bugs, hold the bunnies

I like maximalist things, I think. The concept appeals to me. But I keep reading books in the New Weird tradition and coming away disappointed. Last year, I read Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I forced my way through all 640 pages and I really disliked it. Trust me when I say, when I spotted THE WORKS OF VERMIN by Hiron Ennes last year and excitedly marked it as To Read months before the release date, I didn't know it was going to garner comparisons to Perdido Street Station. The comparison is apt, and not to VERMIN's favor. Let's review what I said about Perdido Street Station last year: "I really really don’t need in-depth explanations of how the little machine contraptions work or where exactly a building is located or how to get there. Over-explanation makes everything less clear, not more. Leave space for my imagination."

Themes are good, execution is lacking. Precisely, the maximalist worldbuilding, narrative twists, and misplaced character focus drag down an otherwise compelling political and thematic framework.

I considered linking to the synopsis for THE WORKS OF VERMIN here, but I just read it and... it bears very little resemblance to the actual story. So, let me attempt a brief explainer: in the underbelly of a rotten city, an exterminator hunts bugs and gets in over his head protecting his young sister; in the palaces of a rotten city, a young perfumer falls in limerence with an out-of-town dandy with mysterious motives.

Let's start with what's good about this book.

The big monster-creature-vermin in VERMIN ingests paintings and musical instruments and statues (anything of beauty, really) and turns it into a toxin that kills or deforms anything it touches, animate or inanimate. Some people die fast, some people die slowly, and some people get weird powers that also kill them (very) slowly. You have your pick of metaphors here, from generative AI to corporatized franchises to social media algorithms sucking up the world and regurgitating it back into often-willing mouths. Let's just say it's all three and then some. It's a compelling, relevant metaphor with good bones to hang a story on.

Ennes also explicitly links artistic revolutions to political revolutions in VERMIN. History is told through theater, and the history of Tiliard changes as often as a new Dramaturge Laureate is named. The Chancellor invades a neighboring city simply to steal the brilliant blue dye produced nowhere else. The dictators are deposed every 15-20 years by a new crop of artists with heretical ideas about beauty, and the revolutionaries are known not by their political aims, but by their artistic aims. Revivalists, Neo-Repressionists, Extemporists... all violent revolutionaries, all artists. One painter cries tears of crystal blood and is blind to everything but beauty, another character excels at extracting natural oils to create perfumes that control other people, a third character embroiders with skeins of his own flesh that remove toxins... it's all very maximalist and, as you'll see, a bit overwhelming. This book is full of ideas. I wish some of them had been saved for another project.

setting

Apparently, the setting of THE WORKS OF VERMIN is a gigantic rotting tree stump. And no, not in the 'miniaturize the Magic School Bus' way. As far as I can tell, the characters are human-sized and the stump is as big as a city. I did not realize Tiliard was made of tree until many chapters into the book. "Del," you cry, "How could you not understand Tiliard is a tree stump? This is the first sentence, after all: 'Tiliard, known as the Deathbed of Tulips, straddles the river gorge like a half-submerged stump.'"

Well, I put to you that if I wrote, "Del Winters, known as the Deathrattle of Lilacs, walked down the street like a human," you might wonder if I were an alien or an interdimensional creature. You can be either like a thing or you can be the thing, but you can't be both. So, for much of THE WORKS OF VERMIN, I couldn't conceptualize the setting because the first page told me it was like a stump (and a bridge, and a mesa, and a mirage) without solidifying that it was a tree stump (and neither a bridge, nor a mesa, nor a mirage).

The under-city neighborhoods are connected root nodules such as the Root of Abrupt Ends, and the over-city roads are concentric rings. This giant tree-stump-city looms over the river Catoptric flowing with water that catches fire. Ennes builds the full picture of the setting over many chapters. I prefer to get the picture sketched up-front with the details filled in later. Here, I puzzled over the broad picture while getting details I couldn't slot into a shape I couldn't trace. I'm still not sure how a tree stump straddles a river, unless we're talking about a mangrove, and I didn't get mangrove vibes from Tiliard. And no, I don't know why the water catches fire. Maximalist worldbuilding demands maximalist details, and eventually you struggle to find the story amidst the weird.

prose

The maximalist worldbuilding is but one factor detracting from the story and characters. VERMIN also suffers from an abundance of filtering phrases and the director-author approach to character movement. Interiority is in short supply, characters observe and wonder, and bodily movements and actions are excruciatingly detailed. Here are some examples:

"The woman bows her feathered hat, conceals her derringer in her purse, and scuttles away."
"Sorav wonders if she will come with Mallory."
"He observes the topography of the city from the highest tower of the Palas."
"Mallory rests a hand over his eyes. Under his small, sorrowful sighs, Aster can make out a hint of laughter."

The author is directing actors, here, not digging into why is this character like this. This director-writing has plagued most of the recently published novels I've read. Filter phrases like wonders, observes, and can make out litter these sentences and distance the reader from the point-of-view of the character. The painstaking blow-by-blow of the woman with the gun is stilted and overbearingly exact. Unless they're defusing a bomb or fucking, I don't need to know where both hands are and even then it's questionable. In a novel, you worm your way into the characters' brain folds more than any other art form, and I'm disappointed when authors don't take that leap. I watch enough movies. When I read a novel, I want to read a novel, not a screenplay.

However, THE WORKS OF VERMIN is not wholly without reading pleasure. Here's my favorite paragraph:

"She laughs, imagining him sailing to the ends of the Catoptric, scouring the boiling doldrums for its mouth, a passage into the acid sea; she imagines him standing proud atop his disintegrating ship with a tricorn hat. Or, better, a cap of hellrat fur, dragging his hapless brother over the Sawteeth and into the fume wastes, leaping over peaks so sharp they can sever a bird from its wings. Maybe he will instead don a sun hat and climb west into the high deserts, the endless maze of manzanitas and the necrotizing fungus that proliferates there."

This paragraph combines characterization (how does Aster see Mallory) with sparse but precise worldbuilding (what exists at the four edges of this world) in a few evocative, lyrical sentences. True, the 'imagining/imagines' is still filtering Aster's perspective. And yes, it's surrounded by awful dialogue I won't subject you to. However, this paragraph suggests a better novel in the shadows. Ennes also excels at naming things. The fire-water river is the Catoptric, the jail is Strangleroot, and the moon cycles through seasons known as Mint Moon, Acid Moon, and Rut Moon. Some phrases are delightful in the moment and even more delightful in retrospect, such as: "He is a gentleman, or a decent counterfeit." I've read many books with no redeeming qualities, so I'm happy when even frustrating books like VERMIN have some sparkle.

character

THE WORKS OF VERMIN is about transformation, so I'm frustrated it centers on the two most static, boring characters. Guylag is a debt-riddled exterminator who wants to buy his little sister's passage out of the undercity. Aster is an (adult) orphan with centipede-induced tuberculosis who concocts pheromonal perfumes for Tiliard's military leader. Guylag suffers for his loved ones, and Aster gets dragged along on adventures by her more interesting friends Mallory and supposed-crush Elspeth. I say "supposed-crush" because Max is always telling us Aster is hopelessly obsessed with Elspeth, but I never once felt that from Aster's headspace. Aster's feelings towards Elspeth read far more in the 'effortlessly perfect best friend I can never measure up to' direction. Character voice doesn't really vary from character-to-character, anyways.

I also never worried Guylag or Aster would make the wrong choice. Things happen to them and they have very little that's interesting to say about it. Their narrative counterparts Mallory and Maximian are much more intriguing. Mallory and Maximian have real tension to their character arcs; they undergo deep transformations in morality, physicality, and philosophy, and it all happens off-page. Unfortunately, the narrative twist demands the reader stay ignorant of Mallory's and Maximian's mirror-reversed arcs. Ennes could have explored contrasting choices in masculinity and violence with Maximian and Mallory, but the twist kills that in the cradle. Their brief point-of-view sections feel like standing on the outside of an inside joke. The narrative structure might work for readers who don't get the reveal until the third act, as intended. If you figure out the structure in the first act, the tension dissipates early. Neither Guylag's and Aster's passivity nor Mallory's and Maximian's vague-thoughts can support a novel's length of story.

bonus round

When I explained to my spouse the contours of this review, they asked if I would hold any books they ever wrote to the same critical standard. I said I'd hold their books to whatever standard kept me married.

Up next: I'm going to actually finish this book about the American Revolution by Rick Atkinson that I've been reading since last August. I only have ~200 pages left! I'm giving myself a July 4 deadline.

Del