Books book reviews More Than Metaphor: The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes Hiron Ennes’ second novel, which continues some of the themes of their debut Leech, rarely goes where you’d expect… By Tobias Carroll | Published on October 23, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share The Works of Vermin, the new novel from Hiron Ennes, has plenty of elements to keep a reader’s attention. You have political intrigue, an evocative setting, and a bestiary’s worth of uncanny creatures, including “the ubiquitous Whitteleston termite, bushels of devilvine, [and] spore-spraying blast mice.” And if all that Ennes sought to do here was tell a story about pest control in an uncanny city, that would likely have been compelling enough reading on its own. Ennes is on to something different here, though; there’s a narrative sleight-of-hand that eventually reveals something far bleaker going on than a conflicted hero facing off against something very large with too many legs. Ennes’ previous novel Leech featured some themes and images that the author returns to in this new book: a penchant for symbiotic and parasitic life forms; troubling power dynamics; and the nature of humanity are all on the table in both novels. Where The Works of Vermin differs from its predecessor is in both its scale and in what Ennes does with those elements. One early chapter here is titled “The Brave Men and Women of Borisch & Sons Extermination Company,” and the contents of the chapter are immediately at odds with the heraldry of that title. When Ennes introduces Guy Moulène, he is adrift in dreams before awakening to another day of work. “[T]he vermin, despite all his fumigants and traps and serrated blades, never seem to die,” Ennes muses here. Guy and his colleague Dawn are tasked with tracking down various creatures large and small, and it’s an especially large beast—imagine a vast centipede that reproduces asexually—that becomes his own personal white whale. The city of Tiliard, where this is set, is built into a massive tree, one whose trunk leads up into the stratosphere. There’s a certain metaphor there—the city as an organism all its own—but there is also a thoroughly fantastical aspect to it: Of course a city built into organic material would have a particularly unique flora and fauna. This is also a city where many people work to pay off debts; throughout, Guy does both his extermination work and various other jobs—including a sideline in sex work—to keep his sister Tyro from going down a similar path. Ennes will occasionally throw in an especially evocative description of a location, like this one: Conundrum Street carves across Tiliard’s face like a duelling scar, a wayward secant interrupting the concentric rings of nearby avenues. The gash is a declaration of the city’s violent prehistory, though no one can quite decide how it was made, or when. True to its name, the street presents a riddle over which academics love to shed blood. [71] Initially, The Works of Vermin feels like it’s going to follow Guy’s efforts to track down a giant creature somewhere in Tiliard and keep it from wreaking havoc on the population. That’s when another character enters the equation: Betram Gorslung, scion of a powerful family, who purchases Borisch & Sons and takes an interest in Guy’s future with the company. [Spoilers follow.] Buy the Book The Works of Vermin Hiron Ennes Buy Book The Works of Vermin Hiron Ennes Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget That Bertram’s affable demeanor might be too good to be true is hinted at several times, but becomes much more clear as new additions roll in for The Borisch Manual of Catoptric Pest Species, the comprehensive guide that Guy, Dawn, and their colleagues use as reference when hunting. The 398th entry is for “The Contriver Worm,” which is the massive creature that Guy encounters early in the novel. The 399th is for “an incandescent biofilm born in the nest of tetrapod toxin on the Root of Brewers.” And then we get to number 400, which is for “the first human species added to the list.” This is at roughly the halfway point of the list, and it’s here where the full scope of what Ennes is doing comes into frame. There is, unfortunately, a long history of political factions dehumanizing their opponents by comparing them to pests—and, subsequently, using that dehumanization to justify genocide. The Nazis did this; so too did the Hutu in Rwanda. And if that suggests to you that, under Betram’s control, the newly-merged Borisch-Gorslung has a more sinister agenda, you are very much on to something. There’s more going on here than just Guy’s efforts to pursue a giant creature, keep his sister safe, and avoid becoming embroiled in a growing authoritarian system. There’s also a plot running in parallel to Guy and Tyro’s story, involving a woman named Aster, an increasing amount of intrigue involving the city’s Grand Marshal and Laurel Chancellor, and the arrival in the city of “a stranger, dark and lean” named Mallory vant Passand. Aster is a perfumer, and Ennes adds plenty of sensory detail to these sections. Aster also has a constant cough, which has the effect of producing something inexplicable: She closes her eyes, heaves one last cough, and spits into the handkerchief. Between the dark streaks of mucus lies a clump of soft, undulating tissue, branched like her airways. Bodiless but alive, it flutters its cilia, toxic nodules shimmering along its length like faceted eyes. [47] Seeing how exactly these two threads will eventually converge is one of the pleasures of reading Ennes’s novel. The Works of Vermin is a novel that takes its interest in fauna, fungi, and life cycles seriously; both evolution and metamorphosis play significant thematic roles in the proceedings. Ennes’s new book also suggests an aesthetic kinship with the likes of Jared Pechaček’s The West Passage, Alex Pheby’s Cities of the Weft trilogy, and Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb novels. Aesthetically, they’re all very different, but they share a visceral gothic quality to them—an ancestry that hints at the influence of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast and Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris—as well as a meticulous attention to questions of power and how it can be abused. The Works of Vermin is a novel that rarely goes where you’d expect. I went in expecting strange creatures and thrilling adventure, and I got both. But Ennes’s book also contains moving scenes of interpersonal interaction and an unsettling lesson in the abuses of power. It’s a haunting read, but not necessarily for the reasons you’d expect.[end-mark] The Works of Vermin is published by Tor Books. The post More Than Metaphor: <i>The Works of Vermin</i> by Hiron Ennes appeared first on Reactor.