Review: The Monsters Among Us by Kent Priore

CW: Child abuse (including sexual, although not graphic), offensive to multiple religions

At first I thought this book was playing with gnosticism, and in a way it is. Certainly, it plays with the idea that “God” is actually an evil being and the world is governed by evil.

Priore, however, takes it a slight step further, casting all religion as bad and deceptive. All gods are evil and must be destroyed to create a world in which humanity can thrive.

This pushes it past gnosticism and into antitheism. None of this, of course, speaks to the book’s quality, but I do want to caution the devout.

Our protagonist has been raised by demons and trained to become a demon when he dies. Unfortunately for Satan, Seth has quite the problem with following orders. We follow him through a world of demons, angels that are no better, and twisted mythology. I’d call this horror more than dark fantasy, although YMMV. There’s certainly some body horror in there, as well as a lot of violence and death.

Priore is not a bad writer, but I found this book kind of the antitheist equivalent of religious fiction. It felt as if it was trying to convert people, and that bothers me regardless of the philosophy being espoused. It’s also hard to write an antitheistic book in our world without a touch of antisemitism, and Priore rather fails that challenge.

That said, I suspect some people would find some enjoyment from it. It’s certainly well written.

But I did not find it enjoyable and I suspect you have to share the author’s mindset on religion to truly appreciate it. Recommended for people who aren’t bothered by anti-religious stuff.

Review: Blue Lotus: Dawn by Sophia Xiang

And in complete contrast, another book which clearly reveals the religion of the author. In this case, Buddhism.

Xiang makes it hard to find anything out about her other than the fact that she’s Buddhist. Her Facebook is bilingual and I suspect from this book that her first language is not English, but a dialect of Chinese (I’m sorry, I can’t tell which one). The copyright page indicates that her publisher is in Louisiana.

The use of language and the way the story unfolds are very non-Western. But this book doesn’t resemble what I’ve seen come out of China recently either…it’s not hard SF (the author calls it SF, but it reads, in many ways, more like fantasy) and it’s also not exactly a cultivation novel. It has elements of that genre, but there is nothing of wuxia here. Instead, there is a peculiar unfolding of cosmology with a trace of romance.

If you aren’t used to Asian storytelling you might get a bit lost; Xiang makes no effort to make this approachable to a western audience. And that’s where its charm lies. The word I would actually use to describe this book is “pretty.”

I do have one contact warning. Do not read on an empty stomach! There are a lot of food descriptions in this book and it might make you want to find the closest dim sum joint.

If you want something pretty, strange (to western eyes), and which might just make you think a bit about other cultures and modes of storytelling, I recommend this book.

I received free copies of these books for review and award consideration purposes.