House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson

I would like to thank Bantam Press for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Bantam Press

Published - Out Now

Price - £16.99 hardback £7.99 Kindle eBook

Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation are all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a strange advertisement in the newspaper, seeking a 'bloodmaid'.

Though she knows little about the far north - where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service - Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery - and there, at the centre of it all is her.

Her name is Countess Lisavet. Loved and feared in equal measure, she presides over this hedonistic court. And she takes a special interest in Marion. Lisavet is magnetic, charismatic, seductive - and Marion is eager to please her new mistress. But when her fellow bloodmaids begin to go missing in the night, Marion is thrust into a vicious game of cat and mouse. She'll need to learn the rules of her new home - and fast - or its halls will soon become her grave.

Working for monsters and being in their thrall is a rich theme for horror to explore. The horror of capitalism exploiting us for their master’s gain is something we can see in interpretations of the vampire myth. In House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson we get a unique secondary world where the act of allowing someone to drink your blood is considered a prize but of course there is a price to be paid. However, for me despite an inventive start it didn’t really give me a sense of a topic well explored.

Marion works as a servant in the tough and poverty=stricken city of Prane. A typical life in the South where life is often short, can end with TB and everyone tries to live a day at a time. Currently working as a maid for one of the overbearing upper class she sees an opportunity to escape and become a bloodmaid in the North. Effectively allowing a rich family to take blood that can be used as an energy source or way to restore health. Marion passes a test and is whisked to the House of Hunger to serve the enigmatic Lisavet. Maron finds this life is decadent, hard and seductive. Lisavet attracts Marion but Marion has a sense that there are secrets that may suggest this new life may be a very dangerous and short one.

I’m a little disappointed with this story as the opening scenes are really powerful. Marion jumps off the page being a former thief, struggling with a terrible drug addicted brother and a desire to be more. Henderson really creates a character you feel hovers over being good or bad in the cause of never having to be this desperate again. But as soon as we enter the House, we seem to lose all that depth and Marion becomes a more standard heroine unpeeling secrets and getting people to fight back. The dark side of temptation feels unexplored and really you’d expect Marion based on what she experiences in just a few days to already know this is all not what she was promised.

It is not a gothic novel as there is little atmosphere and instead, we get a few decent scenes of decadence and cruelty but it all feels overly familiar. I liked the idea that here the upper class are not actual vampires but just use blood for their own ends and are so image focused they’re had their teeth altered for fashionable means. But I don’t feel any of the characters we face in these sections have much complexity to unpeel which makes the rest of the story feel far too predictable. This is a story that needed a lot more pages to explore these elements and its just feels a little too abrupt which doesn’t help the horror element either make us care about what happens

House of Hunger treads a well-worn path of how the upper classes still treat people as slaves but with better job benefits that will never actually materialise, but nothing ever gets explored in detail. How has no one realised this before as things are very obvious and that lack of exploring this world and instead a fast-paced mystery unwrapping for me meant the potential of the first quarter of the tale gets lost. Sadly not one I can recommend.