I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Calamities by Chuck Wendig Series: The Fiends #1
Published by Del Rey on August 18 2026
Genres: Adult, Horror, Urban fantasy
Pages: 592
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop.org
Goodreads
The nitty-gritty: Weird, complex and bloody, The Calamities brings big mob energy to a supernatural tale about demons and those that worship them.
Chuck Wendig never fails to deliver epic, emotionally charged stories, and The Calamities is no exception. This is a big, sprawling, multi-character story that I’m calling “Game of Thrones meets The Dark Tower with a bit of The Godfather thrown in, but make it with demons.” Oh, and a bit of Buffy Season 5. In its almost six-hundred pages, we have multiple plot threads, a fascinating family saga, and some very detailed world building that deserves its own user’s guide. I enjoyed some characters more than others and some side plots more than others, so I can’t say this is my favorite of the author’s books, but at no time while I was reading did I get bored or want to stop—it was very entertaining! It was also…a lot. I was exhausted when I finished, lol.
Mourning Mayne has demon in his blood. In fact, his whole family does. Mourning’s father Hadrian Mayne banished Mourning because he refused to take the soul of Sophie, the woman he loved. Now five years later, Hadrian has requested his presence at the family estate. Hadrian suggests something big is about to happen, and he wants his son back in the fold. But the next day, Hadrian is gone, and even worse, the family fount in the basement—the receptacle filled with the elixir made up of all the taken souls—has been drained dry.
Mourning sets out to find his father and restore the missing elixir—all the other families who draw from it are upset to say the least—and he’s joined by a few old friends, including the aforementioned Sophie and a woman from his past named Key. Mourning is also having nightmares about a weird towering building in a cornfield, and he later discovers his visions are connected to an artist named Quinn K. As the many puzzles pieces begin to come together, Mourning and his companions are drawn closer and closer to a terrible truth.
That quick summary is barely the tip of the iceberg, but you get the idea. This is a world filled with powerful families who keep their secrets to success in the basement. Mourning and the others are called fiends, and they are able to make bargains with humans in exchange for their souls. These souls become part of a family’s power, and when they drink the “soul elixir,” which is like a powerful drug, they experience all sorts of cool stuff, including the ability to heal themselves (and even pull themselves back from the brink of death.) Wendig spent quite a bit of time creating this world, with many different families who are descended from specific demons, and the most powerful of those families have founts on their properties. In fact, it was so intricately detailed, that I wish the author had included a family tree or a list of characters and how they’re related in the book, it would have been very helpful!
The chapters alternate among several POV characters, each with their own agenda. Key was one of my favorites. She’s tied to a family based in Portugal, the Dantalions, and wow they were scary. It doesn’t help that she’s been hiding secrets from them, and she only takes souls because she doesn’t know how to get out. Key has a relationship with a tattoo artist named Lucinda, and something happens between them early in the story that was such a fun idea that it could have been its own book. Quinn was an interesting character, another innocent caught up in someone else’s terrible schemes. And of course there’s no shortage of awful characters, all driven by greed.
The Calamities is very dark, which shouldn’t surprise anyone given the subject matter, and Wendig’s stellar prose sets an almost cloying, claustrophobic tone. This is a story full of blood, walls made of flesh, and humans bleeding on a napkin to make a deal with a demon. Speaking of the writing, I love Chuck Wendig’s literary style and I think it works really well here. Yes, he’s verbose at times and honestly, some things could have easily been cut (one character goes on for two paragraphs describing his beloved gun, lol). And yes, there are story tangents that felt a bit indulgent. But for me, it was all part of the mood.
Ultimately, this isn’t a happy story. Things are sort of resolved at the end, but I wasn’t left with a feeling of relief or any sort of joy. But that’s sort of what I expected from a Chuck Wendig book, and for me, everything worked more than it didn’t. The second book in the series, Chaos Reigns, has already been announced, and I am very curious to see how everything plays out.
Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.
Leave a Reply