The Works of Vermin - Hiron Ennes
Set in the city of Tiliard, a place that sits or hangs over the Catoptric river, with thick roots drawing up all kinds of vermin from the undercity, the Laurel Chancellor is planning his wedding to Elspeth. It's going to be quite the occasion with all the hallmarks of the great Revivalist tradition, with an opera built around written by the era's greatest composer Olaf Aufhocker from the cell where he has been held captive for many years producing masterpieces. But the movement (or regime) is under threat from youthful Extemporists, whose values and ideas are not well known, and it becomes clear that there are plans to disrupt the occasion. That doesn't sound too complicated does it? Well it would take a better writer and reviewer than me to do justice to the riches contained within that scenario for Hiron Ennes' astonishing second novel, but I'll see what I can do…
If I'm at a loss of words to fully describe Vermin, the city of Tiliard, the society, the people, the customs, behaviours and cultures that swirl around, it's perhaps because everything here has an extrasensory aspect that is not one familiar to this world. The reason for this enhanced ability is something that may be (I make no excuses for failing to grasp all the peculiarities of this world, but I can assure you that the author has a clear vision) something do with the nature of the 397 species of vermin that infect the city documented in the Borish Manual. Their toxins have different qualities that affect people in different ways, sometimes causing extreme hallucinations, others causing body deformations, melting people, buildings and the ground. One in particular called 'ecdytoxin' has powerful properties that warp reality. Fatal in all but the smallest of doses, for some it can endow them with extraordinary gifts, or perhaps curse them.
Elspeth for example, about to be married to the leader of the brutal ruling Revivalist movement, is a celebrated painter, but she never finishes her canvases and yet the paint takes on a living quality that makes her highly sought after. Playing a more significant role in the novel is Aster, a friend of Elspeth who is contracted to work for the Marshal Revenant, Maximian Sorav, who also has an unusual gift after an almost fatal exposure to ecdytoxtin. As a bioalchemist she has the ability to use perfumes and colours that they can wear to cast influence over and control behaviours towards those around them. And then there is Guy Moulène, who is an exterminator of vermin in the Undercity. Infestations of vermin can erupt suddenly in waves, and the exterminator teams never know what unusual features they might bring. Guy has just encountered one enormous creature that he hasn't seen before which defies description, but which has left its mark on him after a close encounter. There is also a newcomer to the city. From the country. Mallory vant Passant is a little bit different and excites Tiliars society, making acquaintance separately with Aster and Elspeth.
Despite this lengthy attempt at describing some aspects of The Works of Vermin - and I doubt I've got all the details right - I can assure you that I've only scratched the surface of this extraordinary world and there is much more to take place and other features to discover. The wider society of Tiliard, with its history of various regimes and their unusual characteristics and cultural movements is harder to sum up in a few paragraphs, but everything about it seems to be dialled up to 11. There is the constant threat of assassination, executions are rife for even the smallest infractions, the whole place seething with life and culture. Even the opera-ballet is a combat sport here and the music and those who practise it seem to operate on another plane of reality. At times I felt we were in a world similar to Brian Catling's The Vorrh, Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris, Terry Gilliam's Brazil or Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Hard To Be a God, as directed by Alexsei German.
The Works of Vermin is as extraordinary and as confusing as that sounds, but always thrilling and never dull. Just as you think you are starting to make sense of it all and put it together, things have a tendency to explode and the ground shift beneath you - both figuratively for the reader and literally in the novel. Which is essentially what happens to the society as it shifts from one revolution to another, a social and a cultural revolution, each era ushered in by a new pretender for Chancellor and a healthy or unhealthy dose of ecdytoxin. There are conspiracies on both sides of the story; in the Undercity of Guy and the exterminators, in Aster's Overcity and, inevitably since it plays such a part in the culture, those come together in the opera house.
Really, while you can have fun comparing it to various antecedents, the actual quality of the writing ensures that there is nothing else like this. If you are finding the plot and descriptions initially hard to follow, just go with the flow, get lost in the madness and don't take it all too seriously, as there is also quite a bit of humour in the writing. As unreal, imaginative and bewildering it might be, Ennes somehow (I'm not going to say how) simultaneously pulls the rug out from under you at one point and ties it all together in an extraordinary and thrilling way. The vision is breath-taking, the execution exemplary. I can't remember when I last read anything as dazzling and as brilliant as this. There is no question that Hiron Ennes is a gifted writer.
Reading notes: The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes is published by Pan Macmillan/Tor Nightfire on the 16th October 2025. My thanks to the publisher for providing an eBook/Kindle advance proof for review.
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