"Tonally, this book was almost completely different from Dune, not to mention about half its length. However, it works. Dune Messiah plays out almost like a Greek tragedy, with conspiracy and psychological terror at every turn. I found this to be a stark, compelling portrayal on the isolating nature of absolute power, and the necessity of questioning one's leaders. It's a far cry from the triumphant epic scale of the first book, where Paul is portrayed in all his righteous, flaming fury as a charismatic godlike figure. Maybe not as enjoyable a read as Dune, but one that gives a deeper insight into the Atreides rulers.

“The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not...yet, I occurred.��"

lena wants to read The Rogue King (Inferno Rising, #1)

"Overview

👹 Monsterfucking (sans sex)

😈 Villain romance

☠️ Death trial games

🧿 Weird evil parallel universes

🏰 Court politics

🏳️‍�� Secondary MC queer rep

🥀 Extremely goth families that hate each other

⭐⭐ Read more of my reviews and get tips on the best Enemies to Lovers books by checking out my Blog, ⭐⭐

🖤🖤 🖤🖤

When I say this book kept me up at night consuming my every thought, I meant it. This is the holy grail of villain romance books to which there has been no equal for me. This book is for those who the felt the main character from One Dark Window ended up with the wrong guy. This book is my personal bible.

As a note before we get started, the author is actually a graphic novel, artist- and art of the characters and settings are littered into the book. Its amazing seeing a powerful scene you just read get brought to life on the next page!

Alma lives a poor but happy life with her mother, until she gets sick and Alma reaches out to her long lost father to save her. The trade off is simple- come with him and officially join his wealthy family and her mother will be saved.

Years later, Alma's mother is dead, her father sliced off her arm and fed it to the god his family worships, and Alma's childhood imaginary friend is fueling a revenge filled crusade to destroy her father's life by becoming the First Hand of the Beast, the most loved by their house's god. This is House of the Beast, a supremely gothic and bloody New Adult stand alone about worship, obsession, codependency, and self hatred.

The first sign to me that this book was something special is how daring it is in every single thing it does. The book does not give Alma a safer love interest to contradict the fact that the person she's in love with is an elder god that has invaded her mind telling her to indiscriminately murder people. It does not shy away from buckets of blood and gore, with scenes ranging from people pulling their own limbs off, lobotomies, and slaughtering horrors beyond human comprehension. While House of the Beast feels like its designed for a "romantasy" style audience, Michelle Wong took a lot of risks in this story, effectively taking a gas can and lighting the formula on fire. Wong is uncompromising in her storytelling style and dark tendencies, making the book feel more like a Kaori Yuki manga than a book aimed at romance readers.

The world of House of the Beast is incredibly lush and addictive. Wong uses her wordcount to drop a ton of lore on the reader without a single infodump, carefully crafting Alma's horrific and extremely strange home with details on the entire world around her. Culture, religion, community, and the inner lives of the aristocracy litter every page, emotionally investing you in Wong's universe. I would read 10 more books set in this world.

Each wealthy family worships a different elder god, somewhat influencing their powers and interests without feeling terribly like a 'Harry Potter' house. as aristocrats are introduced though the story, you get a stronger picture of how the gods have influenced human hubris; the wealthy and the chosen are seemingly unendingly strange and cruel, while being fully fleshed out human beings with powerful desires and believable motivations.

Every character in this book is morally grey or straight up evil, but any named character has a significant amount of detail put into their character, and this completely shocked me. There are characters introduced in the last 20 percent of a book that feel like real living breathing human beings that I became invested in.

The closer characters to Alma include

Alma's Father- A dark, brooding presence who seems to show different sides to everyone he meets. For Alma, that's mostly contempt.

Kaim- Alma's cousin. Snobby, immature, and powerful, he is motivated by his desire for purpose to become the First Hand to the Beast

Fion- A special young man with unknown abilities who is Kaim's dedicated and sworn companion

Sevelie- Kaim's fiance, fiercely dedicated to Alma's father and challenging to get a read on

But theres a number of other fascinating characters in the book- in fact, one might argue that theres about a whole family tree's worth of additional characters. While some of them are quite minor, I found myself falling for all of them. I would (again) read a book about ANY of these characters individually, as they are all wildly complex. Despite this being a single POV book, l every single side character has their own motivations that make them interesting, they are not just used to color Alma's world.

Alma herself is a complex character caught between ambition and her own inherit goodness. While at times that goodness can feel a little put on, I do appreciate that she truly is conflicted and not simply a heroic main character. Her desire to see her father destroyed leads to a lot of dark choices on her part, but her upbringing was decidedly different, and there is a light in her that refuses to go out.

Then of course, there is Aster, Alma's imaginary monster, the god that favors her. This relationship, other than the one between Alma and her father, is what this story is all about. Aster is sort of a dark vision of Peter Pan- young, beautiful, and wholly uninterested in who he hurts. He can only be seen by Alma and pretty much enthusiastically pushes her to murder people as much as possible. Aster's foundation is built on the dreams that Alma has for a partner, but the reality she is faced with again and again is that he is in fact, a monster. As Aster's chosen, Alma is granted dark powers, and significant shielding from the horrors of her world; including other humans.

This is not a cute nor healthy relationship, but if you like twisted "us against the world" deeply, deranged codependent romances that burn slower than the death of a star, this will be satisfying for you.

I would not recommend House of the Beast for folks looking for cozy romances, or half baked "Edgy" romances. If your idea of a cool dark romance is a little bit of misunderstandings or two people in a warring kingdom, look elsewhere. House of the beast is a book that refuses to compromise itself for trends. It chooses not to fit in, categorically rejecting the clean lines that romantasy is often drawn with. This one is for the all of the readers that want a touch of darkness in their lives. Michelle Wong is an insta buy."