This was…not the book I was expecting. I figured it would just be three people questing their way through medieval horror episodes.
And it is that. The thing is: the horror is taking place during the bubonic plague, which has also apparently opened a portal to hell freeing the demons to do cosmic battle with the angels…hence the horrors on earth.
Yeah this book is a lot. And it’s really good.
The three main characters are cyphers for the larger story Christopher Buehlman is trying to tell but I was still deeply invested in their tales. As they go about their journey, dealing with one apocalyptic vision after another until the final great confrontation, I was sucked in to the rich writing. The dream sequences were incredible, some of which I don’t even have real words to describe. This book has a real power to it.
The horror is a bit of jump scare but really this is monsters and gore. However, what gave the story stakes and made the monsters feel real was the overarching references to the literal battle of good vs. evil. Yet in a world where everyone is already dying at the hands of the bubonic plague, it’s tough to suss out what is good and evil. God is absent and the devils are at hand. So where I would normally get bogged down in a story like this (big spooky monsters), I was drawn in deeper, all the way to the slam bang conclusion.
This is a violent, brutal, bloody book that examines apocalyptic literature in the most violent way. Wouldn’t normally be my thing but I loved it.
