The Works of Vermin

Ennes’s ambitious sophomore novel (after Leech) delivers some impressively baroque worldbuilding, transporting readers to Tiliard, a city carved into the trunk of a vast tree with architecture reflecting the rigid class divisions of its inhabitants. Amid the roots below ground, the laborers toil, among them Guy Moulène, a pest exterminator who has a side gig as a sex worker to help financially support his sister, Tyro. Guy and his bunkmate Dawn are dispatched to confront an enormous creature that feasts on artwork and becomes the latest addition to the Borisch Manual of Catoptric Pest Species, a catalog of the city’s most dangerous vermin. Above ground, a second story line unfolds, following perfumer Asteritha Vost, who tempers the city’s toxic politics with her expertly crafted scents. Vost’s flirtatious relationship with mysterious stranger Mallory vant Passand begins when he chivalrously offers her his handkerchief at one of Tilliard’s popular public executions. The prose is so dense that it occasionally bogs down key plot points, but Ennes pulls off some remarkable twists here: the first hundred pages gain new meaning after a late reveal upends readers’ assumptions. It’s an intricate tale of class, corruption, and queer transformation. (Oct.)