Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima
Tor Books (June 2024)
Reviewed by Chandra Claypool (Instagram) (TikTok)
Imaging meeting the Devil at a bar and they convince you that you’re kindred spirits because you both crave stories and you’re just drunk and heartbroken enough to let them in. This book has a unique format in that there’s stories within the main story. We follow the main character and her several encounters with the Devil as we get a peek into the stories she is writing for them. I absolutely love the cover for this as it shows this concept so well.
While this is touted as a horror book, it doesn’t necessarily fit into the genre as I see it. I’m not even sure how I would categorize it because of the uniqueness of it. Maybe had the Devil shown their face more often within the read, it may have had more of that horror element, but otherwise it really read as more of a literary fiction type.
Overall, I would rate this book down the middle. The author is also a poet and her writing absolutely shows this throughout the read. This type of writing doesn’t particularly work well for me personally but I have all the respect for it. The biggest takeaway from this reading is that the author touches on strong subjects including politics, morality, sense of belonging and ambition. The way the author broaches these subjects is very well done. I just wish the stories themselves connected better and applaud the interesting style, even if it didn’t quite work for this reader.
