Someone You Can Build a Nest In (John Wiswell)

Someone You Can Build a Nest In
John Wiswell
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror/Romance
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: When monster hunters wake Shesheshen from a peaceful winter hibernation in her ruined manorhouse lair, she is most upset. It's enough of a chore building a body from scraps of metal and remains of previous meals when fully alert, let alone when she's been slumbering deep in the hot spring pools for months. Still, she manages to kill and consume one of them, a truly horrendous oaf of a human in gilded armor - but not before she is struck by a diabolical crossbow bolt loaded with toxic rosemary. The wound makes it impossible to return to sleep, driving her out of her lair in search of food and straight into more trouble that nearly sees her killed. But she is rescued and healed by, of all things, a human woman named Homily.
It is clear that Homily has no idea who, or what, Shesheshen is. All the woman knows is that, like herself, she's an outcast. The monster is not used to being treated with anything but fear or anger by people, and doesn't know what to make of prey that does not act at all like prey. But, despite herself, she begins to grow fond of Homily - even as her own nature and instincts may spell doom for both of them, moreso when she learns the truth of who Homily is and why she has come to these lands.

REVIEW: It took me some time to consider what I thought of this book and how to rate it. Blending grotesque monster horror with romance and the dysfunctional dynamics of abusive family relationships, it generally works more than it doesn't, but also can't seem to help wallowing in its own pain and trauma and broken lives and sheer graphic gruesomeness.
From the opening, the reader is placed in the point of view of Shesheshen, an amorphous shapeshifting creature of indeterminate nature, as a band of humans insists on picking a fight. She may consume the odd human now and again, using their organs and bones to give herself a temporary solid form, but she's far from the rabid demonic "wyrm" the hunters insist she is. She even has her own pet, a massive blue bear named Blueberry, whom she lovingly feeds entrails to after dealing with her unpleasant visitors. The gilded knight is from a noble family more than well known to her, who seem to have made her extermination their personal mission - but it's not until she is befriended by the ignorant young woman Homily that Shesheshen begins to understand why... and why just hiding out in her lair and hoping the whole matter blows over is not an option. Shesheshen struggles to understand humanity in general, but it's not until she is rescued and forced to spend time among them while not actively stalking her next meal that she feels compelled to make a genuine effort to connect... efforts complicated by her own instincts to not just feed, but find a suitable host body into which to place her parasitic egg sac. (Shesheshen tragically misunderstands her own childhood relationship with her "father", mistaking his "gifts" of warmth and shelter and, later, food for genuine love.) The more the monster learns of Homily's family, the less she likes about what they did to break the woman, and the more protective she becomes, but the lie upon which their budding relationship is built is a ticking bomb (one of many) that must inevitably blow up in Shesheshen's face.
Though there are some interesting notions and initially intriguing characters in this story, at some point it all begins to feel flat and stretched, kicking the reader in the face with Homily's over-the-top abusive family (and the woman's own traumatized reactions), how the monster Shesheshen is ultimately a more humane and just "human" than the flesh-and-blood species, how the real monsters are the ones wearing crowns and bearing swords and destroying the people and the land in pursuit of their own petty grievances, and how love can manifest in myriad ways among myriad people, even people who have been broken by those who should love them most. The story also never resists a chance to bathe in guts and gore and the inhuman biology of Shesheshen. The final parts in particular end up feeling drawn out, part of what made me shave the half-star off the Good rating.

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