Alma Katsu’s “Fiend” is “Succession” as filtered through “The Fall of the House of Usher”: three largely unlikable heirs to a powerful family with a dark secret vie for control of forces none of them can understand.
“Unlikable” may not be quite the right word: while I’m sure that I would not personally like any of them in real life, I did find them interesting to spend time with. Dardan, the only son and heir apparent, is largely hapless, and surely not up to the challenge offered by the Berisha family fortune and curse. Maris, the elder daughter, is ambitious and scheming and tends to get out well ahead of her skis. And Nora, the youngest, gives off an air of disaffection and decadence, but is in fact the most cunning and vicious of them all. A moral victory is impossible in this battle — there’s nothing even vaguely moral about any of them — but a poetic victory, perhaps, is.
“Fiend” is brief, bloody, and dark, and holds the story in delicious suspense right to the very end.
