The Upstream Writer: Reader's Review: "Hemlock" by Jesse Teller

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Reader's Review: "Hemlock" by Jesse Teller

Synopsis from Amazon:

The busiest pirate bay in Perilisc is newly infested with vampires. These monsters will soon overrun the world, but the Manhunters must try to stop them in secret. Agents of the king are hunting Rayph's vigilante crew. With one false step, they could all end up at a royal execution.

>>>>>>>>>

My Review:

A little over three years ago, I started this trilogy after having my introduction to grimdark fantasy well in hand, and enjoying the gratuitous use of Avengers-like superpowers in addition to all the violence and grittiness of your typical grimdark.

Then last fall I started reading the second book--and realized I'd forgotten a lot about where the story was at and what the characters were up to. I've even fallen out of reading grimdark in recent months... it just hasn't been something I've read in a while.

I think that was my first problem when approaching this book. Second, where Song was introductory, more flashy and action-oriented, bringing the readers into a world they hadn't encountered before, genre-blending in a way that few have tried... Hemlock just gets DARK. VERY QUICKLY. Perhaps even more horror-leaning with its subject matter. Last time it was sorcerers and thugs and dark alleyways. Now it's vampires and ruthless pirates and seedy brothels.

The world-building is still on-point, and the descriptions are absolutely gut-wrenching. One thing I found a little disappointing, and probably the reason it took me so long to get through it, is that it didn't do as good a job of referring back to the first book as a sequel ought to do. There was just so much going on in this book with characters that I may or may not have remembered (if indeed I was supposed to remember) from the first book, I could see how there might not have been time to rehash previous events, especially if what happened before would not necessarily be relevant to what is now current. But that just meant that only a few characters had any sort of context attached to them, and the rest, well... it was like walking into a conversation between friends that you'd only known in passing--they're carrying on like they've known each other for years, but you're stuck trying to get yourself oriented and acquainted with them. The battle scenes were suitably action-packed and there were some emotional moments in the plot that I found very touching. The torture scenes I didn't entirely appreciate. The new side character, Aaron the Marked, was a highlight of this book, and I enjoyed his arc very much.

Suffice to say, Hemlock does what it sets out to do, and for that I can rate it ****4 STARS****. I might be falling out of my initial taste for it--the glamour of the first book has worn off, it seems, and now that the story seems to be sliding down a slippery slope of increasingly savage imagery and nightmare fuel, and fewer characters I am drawn to in the main cast, I am less inclined to finish off the story--maybe things might have developed differently if I had read the whole trilogy all at once, rather than splitting it up like this.

If you're an avid fan of horror and grimdark, and things like intense gore and violence described in vivid detail don't scare you, then you might pick up the Manhunters Trilogy for a new world to explore.

Further Reading: (Epic World-Building/Vampires/Sword-And-Sorcery/Dark Fantasy)