This Ravenous Fate by Hayley Dennings
(Hodderscape, 2024)
Reviewed by Leanbh Pearson
This Ravenous Fate by Hayley Dennings is an alternate history of 1920s United States focused on Harlem, New York. Dennings creates a fascinating world of gangsters, jazz clubs, prohibition, illegal alcohol trade, racial discrimination and social tensions. To this backdrop, there is an expertly layered supernatural realm of reapers, which are vampire-like beings originating from historical and unethical medical experiments.
On two opposing sides of the brewing battle between the growing numbers of reapers and humans, is the complex-relationship between two young African American women: Layla Quinn, a reaper, and her former best friend, Elise Saint, the heiress to the wealthy and politically influential Saint Empire.
The complexities of the past for the two protagonists unravel as Layla and Elise begin to heal the wounds of the past and their friendship slowly matures into a romantic relationship. The once-best friends share a dark past which broke the friendship they had and barely grown into a romantic one in their youth. A reaper attack that killed Elise’s eldest sister (the previous heiress to the Saint Empire) also transformed Layla into a reaper. Since that bloody night, Layla’s attack also on Elise during her first days as a new, blood hungry vampire has broken the solace they’d once fond with each other and any potential romantic attachments assumed gone forever.
When Elise returns home from studying abroad, the Sant household and Harlem are engulfed in a troubling darkness and what Elise’s father and his true intentions towards the reapers are. Medical experiments first created reapers and again doctors are experimenting with humans and reapers, but this time promoting research into reversing reapers back to human.
The Saint Empire is now credited as a defender of humanity from the growing numbers of reapers and mysterious rise in reapers losing control with these rouge reapers slaughtering humans in mass killings. After a reaper attack on the Saint’s most promising doctor, Elise must confront Layla again and together they are bound by an agreement to investigate the unusual reaper behaviour in Harlem. The tangled and fraught past between Elise and Layla begins to unravel as does the slow rekindling of the romance between them.
There are many politically charged themes within this novel that Dennings highlights through racial injustices and social inequalities from the past and many which are still relevant for today’s society. In this alternate history of the world, the prominence of eugenics, the altering and weaponising of individuals via medical interventions, is focused on the lower socioeconomic classes and especially on African American communities. Throughout this shifting vision of history, Dennings holds an unflinching mirror to the truth of the past and our horrific potential future.
This Ravenous Fate deals with issues from history and there is nothing held back in the misogyny, coercive control, marginalised communities, racial discrimination and exploitation of less privileged. Throughout these themes are the developing and highly effective female protagonists who are strong, independent and willing to fight for a future they can believe in and shape. Despite the clear gothic horror genre, there is hope offered in this dark version of Jazz Age Harlem which is as much horror story as it is a highly potent social commentary.
A high-quality horror fiction that is a compelling and important addition to the canon of modern gothic horror. This Ravenous Fate shares similarities to Victor La Valle’s novella, The Ballad of Black Tom, which focused on the supernatural, moral corruption and racial prejudice in the Black communities of 1920s Harlem. This Ravenous Fate is a thought-provoking and original novel that resonates strongly with contemporary societal issues.
Review from BSFA Review 25 - Download your copy here.