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A review by eleven_hummingbird
Beasts in Velvet by Kim Newman, Jack Yeovil
4.0
A good Warhammer novel with a really fun setting and likeable characters, but not without its problems.
While Genevieve took more of a passenger's perspective in the prior book, she is near totally absent and entirely irrelevant to this novel. She has only three or so pages in which she appears and these are not plot relevant at all. Context clues also point to this novel taking place between the first and second books, rather than after.
That being said, the main body of this story is a mystery-detective following an investigation attempting to uncover a werewolf (or multiple), referred to as the Beast, in the city of Altdorf. The characters are all decent and the setting is really fun, the author doing a good job of muddling the story with overlapping larger and smaller-scale plots while still maintaining the investigation as the heart of the narrative. There's classism, revolution, aristocratic drama, and Tzeentchian cults. Really great setting for a werewolf mystery.
I really liked the literary use and imagery of 'beasts in velvet' as both actual and metaphorical. A few of the characters were genuinely very likeable. Loved Rosanna.
Overall good, but with a problematic ending I will discuss in a spoiler section below.
**Spoilers**
The author is heavy-handed at placing certain characters as likely candidates for the Beast. These leads are largely left as loose-ends at the end of the novel when, in a whirlwind, an entirely different character is suspected before, immediately after, the actual Beast is revealed. Which is where the problematic element is: the Beast is a transgender character who was forced to transition as a child against their will, the Beast apparently being their suppressed feminine identity turned monstrous through hatred and jealousy.
I have really mixed feelings about this. As a transperson, a part of me is glad to see some representation. The only vaguely, explicitly LGBT characters I've come across so far in Warhammer Fantasy being bisexual elves and the intersex daemonettes of Slaanesh. Obviously, however, it's problematic having one of the few, if only, trans-characters in Warhammer being someone who was forcibly transitioned and who turns into a werewolf-esque serial-killer. I would not be against this narrative if it were the inverse (the character being prevented from transitioning) nor the werewolf part, as a major element of Warhammer is our inner-demons becoming manifest.
I'm rambling... in sum, I liked the book, but I wish Leos, the Beast, had been written differently. Her character could have been an unexpected piece of trans-representation in my favorite fantasy universe, but instead feels almost trans-exclusive. Still, I appreciate Leos and really felt for her struggle.
While Genevieve took more of a passenger's perspective in the prior book, she is near totally absent and entirely irrelevant to this novel. She has only three or so pages in which she appears and these are not plot relevant at all. Context clues also point to this novel taking place between the first and second books, rather than after.
That being said, the main body of this story is a mystery-detective following an investigation attempting to uncover a werewolf (or multiple), referred to as the Beast, in the city of Altdorf. The characters are all decent and the setting is really fun, the author doing a good job of muddling the story with overlapping larger and smaller-scale plots while still maintaining the investigation as the heart of the narrative. There's classism, revolution, aristocratic drama, and Tzeentchian cults. Really great setting for a werewolf mystery.
I really liked the literary use and imagery of 'beasts in velvet' as both actual and metaphorical. A few of the characters were genuinely very likeable. Loved Rosanna.
Overall good, but with a problematic ending I will discuss in a spoiler section below.
**Spoilers**
The author is heavy-handed at placing certain characters as likely candidates for the Beast. These leads are largely left as loose-ends at the end of the novel when, in a whirlwind, an entirely different character is suspected before, immediately after, the actual Beast is revealed. Which is where the problematic element is: the Beast is a transgender character who was forced to transition as a child against their will, the Beast apparently being their suppressed feminine identity turned monstrous through hatred and jealousy.
I have really mixed feelings about this. As a transperson, a part of me is glad to see some representation. The only vaguely, explicitly LGBT characters I've come across so far in Warhammer Fantasy being bisexual elves and the intersex daemonettes of Slaanesh. Obviously, however, it's problematic having one of the few, if only, trans-characters in Warhammer being someone who was forcibly transitioned and who turns into a werewolf-esque serial-killer. I would not be against this narrative if it were the inverse (the character being prevented from transitioning) nor the werewolf part, as a major element of Warhammer is our inner-demons becoming manifest.
I'm rambling... in sum, I liked the book, but I wish Leos, the Beast, had been written differently. Her character could have been an unexpected piece of trans-representation in my favorite fantasy universe, but instead feels almost trans-exclusive. Still, I appreciate Leos and really felt for her struggle.