In We Who Hunt Alexanders, by Jason Sanford, we meet three rippers – monsters who feed on irredeemably bad men (and, very occasionally, women): ancient Danjay; her novice daughter Amelia; and Ziee, a spiky acquaintance who grudgingly takes Amelia under her wing.
Unusually for a ripper, Amelia experiences the full range of emotions, whereas Danjay and Ziee can only feel anger. What’s more, while rippers can generally make themselves invisible to the warm people whose homes they squat in, Amelia and Danjay’s new teenage housemate, Abner, can see them, and even bonds with Amelia over their shared enthusiasm for penny dreadfuls.
The city of Medea, where mother and daughter have fled after religious zealots forced them from their previous home, is far from a refuge, however. A church demonfinder holds a great deal of power locally, and as an incendiary who doesn’t get his own hands dirty, he’s not technically an Alexander, so can’t be dispatched by the rippers. Can Danjay and Amelia survive, despite their respective frailty and inexperience?
I found We Who Hunt Alexanders a fun and unexpectedly heartwarming read. Right from the start, you can’t help but be on the rippers’ side, as Amelia is such a compelling, endearing narrator, and the type of people rippers target aren’t exactly a loss to the world. In fact, it’s rather satisfying seeing Alexanders get eaten by monsters!
Despite the constraints of the novella format, Sanford not only successfully realises the characteristics, rules, and lore of rippers – the many-toothed personal “blood-maws” they summon from hell to help them with their kills are thrillingly gruesome, and I enjoyed the explanation of why their victims are called “Alexanders” – but also the Victorian-coded city, and the broader world of the story, where many other supernatural entities also happen to exist.
More than anything, though, this is a coming-of-age story. At the beginning, Amelia has never killed an Alexander herself, is late developing the ability to summon a blood-maw, and suspects her capacity for feeling is a liability. Over the course of the book, she finds a true friend in Abner, gains Ziee as a mentor, learns about her mother’s life before she knew her, and – without giving too much of the ending away – discovers that difference can be a strength.
As suggested previously, though, Amelia doesn’t find it easy to get Ziee on her side – in fact, rippers being extremely territorial, Ziee initially nearly kills Amelia when she happens to visit the building where Ziee lives.
Between rippers’ adversarial relationships with one another, and the risks they have to take to keep themselves fed, there’s a lot of tension and danger to keep you turning the pages, culminating in a dramatic and gory finale.
We Who Hunt Alexanders is an imaginative, suspenseful, and surprisingly touching coming-of-age horror novella.