I was fortunate enough to receive an ARC of this book. This was a compelling and immersive read that presents a fresh take on the vampire as an allegory for intimate partner violence and the dynamics of abusive relationships. For how prevalent these kinds of relationships are, their inner workings are frequently misunderstood and the consequences of this can be deadly. The Wicked and the Willing is not an easy read, but readers who are in the right headspace for it will find a story that thoughtfully engages with these challenges.
I love it when vampires are beautiful, but still creatures of genuine horror. It becomes even more captivating when much of the horror comes from how powerfully alluring they are to the people they hurt. It's a field full of landmines that Tan navigates with expert care. While the novel explores extreme and difficult themes, it still offers plenty of scenes where genre fans can enjoy vampires doing cool vampire things like turning into mist and moving with impossible grace as they rip people apart with their bare hands.
The three main characters are all saddled with significant flaws. It's hard to watch them make one bad decision after another, Gean Choo most of all, but it works because everyone's actions are informed by their backgrounds. The psychological realism of the writing makes it easy to understand how everyone got where they are.
Gean Choo meets Mrs. Edevane at an extremely vulnerable time in a life that's already been too hard. While the attraction is mutual and genuine, that doesn't mean that her employer isn't fully willing to take advantages of these vulnerabilities to get what she wants. Her mercurial moods, the rapid and intense cycling between doting affection and reflexive violence, paint a painfully real picture of what it's like to love someone who is incapable of loving you back in a way that you deserve. The final, extended intimate scene between Gean Choo and Mrs. Edevane was truly harrowing as all the toxic elements of the relationship reached their most devastating potency.
Po Lam, Mrs. Edevane's majordomo, is a stark contrast to this tainted, narcissistic form of love. It would have been easy to set her character up as an obvious, unproblematic alternative, but Tan made her a lot more complicated than that, and as a result she was my favorite character. It's true that she will make sacrifices and deny herself for the sake of Gean Choo's safety and happiness in a way that Mrs. Edevane never would. But she's also been an accomplice to atrocity and looked the other way for a long time. It's a lot of guilt to reckon with, and Po Lam doesn't get an easy way out of it by virtue of being "the healthy choice". I also really appreciated how her gender identity and expression was portrayed. The way she saw herself was uniquely her own. She didn't fall neatly in line with what the historical setting demanded of her, and certain elements of that defiance were easier for her than others. She still convincingly wrestled with the perspective that would have been imposed on a woman born to her place and time.
And of course I have to touch on the multiple endings. Speaking for myself, I read the ending that I knew I didn't want first, and it was so bleak I thought to myself, "Wow, glad that didn't really happen." And yet, even after reading the ending I DID want, when I really thought about who the characters were and how deep their damage went, it's not like I could say that the bleaker ending wouldn't have felt "true". I definitely need to read that third ending (available as a mailing list exlusive) before I feel like I can make an informed decision on what "should have" happened!
All in all, The Wicked and the Willing is an intense collision of lust, love, power, guilt, abuse, and horror. It's a fantastic example of what a gothic novel par excellence is capable of.
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