The Fourth Whore by Ev Knight (Bookshop.org | Amazon.com)

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-947879-16-4

Availability: paperback, Kindle

The Fourth Whore is the debut novel from Ev Knight.  It’s the eclectic, and often bloody, story of Kenzi, a young, woman with hard luck, caught up in a centuries-old struggle of the gods.  Written from a number of character viewpoints, The Fourth Whore is a dark tale combining the ugliness of humanity with the insanity of the deities who are involved with it.

Kenzi is the focal point of the book, and her life sets the overall grim tone of the story in the first few pages.  She’s saddled with trying to pay for a slum apartment and supporting her junkie mother, which she does by peddling dope.   She also peddles herself to the landlord for rent.  Despite the fact that she’s quintessential street trash, it’s easy to like her.  She does have dreams of a better life, and her upbringing hardly resembles re-runs of The Brady Bunch.  Her pseudo-guardian, Sariel, is also intriguing; he’s a study in contrasts.  Kenzi knows him as the ‘Scribble Man,’ but he’s actually Death, the collector of souls for God.  However, he’s no faithful servant: his job is a punishment, not a blessing.  Also, his occasional sympathy for the dead, and sometimes aiding Kenzi in her times of extreme need, render him all too human.   His collecting allows for some hilariously bleak humor at times, such as when he grows impatient waiting for a young man to throw himself into a river with a load of heavy chain, thereby drowning himself.  Very morbid, but the thoughts Sariel voices are also quite amusing in a twisted way.

Kenzi and Sariel’s lives are quickly tied into the ‘god’ story thread, as both of them become targets of Lilith, a demi-god.  The story takes a nice turn here, as the author has re-worked the Bible story of Adam and Eve.  In this version, Lilith was the original wife of Adam, but she was tossed from Eden and tormented for failure to be a 1950’s style, submissive housewife to Adam.  Needless to say, when freed from her prison, she’s angry and wants revenge on…everything, and everyone.  She’s the closest thing to pure evil in the book, although some readers, especially women, may actually find her quite sympathetic, perhaps more so than any other character.

Therein lies Knight’s primary strength: she’s very good at painting her characters as somewhat sympathetic, or at least relatable, to all types of readers.   The story itself is good, but it’s the characters and how they feel that carry the book to its conclusion.  The only minor drawback is the occasional lack of cohesion around some of the plot elements in the book.  Things happen, but the reader might be questioning how they happened, as no hint of reason is given.  Events don’t always relate to each other, and seem occasionally random.  A little more explanation for some sections would have helped boost the story to the next level.

Overall, a solid first effort from Ev Knight, and worth reading.

Contains: profanity, graphic violence and gore, graphic sex.

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson