Instead of giving us a bland audience insert, Hendrix gives us a flawed character, but one whose anger is understandable as a result of her thwarted and crushed artistic desires.
And Hendrix plays his cards close to his chest for a while, focusing not on what’s to come, but simply on letting us come to understand Kris in all of her prickly, sensitive, frustrated personality. Of course, this is a horror novel, but exactly what kind of horror novel it’s going to be isn’t clear from the early going, which is part of the intrigue about We Sold Our Souls. And that’s why she decides to track down the band’s singer, who ended it all and set himself up for a phenomenally successful – but artistically bankrupt – solo career ever since. But one night, Dürt Würk ended, under circumstances that no one involved quite remembers the details of, and now Kris is working the hotel check-in desk and hating her life. At the time, she was living the life she wanted – playing music every night, losing herself in her guitar, expressing herself through her work – everything she hoped for. We Sold Our Souls is the story of Kris, a woman who used to be the lead guitarist for the metal band Dürt Würk.
That We Sold Our Souls does all of that while also being a paranoia thriller and possibly a story about literally selling souls to the devil? Well, that’s just icing, isn’t it? It’s got the strong character work of Exorcism, yes, but Hendrix does more with it here, using his characters to create a complex exploration of music and art, dealing with selling out, the love of the art, and what happens when your life doesn’t go the direction your muse wanted it to.
I loved his overview of pulp horror, Paperbacks from Hell I thought his 80s-set teen exorcist novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism was really solid. The more I read by Grady Hendrix, the more I like him.
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