Review: The Fourth Whore by EV Knight

March 15, 2021

Gruesome and hard to put down!

The Fourth Whore by EV Knight

Published March 2020

Dark Fiction | Goodreads | Amazon

Source: Received for Review Consideration

Kenzi Brooks watched The Scribble Man collect her brother’s soul after a hit and run when she was seven. He gave her a present that day - a lucky rabbit’s foot. Sixteen years later, she no longer believes in The Scribble Man, she believes in survival and does what she has to in the slums of Detroit. When thugs kill her mother and beat Kenzi to near death, she accidentally releases Lilith from her prison within the time-worn keychain.

And Hell hath no fury…

Lilith is out for revenge. Revenge against God, Sariel (Angel of Death and Kenzi’s Scribble Man), and all of mankind for relegating her to nothing more than a demoness for refusing to submit to her husband. She’s put together an apocalyptic plan to destroy everyone who has forsaken her. Forget the Four Horsemen, Lilith is assembling the Four Whores.

Will Kenzi rise against her to save the world and The Scribble Man or will she become The Fourth Whore?

My 2 Cents For Free!

Wow this one pulls no punches and immediately sets a gruesome and bleak stage for all of the events that follow. Hold on to your lunch because it also gets really ewww gross and I couldn’t love it more for making me cringe like that! Heehee.

There’s a lot going on here and I’m not going to even attempt to explain it all. Probably couldn't if I wanted to but I don’t want to because you need to experience it all your own selves. As a child Kenzie experienced a tragedy first hand and met a figure she deemed “The Scribble Man”. He gives her a rabbit’s foot for protection, and it brings her comfort and release throughout her extremely traumatic life but there’s a lot more going on with the rabbit’s foot as well as with “The Scribble Man”!

Lilith (yes, that one) has a history with the “Scribble Man” and a long simmering hatred and all-consuming desire for revenge after she learns she has been wrongly vilified. When a terrible event occurs, Lillith is unleashed upon the earth and she is FURIOUS. She plans to bring forth Armageddon with the help of three women she has handpicked to help her topple the patriarchy and begin anew. Sounds good to me, ha! Each of her “whores”, as she calls them, has a specific task to fulfill. Pestilence, War, Death - you know how it goes. Kenzie, for reasons I will not spill, is chosen to be Lillith’s Fourth Whore and all the women have big roles in pushing the horror of the story along.

This novel was a bit like watching an unrated Supernatural season (without Sam or Dean saving the day) with things twisted all around and brutal depictions of sexual harm, abuse and well, just brutality. Be warned if you have sexual abuse triggers, that’s all I’m gonna say. There are archangels and nasty demons and the main human characters are imperfect specimens who suffer from self-destructive behaviors, haunting pasts and are women abused terribly by our world and find their power and they are SO fascinating to follow on the page. Sariel, who plays a huge role, is excellently characterized as an imperfect, often selfish and cowardly (again, if you ask me) angel-man who his doing his best to make amends for his past failures and seeks redemption, even if he probably doesn’t deserve it (one of my notes about him says only Fuck off angel and believe me he deserved it but to tell you why would be spoilerific). I guess I’ll credit him for trying to be better but I’m not gonna lie. He didn’t sit right with me. But then again, I’m not sure he was supposed to. I liked that this novel showed the grittiest, ugliest and most flawed edges of humanity but still made you worry and care about a character or two. Lilith, is a fully fleshed out character with a painful to read backstory. Her glorious rage is one million percent justified! But Kenzie was my favorite. Her life was a tragedy but she managed to remain both vulnerable and strong even when facing the worst situations imaginable.

This likely sounds like a lot of characters and side-stories for my brain to handle and it was but the story, for me, was very cohesive and easy to follow. These types of storylines typically confuse the hell out of me and have me drifting away but that wasn’t the case here, not even for a moment which is a minor miracle. The writing is a visceral thing, it got under my skin in this intense, unflinching way and it made me rage for these women as they were used and abused and unfairly blamed and tossed aside like trash and I did not want to turn away even when things were at their most ewww! This isn’t a book for everyone and to be completely honest I didn’t think it was going to be for me when I read a bit about the plot. It very much has a dark urban fantasy feel which isn’t typically my favorite but it all worked here and I did not want to tear myself away. I would’ve finished it in a day if life had allowed me a distraction free moment of peace.

I’m giving THE FOURTH WHORE 4 ½ stars and I would easily recommend it to anyone with a strong stomach looking for a gripping tale of sublime unbridled fury and the humans caught up in the fiery flames of revenge.