On a seemingly normal day in Oleander, Kansas, five people attacked anyone and everyone around them, using whatever weapons were at their disposal. Afterward, all the murderers killed themselves – except for one: Cass Porter. Cass doesn’t remember killing, but she knows she’s done it. She doesn’t know why she would have done such a thing, but she knows she’s a monster. She’s locked away in a mental hospital, the sentence she received instead of prison, until the tornado hits.

No one understands why five people suddenly became murderers, killing people at random. When a tornado rips through Oleander, it destroys much of the town and kills off a great number of its population. The town is quarantined – for its safety, supposedly. The tornado also unleashes something inside of Oleander’s surviving residents. They start to turn on each other. Small slights turn into bigger transgressions. Religion and small-town politics collide. People start dying again at their neighbors’ hands, only this time, no one seems to care. In fact, many of the residents seem to regard it as business as usual. It turns out the Killing Day wasn’t the worst thing to happen to Oleander; what came after the tornado will be much, much worse.

The story follows several teenagers in the town (a football player, the sister of a murdered child, a girl from the meth-dealing family, etc.), Cass among them, shifting perspectives but keeping everything third person past tense. Their stories overlap in different ways, and they do all end up together near the end (more or less).

This is a tough one to evaluate. It’s not a “jump out at you scary” type of horror novel. I wouldn’t say that I was ever on the edge of my seat, itching to hear what would happen next. It did feel a bit long to me. I think Wasserman sacrificed pacing in order to give us more in-depth character development. That’s not a bad thing, on the whole – but it’s not a choice I personally liked. This is not a quick read.

The key question, the one Wasserman clearly wants the listener/reader to ponder, long after the book is over, is “Did these people do what they did because they always had it in them, or did something external turn them into something they never were?” It’s a question the surviving characters themselves address directly, with different theories. No conclusions are given. We’re deliberately left to wonder. That is the power of the book – and also its most horrifying aspect, I think. What if all your neighbors, your friends, your family harbor the ability to do these terrible things? What if all it takes is something to set it off – and no one would even recognize the difference?

The body count is high. Wasserman doesn’t shy away from killing off her main characters, some in particularly horrible ways. It does make the whole listening experience quite tense, since it’s never clear who’s going to make it to the next chapter – and who’s going to end up burned alive. It doesn’t ever feel exploitative, though, thanks to the time and care Wasserman has taken in creating her characters. They don’t all like each other – and they shouldn’t all like each other – but they’re people you’ll recognize. What they do to each other – both good and bad – is what we all do to each other. Even the horrible things start with a few minor things and escalate.

Kelly’s read this one too, and she’d be able to speak much more to the Midwest setting. I grew up in Southern suburbia and have lived in a large-ish city plus a rural/suburban Southern hybrid, and none of them seem close to what I’ve seen a small town in the Midwest described as. Oleander, Kansas seems very suffocating, even before it’s quarantined – and I’m sure this metaphor will not be lost on teens.

Give this to teens who appreciate thoughtful horror and a more leisurely pace. I’d recommend it on audio as well. Reader Mark Deakins gives the story the appropriate amount of gravitas without making it seem melodramatic. Though I do have to mention that one of his female characters sounds a bit like a character from South Park at times…

Finished copy received from the publisher.

Though we don’t have a formal horror series planned for October, Kimberly and I will be featuring a number of reviews and other fun features highlighting horror this month. We’re going to kick it all off with a dual review of a horror novel that generated a ton of discussion between the two of us because it does precisely what a good horror novel should do: it leaves you with a lot more questions than answers, and those questions beg to be talked about. The two of us enjoyed Engines of the Broken World so much that we invited the author to participate in an interview. So whet your appetite on the review, and then we’ll bring you an interview with Jason Vanhee tomorrow.

Kimberly Says . . .












Merciful and Gospel Truth’s mother has just died. They live on a farm in the country, and it’s been cold – and getting colder – for a long time. This means they can’t bury their mother in the hard ground. Instead, they put her beneath the kitchen table, which they know is wrong.

The Minister, the talking cat who lives with them, guiding their actions on the path of righteousness, tells them this is wrong. They must bury their mother, even if it means venturing out into the encroaching fog, the fog which eats away at their neighbors’ bodies, leaving nothingness behind.

But they don’t listen to the Minister. They leave their mother’s body unburied, and Merciful realizes what a mistake they’ve made when she hears her dead mother’s voice speaking to her. Her mother – or whatever is inhabiting her mother’s body – has something to do with the fog closing in on the farmhouse, closing out the rest of the world. The Minister is also involved somehow, and one of the greatest joys of watching this story unfold are the ways Vanhee leads the reader down so many different paths. What is the true nature of the Minister, of the fog, of Merciful’s mother? You’ll change your mind several times over the course of the story, and you may still feel like you don’t have all the answers at the end.

I like it when authors take risks with their content. There’s quite a lot of religion in this book, but it doesn’t come close to resembling what most would consider “Christian fiction.” Because Vanhee plays with Christianity in the way he does, twisting it into something one might call horrifying, I expect a great many readers would find his book offensive.

I love that. I don’t love it just because people are offended; I love that these kinds of stories are not off-limits despite that. I’ve written about this a little bit when I discussed Misfit and The Obsidian Blade. By experimenting with a religion so many of us subscribe to, Vanhee makes his story all the more terrifying, I think, and more personal as well.   

Engines is an apocalyptic story, but it’s markedly different from any other apocalyptic story you’ve read recently, I assure you. For one thing, it’s a small, intimate story. The cast of characters numbers six, and it diminishes quickly. The setting consists of the Truth home and a neighbor’s home, plus the land between them. This, too, diminishes quickly. The book gives off a very claustrophobic feel. Its huge idea – the end of the world – may seem at odds with the smallness of its cast and setting, but that’s what makes it stand out, and it’s a large part of what makes it so effective.



It’s also incredibly disturbing. One of my favorite moments is actually something I feared was an ARC mistake at first, involving the deliciously creepy and ambiguous Minister. (The Minister may be the most brilliant thing about the entire book.) If you choose to pick up this book after reading our review (and I hope you do), look for a moment where the Minister’s true nature becomes even more ambiguous than before – and then let me know if you were as creeped out by it as I was.

I loved this book for its creativity, for its daring, and for its writing – which is concise, atmospheric, and doesn’t waste a single word. This is an excellent choice for readers looking for something that will stretch them a little, something that’s different from anything they’ve read lately. I also think it would be a great pick to re-energize anyone going through a reading slump.





Kelly Says . . . 


A good scary novel in my mind leaves you wondering at the end, and I find it particularly enjoyable to wonder whether or not the ending is hopeful or hopeless. Vanhee captures this perfectly in Engines of the Broken World, as we’re left with a world that’s been literally shattered and destroyed. But Merciful Truth is such a trouper throughout the story, making some gut-wrenching decisions, and at the end, I couldn’t help wonder if the world has hardened her enough to make her actually feel hope or if she’s finally succumbed to the truth of the world in which she lives: it’s hopeless. Period. Because even though she has the chance to live now, the chance to get out and do things on her own terms, there are lingering forces in the world around her which she has no control over.

The fog isn’t going away. If anything, it continues to grow closer. The ending of Vanhee’s novel was absolutely perfect and just the way I prefer my scary stories because of this. I don’t want a cut and dry answer. I want to leave wondering. But I want to be left wondering enough that I also don’t want to reenter that world and discover an ending. I like that discomfort. I like there to not be a pretty bow at the end.

Kim and I talked a long time about the role of The Minister in this book when we both finished, and we’ve each our own take on it. I believe The Minister’s role was as the false prophet in the story: it’s a role he (it?) sort of takes on himself and yet it’s a role that both Merciful and Gospel choose to believe in when the times become exceedingly difficult for them. And it’s through their belief and worship of The Minister that their world becomes more confusing and challenging, rather than one in which they can believe stronger. For me, the role of The Minister as false idol/prophet came to a head when Merciful has to make a huge choice about taking control of the situation within the house and spirits haunting it — spoiler here — she has to kill The Minister. And with that comes the freedom to move on with her life and make her own choices without his guidance and his judgment of them. This act of agency was empowering for her, rather than one done out of desperation, though desperation certainly aided in her choice.

Overall, Vanhee’s novel is a lot of fun. Yes, I said fun. There’s definitely a body count, and there’s definitely a lot of scary stuff that happens within it, but what makes it fun is that it’s ballsy. Engines plays upon a lot of taboo topics and does so without backing off them. And there’s a cat who talks and is (in my mind) a jerk. It’s satisfying and rewarding as a reader since there are no cheap ways out. There’s bloodshed, there’s murder of family, and there’s possession, parallel worlds, and as a reader, you’ll find yourself feeling a bit paranoid.

I think this book will make some people angry because it does these things. But I think the real element of horror in this book comes because of that: if we strip away the sanctity of things in our world — death, religion, family, pets — and we instead look at them in another way, of course we’re going to be scared. And we should be.

Pass Engines of the Broken World off to your mature YA readers who want a challenging but satisfying scary book. This one should work well for those who love Stephen King, as well as those who love a story about other worldly spirits.