Book Review: "What Doesn't Kill You" by Ken Brosky
What Doesn’t Kill You Book Review
Written by Stuart D. Monroe
Published by Timber Ghost Press
Written by Ken Brosky
2023, 265 pages, Fiction
Published on July 3rd, 2023
Review:
What do you get when you cross a dead-end town, a hellacious blizzard, a killer monster with a ginormous beehive on her head, and a diverse, richly layered cast of characters? The answer is the latest from Ken Brosky (The Beyond, The Grimm Chronicles), a tale that starts off with an ominous mystery and rapidly escalates into full-on, batshit madness with the rapidity and intensity of, well, a beehive stirred to anger by a foolish kid looking for some honey.
Valerie and Danny Miller are the kids their mom never really wanted, living in a nowhere town called Seven Sisters where the only real employment is the grain mill and the only activity is work followed by drinking, rinse and repeat. It’s a sleepy burg slowly rotting with malaise until the matronly and enigmatic Emma Rose shows back up to the town she grew up in with some unholy cargo and an axe to grind. Before long, the monster is loose and everyone in the town of Seven Sisters will have to ask themselves how badly they want to live and if they’re willing to fight and kill to make that happen.
Brosky is a patient writer who knows how to lay the mystery out and then meter out the shocks one by one until you’re blasting through the pages. He also has a penchant for action scenes, which are the Achilles heel of many authors. What Doesn’t Kill You is the kind of book that gives you multilayered characters by the bushel and a monster with a mythology that you want to dig in and find out more about. It’s also a viciously paced, horror movie-styled tale with motivations often overriding logic and pushing the story forward. I’m also awarding style points for a subtle but deeply appreciated nod to Ash Williams, everybody’s favorite protagonist from the Evil Dead series. Valerie Miller has more than a bit in common with S-Mart’s model employee.
The underlying themes of addiction and social desolation keep you right there with the blizzard-besieged residents of Seven Sisters. What Doesn’t Kill You has a hell of a lot to say about those themes while asking not only how badly the characters want to live but how badly they want to succeed and escape the dead-end hell of Seven Sisters. There are tons of folks in small towns who can relate to that, and the heavy-handedness of the message serves rather than takes away from the overall experience.
And the imagery…oh boy, the imagery. The Queen, with her hardened and pale body and beehive head full of demonic black bees, is the stuff of nightmares. What the bees do with their victims and what happens to the church in their wake, well, I won’t ruin it for you. It's very much out of the darkest realms of Dungeons and Dragons’ most depraved creations, and I really appreciate that. Topping it off with an antagonist and monster with surprisingly human (dare I say natural) motivations makes for a rich experience that you aren’t likely to forget any time soon.
Brosky also sticks the landing while leaving the door open for a tale that has more to say. All in all, What Doesn’t Kill You is a banger of a novel that will have you tearing ass through its two-hundred and sixty-five pages before seeing what else the author has to offer.
In other words, mission accomplished!
Grade:
4.5 out of 5.0 stars
