REVIEW: The Way Up is Death by Dan Hanks
If you thought Stephen King had conjured up the weirdest and darkest tower in existence, then Dan Hanks is here to prove you wrong in The Way Up is Death. In turns brutally disturbing, hysterically funny and soul-stirringly poignant, this extraordinarily bizarre acid trip of a survival adventure will melt your brain and crush your soul without remorse, and I love it all the more for it.
What would you do if one day, out of nowhere, you are mercilessly pulled out of your daily life and dropped along with 12 other strangers before a mysterious floating tower that demands you ASCEND. That, my friends, is just a tiny glimpse of the stupendously intriguing premise of The Way Up is Death. And as you can maybe guess from the title, it doesn’t take long for things to get disturbingly dark and absolutely batshit crazy in the best way possible.
Through the eyes of Alden, a lonely and grief-stricken teacher by day/singer by night, Nia, a weary and angry concept artist, and Dirk, a self-obsessed walking red flag of a celebrity children’s author, we get to experience the nightmarish madness contained within the tower from the front-row seat. While I sometimes had a hard time visualising the increasingly weird and mystifying settings that the tower contained, I never felt lost because these characters’ strong voices kept me so grounded throughout all the madness. Their virtues and vices are truly on full display (for better or worse; looking at you, Dirk), and I loved exploring how they each reacted in such an authentically unique way to the horrors that they were faced with over the course of the single day that they spend in this tower of terror (if they even make it that long).
See, on the surface this story might seem like just another brutal thrill fest of a race against death, but at its core it’s a deeply emotional and beautifully human story that just tugged on my heartstrings in all the most unexpected ways. The Way Up is Death is honestly more multi-layered than the twisted labyrinthine tower it’s set in, and I loved how with each new level the characters ascended, another layer of complexity and emotional depth was peeled back. Heavy themes such as grief, sexism, female rage, loneliness, sacrifice, morality, memory, love, humanity, and, naturally, mortality are all explored in surprisingly deep though often darkly entertaining ways without ever detracting from the addictive thrill factor of the narrative, which is exactly what makes this story stand out from the crowd to me.
Now, I do have to admit that I found some of the (side) characters to be little more than obvious cannon fodder or a mere vessel for the theme they were supposed to represent, which not only made some of the thematic messaging feel a bit on the nose, but also took away some of the stakes and unpredictability of the story for me. The slightly caricaturish character work combined with the break-neck speed pacing somewhat hindered my emotional investment in the wider cast of characters, and that ultimately made some of the supposedly hard-hitting moments fall a bit flat for me.
However, the key characters of the narrative absolutely carried the story for me (Rakie is the MVP, just saying), and I can’t deny that all the emotional gut punches just hurt oh so good in the end. For the longest time I was just along for the crazy ride, uncertain if or how we would get any satisfying answers to the deeper purpose behind the inexplicable mysteries and challenges of the tower, but Hanks managed to surprise me in all the best (or worst?) ways with the shocking revelations. The brutally bittersweet conclusion to The Way Up is Death was more satisfying than I could ever have hoped for, leaving me with only one big unresolved mystery in the end: how in the hell did Hanks manage to write a story that is simultaneously so bizarrely alien yet beautifully and relatably human?
Regardless of what your typical reading preferences are, The Way Up is Death is guaranteed to lure you in with its dangerously addictive storytelling, darkly alluring mysteries, visceral emotions, and scarily evocative imagery that will haunt your mind for days and nights to come. It’s got a bit of fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, thriller, and arguably even a sick and twisted version of LitRPG, but ultimately it’s a powerfully moving and truly transcendental story that just speaks to the soul and showcases the incredible resilience of the human spirit. This is one of those stories that you simply can’t do justice to in a review, so please do yourself a favour and go experience its brilliant madness for yourself, if you dare.
Thank you to NetGalley and Angry Robot Books for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. The Way Up is Death is scheduled for release on January 14, 2025.
Read The Way Up is Death by Dan HanksThe post REVIEW: The Way Up is Death by Dan Hanks appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.
