![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
From:
no subject
I didn't know that! That's really interesting.