Hyo the Hellmaker is the book of a type that feels like it should belong in a subgenre appended by “punk.” Not enough gears for steam punk. Not enough motor oil for diesel punk. Maybe a strong note of solar punk. (One thing I’m definitely sure of is the post-apocalyptic feel.) I may just have to settle for Shinto god punk. Though that’s actually pretty reductive. The setting is a sort of alternate Japan, post an extremely alternate Second World War.
Our Protagonist, thanks to a curse placed on her family, is a “hellmaker.” One of her ancestors killed the gods of misfortune, and because there needs to balance, her family has to pay out the misfortune instead. Instead of becoming evil overlords or something, they decided to turn it into a business. (Which may be better or worse.)
Hyo and her older brother Mansaku are approached by a demon about hitodenashi pears that are being grown where it is supposedly impossible to be grow them: Onogoro, an island where living gods live alongside mortals. (And by “approached” I mean “coerced and threatened.” The demon has had them stuck in the Worst Timeloop Ever for years, watching their entire village die horrible deaths due to the pears.) Hyo and her brother are extremely disturbed about this accusation–the reason the hitodenashi can’t be grown there is because that’s where the cure for becoming the host for a parasitic pear demon is made.
Their arrival to Onogoro turns into a murder mystery when the friend they were going to stay with before finding an apartment ends up dead due to a god’s curse. From there, they stumble across a mystery involving one of the “pillar gods” of the island. A mystery that may or may not involve the hitodenashi pears. Hyo also ends up befriending a god who no longer possesses his “heavenly name” and as a result, is extremely cursed.
This book is an engaging dark fantasy with lots of interesting worldbuilding. This is a story with a lot of baked-in horror ranging from existential horror to body horror. It’s grim in a few places, given the nature of Hyo and her brother’s curse and their shared trauma, but it’s leavened by moments of humor to break up the darkness of the overall plot.
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