The Endings, The Endings AAAAARGH

An Interlude: I am chronically ill. It’s something auto-immune adjacent, if not dead on, that is exacerbated by some severe PTSD and fatigue that mean I’m always a tightly-wound ball of nightmares and naps. Because I don’t communicate like normal peeps (thank ND), doctors tend to think it’s not as bad as it is, even when it’s pretty damned bad.

My psychiatrist though? That guy? He’s a damned rock star. He looks at test results. He puts things together. He knows it’s a complicated history, I’m not looking for the hard drugs, and I just want to do things like be able to focus and sleep. I’ve lived with the pain for years. Same for the trauma. But as I age, my brain handles all of the non-voluntary functions with less and less grace. 

Que the rock star. He put me on some sleep meds which allowed me to put a lock on my night time routine. I’ve gone from very poor to poor on the Likert scale of sleep. It’s insane. I have a modicum of energy. I deep cleaned and organized two whole rooms I haven’t been able to seriously work on for years.All this to say: I’m sitting on my computer a little less. Reviews will come accordingly until I finish the backlog of household stuff I’ve had to let go. Ideally, as we adjust and find the perfect sleep med, I’ll get through all of that more quickly and still be able to apply my brain to writing, reading, and all of the art that comes with an overactive brain that can actually do the corresponding work. 

Anyway, onto some books!

I can’t remember where I saw the list, but I think it was something to do with Bram Stoker award nominees and winners. Of course, I added that shit to my TBR pile like the internet was showering me with manna from heaven and not just presenting information in a useful way, because I love making lists that later crush me with how long they’ve unintentionally gotten. Reddit’s /horrorlit knows the game.

Two of the books on the list were Josh Malerman’s Malorie and E.V. Knight’s The Fourth Whore. And man, you would think a book about cosmic aliens driving you mad and another about how Lilith is trying to stick the landing on the whole apocalypse thing would vary vastly in terms of execution, but then you read them. And they’re both disappointments in very similar ways: both are about the end of the world as we know it and the endings are terrible.

Malorie by Josh Malerman: 3. With Malorie, Malerman is telling the story of what happens not in the immediate aftermath of a world-altering event, but ten or twenty years later. Once the children born into that world start becoming adults and the conflicts between those who were traumatized and those who’ve never known anything but this new normal arise. In a lot of ways, it’s about how some only know how to fight and others learn to adapt. 

Malorie is trying to live her life by the fold, and her now teenage children want to break free from her vice-like hold on safety measures, especially her teenage son. Tom is a bit of a rebel, a dreamer, and an inventor, not unlike his namesake (which is mentioned a bajillion times). To add to all of their issues, they’ve finally found a safe space, she’s managed to keep those kids alive as a result, and life is as good as it can get when you’re bundled up for winter at all times, even the dead of summer. And then the census taker comes by with information to disrupt all of that, including tantalizing details for Tom, such as a new train that allows people to travel across Michigan in (relative) safety. So, they uproot their lives. And their mores. And maybe some values along the way.

Almost 90% of this book was building to what laid at the end of the train, including a conflict with a villain from the first book. The last 10% was trying to wrap up all of those details in a bow without any real climax. The book spent a huge amount of time going somewhere, then just abandons that for a final kill and “oh things are better now.” It made what was otherwise good storytelling up until that point feel like a wacky, inflatable, tube man stepped up to tell the final chapter of the story. 

The Fourth Whore by E.V. Knight: 2. Trigger warning: there is so much sexual assault in this book. Lilith is on the warpath. She was betrayed by Adam. She was betrayed by her creator. She was betrayed by the one person she trusted after being left in the wilderness, and then he had the audacity to betray her a second time to “save” her from the demoness he helped mold her into being. So, she’s picking up “Whores” to complete her four horseman vibe, including a prostitute she wants to wage STD war and a women’s doctor she wants to sow discord. Then there’s our protagonist, Kenzi.See, when Kenzi was a wee thing she saw the Angel of Death, Sariel. Sariel has also been banished from heaven, but only until he collects all of these demonic souls he’s in part responsible for: he’s the former lover who betrayed Lilith, boning her down and then letting his other angel friends throw her into a cave to be raped by demons for a millenia. Then, because he hates consequences, he seals her soul into a talisman that he carries around and eventually gives to baby Kenzi because “she reminds him of someone.” Kenzi gets into a literal drug war and somehow activates the talisman, releasing Lilith and becoming the demon’s replacement for Sariel. 

The more I read the book, the less I liked it. Sariel groomed Kenzi from the time she was seven to be his beloved. He has set it up so he can always be her white knight, putting her through some shit for that to be true. Gross. He did the same thing to Lilith’s innocence, basically being a whiny, man baby about his feels while she was sexually assaulted into losing everything that made her human. And then the book makes him the hero, because Lilith should stop being so big-mad about God and Adam and Sariel. She should practice forgiveness. She needs to learn to let go. Deep breathe. Yoga. All that.Fuck that noise. Lilith’s on the nose about most of what she says. When she’s being a bitch, such as killing some previous allies, she’s acting completely out of character. She’s acting like Sariel or Lucifer or one of the men, and that’s what makes her villainous. Yet, they get to be the heroes, including the disgusting angel who let the love of his life get raped for thousands of years by demons. He grooms his other great love, starting when she is seven,  by white knighting and m’ladying up the place. The fact that Kenzi chooses her groomer, going so far as to die to save him, makes me gag. The fact that Lilith got left holding the bag as the “demoness,” one final time is a disservice to her. Kenzi should have told them both to stuff it it, made the fucking crow raise her dead boyfriend, and peaced out while Lilith ripped Mr. “I’m a Whiny Crybaby Pedophile” a new hole for him to shit out of.

I knocked off two points for that shit crap. I’m with Lilith. When men fail us, eat them alive. Always.