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Monster was the best, his favourite word. The first half was a kiss, the second a hiss.
In the gross and grimdark city of Elendhaven, where the sea is poisonous and even the drinking water is coal-black due to a magical apocalypse, a creepy nameless child gets abused, takes the name of Johann, and becomes a serial killer. Johann discovers that he has Wolverine-like healing powers and cannot be killed; he uses this power to continue randomly murdering people because he's a monster, an identity he cherishes.
Johann learns that a fragile and fancy accountant named Florian Leickenbloom is secretly a sorcerer, and demands that Florian employ him and find out what he is. Florian, mildly intrigued, takes Johann in and tells him he'll be a part of Florian's grand plan to get revenge on Elendhaven for killing his family.
The entire rest of the book is Johann flirting with Florian, Florian not really reciprocating, and the two of them murdering a lot of people. It's very lushly written, mostly descriptions of gross stuff because in this world everything is gross. Everything is also anticlimactic. There's a series of revelations that should be cool, but they all fall flat because by the time I realized they were supposed to be revelatory, they'd already been revealed in a more low-key way like thirty pages back. We learn more about what connects Johann and Florian, but that's also anticlimactic because it doesn't change anything about their relationship.
Spoilers!
Florian tells Johann fairly early on that Elendhaven as a whole killed his entire family, and he plans to get revenge by destroying it. Johann proceeds to spend the entire rest of the book pressing Florian about what he really wants and what his real plan is. But it turns out that Elendhaven as a whole killed his entire family, and he plans to get revenge by destroying it, so... huh? I don't understand why this was set up as a mystery when we already knew the answer.
The actual mystery (revealed at around the two-thirds mark) is that Florian used local magic to try to resurrect his sister, but got Johann instead. This is pretty cool, but, again, nothing really comes of it. It does explain why Johann and Florian are bound together, but nothing changes between them once Johann knows, so for me the reveal fell flat.
The climax occurs when a mage-finder kills Florian and is killed by Johann in turn. She was the only person of color in the entire book, and also the only significant living woman, so that was weird.
The dying Florian magically mind-wipes Johann, so he ends up with no memories but the will to carry out Florian's plans. So the end is back to the beginning; he's a murderer stalking the city with no idea of who he is. I don't know why Florian mind-wiped him, because Johann was a murderer at the start and a murderer in the middle and was never anything but a murderer, and would have undoubtedly carried on murdering after Florian's death whether he was mind-wiped or not.
Out of the many problems I had with this book, the one which really prevented me from enjoying it was that I didn't care about or enjoy reading about any of the characters. I love horror and noir, which are both genres in which the characters are often bad people, not intended to be likable, etc. So I absolutely don't have to like a character or have them be a good person to enjoy a story about them. Walter White, Annie Wilkes, and Norma Desmond are 100% terrible people, but they're magnetic and I can't get enough of them.
Johann and Florian are one-note and boring. Murder and sociopathy are not interesting by themselves. There are much better books about gay murderers. (Also, there's not even that much gayness! It's just one-sided flirting.)
Content notes: child sexual abuse, graphic gore, vomit, general grossness, edgelord vibes, weird race stuff.
In general, the book felt stylish but pointless. However, I read it because I'd seen multiple raves about it, so this may be a minority opinion.
In the gross and grimdark city of Elendhaven, where the sea is poisonous and even the drinking water is coal-black due to a magical apocalypse, a creepy nameless child gets abused, takes the name of Johann, and becomes a serial killer. Johann discovers that he has Wolverine-like healing powers and cannot be killed; he uses this power to continue randomly murdering people because he's a monster, an identity he cherishes.
Johann learns that a fragile and fancy accountant named Florian Leickenbloom is secretly a sorcerer, and demands that Florian employ him and find out what he is. Florian, mildly intrigued, takes Johann in and tells him he'll be a part of Florian's grand plan to get revenge on Elendhaven for killing his family.
The entire rest of the book is Johann flirting with Florian, Florian not really reciprocating, and the two of them murdering a lot of people. It's very lushly written, mostly descriptions of gross stuff because in this world everything is gross. Everything is also anticlimactic. There's a series of revelations that should be cool, but they all fall flat because by the time I realized they were supposed to be revelatory, they'd already been revealed in a more low-key way like thirty pages back. We learn more about what connects Johann and Florian, but that's also anticlimactic because it doesn't change anything about their relationship.
Spoilers!
Florian tells Johann fairly early on that Elendhaven as a whole killed his entire family, and he plans to get revenge by destroying it. Johann proceeds to spend the entire rest of the book pressing Florian about what he really wants and what his real plan is. But it turns out that Elendhaven as a whole killed his entire family, and he plans to get revenge by destroying it, so... huh? I don't understand why this was set up as a mystery when we already knew the answer.
The actual mystery (revealed at around the two-thirds mark) is that Florian used local magic to try to resurrect his sister, but got Johann instead. This is pretty cool, but, again, nothing really comes of it. It does explain why Johann and Florian are bound together, but nothing changes between them once Johann knows, so for me the reveal fell flat.
The climax occurs when a mage-finder kills Florian and is killed by Johann in turn. She was the only person of color in the entire book, and also the only significant living woman, so that was weird.
The dying Florian magically mind-wipes Johann, so he ends up with no memories but the will to carry out Florian's plans. So the end is back to the beginning; he's a murderer stalking the city with no idea of who he is. I don't know why Florian mind-wiped him, because Johann was a murderer at the start and a murderer in the middle and was never anything but a murderer, and would have undoubtedly carried on murdering after Florian's death whether he was mind-wiped or not.
Out of the many problems I had with this book, the one which really prevented me from enjoying it was that I didn't care about or enjoy reading about any of the characters. I love horror and noir, which are both genres in which the characters are often bad people, not intended to be likable, etc. So I absolutely don't have to like a character or have them be a good person to enjoy a story about them. Walter White, Annie Wilkes, and Norma Desmond are 100% terrible people, but they're magnetic and I can't get enough of them.
Johann and Florian are one-note and boring. Murder and sociopathy are not interesting by themselves. There are much better books about gay murderers. (Also, there's not even that much gayness! It's just one-sided flirting.)
Content notes: child sexual abuse, graphic gore, vomit, general grossness, edgelord vibes, weird race stuff.
In general, the book felt stylish but pointless. However, I read it because I'd seen multiple raves about it, so this may be a minority opinion.
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I think the author might be a Homestuck fan and that is a fandom I found totally impenetrable (although I do now like Tamsyn Muir’s original stuff, but it took a lot of initial grappling)
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The motivations of the characters in this book reminded me of the immortal X-Files line, "Son, you kill people because you're a homicidal maniac."
That is not an interesting reason to kill people.
ETA: Okay, Florian did have a reasonable motivation. I just found him boring.
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Actually, I think this might be a really useful insight into what makes some horrible characters compelling and others really not. When I think about awful characters who do terrible things but are fascinating, they usually do their terrible things for reasons that are sympathetic, relatable, or at the very least really interesting. "I do horrible things because I'm horrible" is literally the most boring possible version.
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ETA: A very different character but along similar lines: the Joker.
I can't think of any other examples offhand. Noir characters typically don't do horrible things because they're horrible, they do horrible things because they want something so desperately that they'll do anything to get it. In horror, the closer a character comes to "I do horrible things because I'm horrible," the more likely they are to have the very sympathetic motivation of being an outcast unable to fit in to normal society but wishing they could and lashing out in bitterness.
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I am definitely going to have to think about this some more.
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The motivation is horror is typically "stay alive" or "stay human." Again, relatable and sympathetic, even if the character is doing worse and worse things to achieve that goal: it's because the goal is so difficult and their options are so narrow.
Both of those are also the opposite of "I have a wide range of choices and what I choose to do is randomly murder people."
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I feel like I might have really enjoyed the same characters in the same world with a different plot. But that might simply have been because a lot of the plot was depressing in the way that real-world political realities can be really depressing.
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Avoid the TERRIBLE HORRIBLE Anthony Mingella movie with Matt Damon as Ripley, in which he does horrible things because he's fucked up by being a closeted gay man, and tragically realises that he's gay at the same time as he realises that he will have to murder his One True Soulmate (a character who barely exists in the novel) and thereby permanently fuck his life up to avoid getting caught. Not only does book!Ripley not fuck up his life, he's probably not gay, but actually a pretty convincingly asexual character before the concept was really made concrete. And would be cynically amused at the mere idea of a One True Soulmate.
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Weird. I mean, if you didn't just mind-wipe Johann, but threw him back to the start of the book then you would have this sort of incredibly grim Groundhog Day, but just mindwiping him doesn't seem to accomplish anything except possibly undermine Johann's ability and motive to carry out Florian's wishes.
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As I was reading, I honestly thought of several ways in which I would *like* this story to be done and when I finished reading the whole post, I'm just kind of sad.
(Things that came up in the version of the story that I was hastily writing in the back of my brain as I read this post: Elendhaven grew some kind of sentience during the Magical Apocalypse, Johann may or may not be some kind of conduit for Elendhaven itself or at least be able to utilize information it gives him, Florian is actually letting Johann "help" because he knows that there's Something with Johann and Elendhaven that he might be able to use in order to meet his own goals, the mage-finder at the end is actually the poisoned sea herself, who's been watching and following the other two and is Done and is now here to fix the mess Florian almost kicked off because Elendhaven/Johann were not containing the issue as well as was needed. Johann and Florian almost die at the same time, except Florian is the one who lives because Elendhaven leaves Johann's body and goes for the sorcerer body instead but part of Johann's characteristics and memories go along for the ride as well.
Clearly the end is the mage-hunter/poisoned sea woman and the Florian/Johann/Elendhaven Cocktail Of Doom drive off into the sunset to see what other chaos they can either stop, start, or watch while eating stale popcorn.)
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Weirdly enough, both of these possibilities are hinted at, but nothing ever comes of it. Some people believe that the world is so shitty because things happen in cycles and this is the last and worst one, and another apocalypse is coming and will set off a new cycle that begins at a high point. Nothing ever comes of that either.
I prefer your version.
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I didn't know that! That's really interesting.
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That is cool.
(Our Christmas tree arrived from Nova Scotia earlier this year and was ceremonially lit up last Thursday. I didn't attend this year, but heard an older woman from Halifax telling someone who didn't know the story about the tradition.)
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In general I agree about being underwhelmed and feeling like nothing really mattered very much. It had vibes for days, though, and I did enjoy that.
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I had a similar sorry of reaction of, "if I squint at it sideways, it kind of resembles a book I might like, but when I read it, it is not."
I read the whole book and felt that there were people in the book I might care about, but none of the ones the book thought were interesting