human frames.

But what—and who—is in there? What gives these memories their lives, and who brings unsuspecting victims into the kingdom of Memoria? Well, as always the culprit is a beautiful woman who lures mostly males into Memoria with sex. Desiree (Desire?) has the power to allow separated souls to return to earth as visitors in other bodies, but she is not the boss in Memoria.

On earth, meanwhile, we have the evil Dr. Lawrence Osias and his obsession with continuing his father's experiments regarding using more of the brain's power, the soul, and the transplanting of brains. Masquerading as a committed humanitarian, Osias is actually mad as a hatter, hatching grotesque experiments using well-paid unsuspecting subjects like family man Dave Wagner, or loyal-but-warped trucker Ed. He employs weirdo assistants Ivan and Milo. Outside the foundation's (castle) gates are the Faithers, religious protesters at least as insane as the object of their hatred. Long-suffering Job is a sinning (that is, normal) teenager whose crazed mother's religious indoctrination has become torture—and he's about to step right into the middle of an Osias milestone experiment.

Upon reflection these elements don't seem quite as fresh—the mad scientist and his Igors in the castle playing with transplants while the angry villagers mass for a home invasion—but the concoction still works because the pot's been stirred in the opposite direction. Osias (perhaps Osiris, personification of resurrection?) is a modern-day Frankenstein messing with the order of things, not realizing that the order of things is messing with him. The religious crazies . . . well, what can we say, we've all seen current versions of the Faithers, and they're scarier than the mad scientists by far.

Pepper's hammer-on-bone excursions into certain characters' unpleasant memories will raise a sympathetic twinge out of any reader. Though mired in occasionally clumsy syntax, word choice, and spotty editing (especially with regard to punctuation), Memoria signals the start of another promising horror career. Pepper draws disparate characters together nicely, making the most of his climax by pitting them in unexpected ways. Minor flaws aside, Memoria entertains with the exuberance of its telling and its daring metaphysical attack on the senses.