I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call (I Feed Her to the Beast #2)
Jamison Shea
Henry Holt & Co.
Published November 12, 2024
Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads
About I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call
Monsters and mortals, rejoice! Acheron is back . . .
Though Laure has tried to close the lid on her ballet shoes and the feelings she once held for dance since the Palais Garnier incident two months ago, Laure is spinning out. Between partying, drinking, and avoiding anything and, well, everyone, she has no time to be anything but a monster.
But when Laure stumbles across a mysterious dead body during one of her nights out, she’s forced to notice the cracks stretching beyond herself. Below the streets of Paris, Elysium is dying, and Acheron and Lethe’s influence is spilling into the streets like a blight. Laure isn’t the only of Elysium’s beasts to rise from the ruins of Palais Garnier, and someone is mobilizing an army of monsters with plans greater than Laure, Andor, and Keturah could have ever guessed.
While Laure is warring between her wants and Acheron’s ever-demanding appetite, she and her circle of monsters are left to reckon with a not-so-simple how do you save yourself from oblivion?
Jamison Shea’s sharp and unflinching voice will bring readers to terrifying new heights in this vicious sequel to the “relentlessly gory and almost euphoric in its embrace of the horrific” (NPR) I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me.
My Review
I forgot how engaging Shea’s writing is until I dove back into this duology. In 2023, I reviewed I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me. I remember being so impressed with the way that the author incorporated details about Laure’s ballet experience. There were things that you really wouldn’t know unless you danced or spent a lot of time with ballet dancers.
Though it’s not the focus of this story, Laure’s dancing still has a deep impact on it. I cannot express how strongly I love that Shea uses Laure’s struggle as a classically trained ballet dancer trying to learn to dance in other styles as a metaphor for how disconnected she feels from her body and how alien she feels as the vessel of a god among humans. Would that parallel resonate as strongly for someone without dance experience? I don’t know, but I am so into it. I felt like I instantly understood her struggle on a physical and emotional level.
This is a story about a young woman finding her place, defining herself, and weighing the personal costs of following norms versus creating her role from scratch. Over and over Laure faces frustration and shame when she doesn’t fit the roles she’s assigned, from ballerina to immortal vessel. At first, she blames herself and vacillates between trying harder and breaking down. She begins to break away from those patterns and look for ways to embrace who she is. She starts to see those attributes as strengths rather than hindrances. I loved watching that transformation.
As with Shea’s first book, I found it so easy to get lost in the writing and the strangeness of the story. It’s horror, so it does have some gore, body horror, and other scary elements. This duology might be my favorite representation of ballet in young adult fiction that I’ve read so far.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 15 up.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used fairly infrequently.
Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing.
Spiritual Content
Laure has become a vessel for a god named Acheron. Others made bargains with Acheron or another god in exchange for power.
Violent Content
Body horror and depictions of gore. Descriptions of dead animals (deaths not shown). References to and brief descriptions of murder, cannibalism, and being buried alive.
Drug Content
Early in the story, Laure drinks heavily at nightclubs as part of a destructive pattern. She recognizes the destructiveness of her behavior and eventually decides to make healthier choices.
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