The Calamities

Mourning Mayne is a fiend, a half-human, half-demon hybrid. As head of Agares House, his family is one of the oldest and most influential among the fiend broods that exist worldwide, hiding among us in plain sight. The fiends capture the souls of regular humans, granting them wishes in exchange. Those souls feed a fount of elixir, which the fiends addictively consume and which gives them enhanced powers, healing abilities, and extended lives. "We create the debts—and we collect on them. We sell dreams for the price of one's soul. And that power strengthens us."

Mourning hasn't been in touch with his family in years, however. He was exiled, cast off to Seattle for a life of parties and debauchery, but removed from the inner workings of the Mayne family. But then he is summoned home, and his father, Hadrian Mayne, confides in him that Mourning has been tapped to take over the family.

It's a role Mourning wants no part of, but the responsibility accelerates when his father disappears the next morning. More disturbing is that Hadrian has drained the family fount of all its elixir. That main fount feeds the smaller founts of countless fiend families; without their taste of the addictive elixir, they will soon be knocking on the Mayne household door, proverbial pitchforks at the ready.

Mourning is at a loss for how to handle the situation, but he stumbles upon drawings of a strange structure that has also, eerily, been showing up in his dreams. Short on leads, Mourning decides the drawings and his dreams must be a clue, and he goes in search of the artist, "Quinn K," to try to unlock the mystery. Along the way, he partners with an old friend from Seattle and an infamous fiend serial killer—now reformed—formerly known as The Cleaver. They form a ragtag bunch intent on saving the world... or possibly causing its destruction.

The book is long, and it's deliberately paced in the setup that leads to the ultimate focus. While locating Hadrian Mayne is part of it, there is a bigger mystery at play, and it eventually comes to light that Quinn K is truly the key to unlocking everything that follows. It's an interesting genre mashup of horror and fantasy, allowing author Chuck Wendig to put his most deranged thoughts on the page. There is definitely no shortage of gore sprinkled throughout ("He'd never felt closer to someone as when he was tearing them open, cuddling their viscera, and sucking the soul from the wet chambers of their still-beating heart"), along with some truly disgusting creature creations. I don't read a ton of horror, so that was a bit much for me, but aside from the most grotesque sections, there was a lot I liked. The action sequences Wendig authors are top-notch, and the overall premise is interesting once you figure out what the heck is going on.

The Calamities—not to be confused with The Calamity Club, which is a drastically different novel and genre!—is a dark mashup of horror and fantasy and a bit of mystery, and I may be one of the only people on the planet to read both it and The Calamity Club. The Venn diagram of people who will also enjoy both has very little overlap... but I am weirdly in those intersecting circles. I was reminded a bit of Middlegame by Seanan McGuire, in the sense that both books deliver a richly created world-within-our-world where you'll probably be confused for the first half of the book, but once you figure things out you're rewarded for your persistence. It also reads a bit like a more deranged version of Joe Hill or Stephen King. The Calamities is Book 1 of a planned duology, with the second book, Chaos Reigns, potentially landing within the next year per Wendig's blog. I liked the start of the series enough to stick with it, and now that I know what sort of stomach-churning gore Wendig drops into his prose, I can plan accordingly. If the premise sounds like your type of thing, I think you'll enjoy this book, though it certainly won't be for everyone.