TL;DR Review: Razor sharp and insanely grimdark. Cynical, cruel, manipulative, and absolutely spellbinding characters.
Synopsis:
All Petre Mercy wanted was a good old-fashioned dramatic exit from his life as a prince. But it’s been five years since he fled home on a cyborg horse. Now the King – his Dad – is dead – and Petre has to decide which heir to pledge his thyroid-powered sword to.
As the youngest in a set of quadruplets, he’s all too aware that the line of succession is murky. His siblings are on the precipice of power grabs, and each of them want him to pick their side.
If Petre has any hope of preventing civil war, he’ll have to avoid one sibling who wants to take him hostage, win back another’s trust after years of rivalry and resentment, and get an audience with a sister he’s been avoiding for five years.
Before he knows it, he’s plunged himself into a web of intrigue and a world of strange, unnatural inventions just to get to her doorstep.
Family reunions can be a special form of torture.
Full Review:
I went into The Fall is All There Is prepared for a grimdark story, but what I got was SO MUCH GRIMDARKER than I could ever have imagined.
You’d think the gritty, post-apocalyptic world—filled with cyborg horses, thyroid-powered swords, guns made using vocal cords that shoot screams, forests of metal, human experimentation, cybernetic limbs, and violent ghost-infested corpses—would be the most fascinating part of this story. But you’d be so wrong.
Oh, make no mistake, I wanted to know everything about the world through which Petre Mercy ran, rode, stumbled, and floundered. I would have loved an entire 15-book series exploring a world destroyed by not one, but two annihilation-level events and the destruction left behind.
But the core of this story—its throbbing heart and wicked soul—is its characters.
From the first page, we’re immediately introduced to just how grim the world is for Petre Mercy. A mother who sought to “fix” his autism with all manner of drugs and experiments, including sewing his mouth shut at one point. Quadruplet siblings who saw Petre as nothing more than an annoyance to be shoved aside or a threat to their power. A father who fit the “cruel tyrannical King” persona to a tee. And his “best friend” who also happens to be a disgraced doctor leading the charge into human experimentation and harnessing human bodies for cyborg augmentation.
It’s instantly evident just how unreliable a narrator Petre is. Every sentence is colored by his perspective and years of damage at the hands of his family, every cynical thought and selfish feeling bleeding into the narrative. We are under no delusions that Petre is anything close to “good”, but he’s sympathetic enough we’re immediately on his side, no matter how petulant, childish, arrogant, self-serving, or inane the choices he makes.
This story is a visceral—and horrifyingly realistic—look at just how much harm can come from the hands of one’s own family. Well-meaning or not, those closest to us can do the most damage. And that damage can follow us well into our adult lives and distort everything and everyone.
What makes The Fall Is All There Is so amazing is the fact that though we should hate this character, we just can’t stop reading. We want to see just how messed up his family dynamic is when we’re introduced to each of his siblings one by one, as he’s dragged home to be sucked back into the quagmire that is the politics of House Mercy. There isn’t a single happy moment in this book, just various shades of unpleasantness. And yet that is so utterly addicting. We have to keep reading to find out what new memory of past damage or harm inflicted will rear its ugly head.
The writing is razor-sharp, with not a single word wasted and whip-tight dialogue that feeds you just enough to give insight into the characters’ without offering explanation. Every word out of a character’s mouth is open for multiple interpretations and leaves you wondering what is really being said. Before long, you can’t stop looking for the manipulation and deceit and misdirection coloring every word, and nothing can ever be taken at face value—a true testament to the author’s craft.
The Fall Is All There Is isn’t a pleasant read, but it’s absolutely spellbinding. Like ground glass laced with the most addictive narcotic in existence, this book will drag you kicking and screaming and bleeding from page to page, but you won’t be able to stop reading until it’s done.
Truly a masterpiece of grimdark fiction that I can’t recommend highly enough!
Leave a Reply