Three years ago Hiron Ennes burst onto the speculative scene with the startlingly original and compelling post-apocalyptic sci-fi, gothic suspense, and body horror mash-up Leech, essentially The Thing meets Rebecca, which gave us the memorable POV of a parasite. It was the kind of debut that fast forwards an author to must-buy status, and now they’ve returned with The Works of Vermin, and though my expectations were higher than the career aspirations of a six year old, I simply wasn’t prepared for the frankly genre-defining masterpiece that landed in my eyeballs. This is a book that gives us, in Tiliard, a fantasy city for the ages—as grotesquely monstrous as it is artistically beautiful as it is gloriously bizarre—as well as a scintillatingly dense and creatively inspired mix of complex satire and deep humanity. It’s frankly jaw-dropping, and I’m not sure I’ve read a better work of speculative fiction for several years.

It’s hard to get across this book by describing the plot alone, but I’ll give it a shot. The city of Tiliard has been built out of the roots of a giant tree, whose roots lie in a vast toxic river. In the canopies, the city is pure decadence meets dystopian control; a city obsessed with art and excess while the secret police of the latest of the many despotic regimes eliminate any threats to its reign. In the roots, the workers strive to pay off their debts while giant insects produced by the river toxins are hunted by the city’s exterminators. One of these exterminators, Guy, is tasked with killing a new giant centipede who has a hunger for eating art and whose toxins begin to change the city in meaningful ways. Meanwhile, a woman who produces powerful toxin-based perfumes for the city’s marshal meets a mysterious gentleman from out of town whose secrets could change the city forever.

The ideas of The Works of Vermin are utterly wild and vivid. The toxins of the bizarre insects produced by the river are turned into perfumes that give gifts to the wearer: the ability to control people’s actions, or maybe just a more attractive smile. One of the most important roles of the city? The ruler’s scent-maker. The devastating building-deforming toxins used in previous intra-regime battles have changed entire areas of the city, and led to artistic movements. Then there’s the opera, where the killings on stage are very real, with those who displease the ruling chancellor being put to death to serve the cause of theatre.

Around these wild concepts, Ennes builds a story of deep satire, constantly hilariously yet deeply disturbing and utterly ruthless about what it says about the ruling classes. This is a city whose constant changes of authoritarian regime are named as art movements: from neo-revivalism to extemporism. The centrepiece for this art-obsessed city is the opera, where as I noted above revolutions are powered by stage performances that portray real killings. It’s this mix of the utterly pretentious with the shockingly brutal that powers some of the outrageous wit and whimsical grotesqueness of the satire, sort of if Waugh’s Vile Bodies was crossed with 1984. 

This is all powered by Ennes’ frankly astonishing prose, already impressive in Leech, which seems to have undergone another metamorphosis in The Works of Vermin, like the monstrous centipede at the heart of the story. The result is that each page is laden with dense worldbuilding detail, creating a historical tapestry of absurd pastiche and vivid, gruesome detail on the horrific monstrosities that lurk in this world, the kind of detail that frankly will go over you head if you don’t devote the time to properly read this book, and if that sounds pretentious then perhaps I’ve been infected by the decadent spirit of Tiliard. Put it this way, it took me about four times my average to read a novel of this length. and I was devastated when it ended. 

While pure satire is fun though, satire with heart is ultimately the most satisfying form of the genre and for all the tongue-in-cheek takes on the rulers, Ennes reserves deep wells of humanity for the city’s underclasses. Exterminator Guy’s attempts to create a future for his sister while surviving both their bosses and the monsters they hunt is incredibly poignant, especially when Ennes pulls off one of the greatest structural narrative reveals of modern fiction, which takes their story to new heights. I cannot emphasise enough how impressive this plot twist was: my moment of realisation of the inter-textual magic trick Ennes has done here was a book moment I will cherish forever. There is a strong undercurrent of compassion for the downtrodden yet hopeful underclasses of this book, and for all that the story is on one level a study of change—the giant centipede’s toxins literally change the city while the revolutionary movements around them change its political destiny—Ennes really seems to be suggesting that this is illusory change: hello new boss, same as the old boss, and the actual change lies in the stories of the workers’ attempts to escape their rule: whether the vermin can free themselves of the eternal plans of their pest-controlling masters. Alongside this is a deep theme of personal change: one trans character’s identify is, while never overtly discussed, nevertheless crucial to the plot, and gender fluidity flows through the city of Tiliard just as much as its river toxins. 

Filled with some of the most twisted, inventive worldbuilding you’ll ever see and a perfectly poised balance of ruthless mockery of the decadent and corrupt with a well of deep humanity for those beneath them, The Works of Vermin is not just a landmark novel of dystopian satire but one of the great speculative works of the twenty-first century.

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