The Fourth Whore
E.V. Knight
Published by Raw Dog Screaming Press

A sprawling tale. Mythological, historical, biblical - all of it. 220 pages felt like 500 in the best way. The story was broad and epic.

I love horror fiction that pulls interesting bits of history into the story. This one pulled from many different outside influences and wrapped them all in a pretty narrative.

Biblical - Genesis
Mythological - Lilith
Historical - Salem witch trials
Current Events - American economics, poverty and crime in Detroit, current political climate, women's reproductive rights
FEMINISM

Does that help to explain what I mean when I say how vast the story was?

Our characters are drawn from all over those topics. The Creator, Adam, Eve, Lilith, Lucifer, The Angel Of Death, Tituba - again, you see what I am saying?

A lot of this was WOW for me - all that going on and it all fitting together so well.

Kenzi is tough female character fighting for survival in drug and poverty riddled Detroit. She does what she can to eat and pay the rent. When her mother uses the money she was setting aside for those things on drugs, Kenzi is beaten nearly to death. Right then, right at that moment, the story explodes, setting off a reaction that opens all these paths I described above. We are set on a course of war and plague of apocalyptic proportions. It's a tough call - I mean, I want Lilith to get her revenge, but we are talking apocalypse here. There is a sweeping trail of destruction with innocents and not-so-innocents falling along the way.

If you follow my reviews at all you know that I love tidbits. Tidbits are those little pieces of a book that stand alone from the story. It can be a memorable occurrence, or just a pretty arrangement of words, or something more personal. This one had a couple.

1. There is one part where the current president is addressing the Plague and it sounded just like what is happening right now/real life with the current health/medical concerns surrounding the Coronavirus.

2. There is one part where Kenzi is checking out the music in someone's apartment. Completely unrelated to the story, yeah? But the music that was cued up was the exact album that was on my turntable at the time (I will go more into this and show you in my video review ) but what a coincidence. What a cool little "tidbit".

This was my first experience with Knight's writing. In the intro, it talked about how part of getting to this book was throwing away a whole semester's worth of work, a lot of rewrites and path changes. The hard work shines through in the final product. It is easy to see that a ton went into bringing this book to life.  

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Link to purchase:
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Review by Well Read Beard

Twitter: @WellReadBeard

I received this book from publishers Raw Dog Screaming Press for review consideration.

YouTube:          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44sV-U_HfGU&t=2s 

INTERVIEW WITH EV KNIGHT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfRFROb-dho&t=572s