I was really committed to embracing Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World. I generally like dark slapstick and horror comedy; I enjoyed Someone You Can Build a Nest In (from the POV of a sentient ooze that eats most of its in-laws) and Dreadful (from the POV of an evil warlock who wakes up one day with amnesia and a conscience). So, when I found this queer romance centering a guy who raises an Abomination to eat the world in exchange for a promotion at work, I thought it’d be just my style. And yet …
To backtrack a bit, the titular Colin works for a company called Dark Enterprises. This company is basically Wolfram & Hart, the evil law firm from Angel: it uses a lot of predictable corporate jargon (e.g., performance reviews, Human Resources, Mergers & Acquisitions) to mask the fact that it’s your classic demon-summoning, ancient-eldritch-being-propitiating Lovecraftian horror show.
Against this backdrop, author Mark Waddell codes the protagonist, Colin, as a standard down-on-his-luck rom-com protagonist: he’s shy, socially awkward, and self-deprecating. When his roommate Amira sets him up on a date with Eric, a handsome, charming, and chiseled fella who quickly falls for Colin, Colin spends much of the novel certain that Eric is Out of His League. Colin has some legitimately awful stressors, as well: he’s being horribly sexually harassed at work, by a peer who is also setting him up for (literal) termination.
As the book continues, we see hints that Colin is much more sadistic and gleefully vindictive than his self-effacing first-person narration can acknowledge. Sure, he’ll send the people harassing him at work to be devoured by the Stygian Maw — that seems fair — but he’ll also repeatedly electrocute (possibly to death) a guy who just mocked him on social media. At a certain point, it becomes clear that, if the Abomination he summoned weren’t planning to eat him, his love interest, and his roommate, Colin might let the massive loss of human life go without an intervention.
The fact that Colin actually is at least a bit of a monster is intriguing; it gives the book an unexpected edge. At the same time, the narrative doesn’t seem to know how to balance Colin’s characterization between the charmingly bumbling loser and the budding megalomaniac. Without getting into spoilers, the novel keeps wrapping Colin in plot armor so that he can dodge any real trade-offs or personal consequences from his most monstrous choices.
One character ultimately tells Colin: “You’re not a monster […] You’re complicated, sure, but you’re not a monster” (271). I disagree. Colin is a monster, and a pretty simple one — the book just keeps insisting otherwise.
