And the world was imperiled unto its death

The Great Death was coming.

It had already begun devouring Avignon, where it was said the pope heard audiences between two fires to burn off pestilential air.

I received a notification from the library that the book I'd put on hold was available — a title that I didn't recognize at all. Requested some five months ago, I struggled to recall the circumstances. Is it possible I'd tagged a random book by mistake?

And so it came to pass that I read Between Two Fires, by Christopher Buehlman, and it was not good.

The plague and seeming end-times! The Avignon papacy and religious politicking! Angels and demons, actual and metaphorical! I hoped for The Name of the Rose, as written by HP Lovecraft. It was not.

Classified as a historical horror novel, I am fairly certain now that it came recommended by hordes of Redditors as sitting alongside China Mieville for its worldbuilding and gruesome fantastical elements. It does not.

Somewhere I saw this novel described as neckbeardy. And instantly I understood this criticism. The excruciating detail of battle, of medieval garb and weaponry. The lack of fully realized personhood in its characters. The convoluted plot, disjointed and pointless. It's a bad videogame; one village, one monster at a time.

The language swings between faux Shakespearean and biblical. "And the world was imperiled unto its death."

The word "cubicular" appears six times. (It feels like much more.)

One early demonic dream sequence brought to mind The Green Knight, and I saw there a  glimmer of potential, but I was mistaken. I shall rewatch this fine film as penance. 

The theological underpinnings of the book's concept are hand-wavey.

The greatest horror was the looming dread that the hero of our story, a fallen knight in search of first revenge and then redemption, would sexually assault the girl accompanying him on his journey.

It's not until about a third of the way through that we learn the girl's name (to be fair, this seems to be intentional, to reflect poorly on the other characters, but it's a big ick that she's dismissed and objectified to the extent she is). In the end, she is literally a mere vessel with no agency. Character development means undergoing the embarrassment of having her first period in the company of her fellow travelers. The author's greatest accomplishment in his misguided chivalry is to hold his hero back from raping her.

He was being kissed now by his own mouth, not as lovers kiss, with tongues, but as true lovers kiss, sharing breath.

(This is perhaps the only line  in 440 pages that spoke to me.)

I wanted very much to not finish this book, to unread the cringe, to reverse my hours, but ultimately I preferred to crawl inside the mind of Reddit's literary subs, to know the true horror of people who may not read much. And so it is written that never again shall I accept Reddit's plumbing solutions, decorating advice, or, above all, book recommendations, without conducting my own thorough research grounded in authoritative resources. (Eagerly anticipating the 2027 Tournament of Books longlist later this month.)