Fiendish was written by Brenna Yovanoff and first published in 2014. It is a work of magical realism with horror elements, set in a small American town with a history of surreal and sinister occurrences. The novel stands alone, so you don’t have to read any of the author’s other work to fully appreciate it.
It started when seven-year-old Clementine discovered a weird tomato in the garden, but she remembers little after that. She was hidden in the cellar with her eyes sewn shut and left to sleep, existing in a dreamlike state as roots began to grow around her. It was ten years until she was found by Eric Fisher and freed from her prison, and Clementine found herself in a world that hardly remembered her.
In the town of New South Bend, you are either normal or crooked. The crooked live on the outskirts and are the families with old blood, in tune with the humors of dirt, creek, fire, air and fools light, and forever connected to the mysterious energies that bubble up from the Hollow. The crooked live in constant fear of these energies growing out of control. This happened once ten years before, triggering the Reckoning and resulting in the normal folks forming a lynch mob to put them back in their place.
Following Clementine’s rescue, strange things begin to happen again. The hollow grows restless, monstrous catfish appear in the creek and fiends – lesser gods of old – are seen wandering the woods. Clementine and her new friends know that they are the only ones who can bring the old magic under control but they need to do so quickly. People are starting to notice and it won’t be long before the frightened townsfolk turn on them once again…
Arkham Reviews 