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A Court of Thornes and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
Alastor sat primly, ankle balanced on his knee, foot bouncing every so often as he listened to the sheer insanity being said around him. The cookies and finger sandwiches— alas, the normal kind— were long gone and he was nursing the dregs of a very unsatisfactory herbal tea.
When Charlie had demanded, politely, in the cadence of a kicked puppy, that he had to join a Hotel activity he was sure a book club would be innocuous enough. How badly could one fuck up a book club? He enjoyed a good book every now and again, kept a few favorites in his personal rooms for night time reading. A little Faulkner or Fitzgerald was just the thing for a quiet evening in with a glass of brandy and a lit fire. When she handed the book to him he thought it appeared to be a touch... infantile but he wasn't above a little low brow popular culture every so often. Why, he had been a fan of trashy noir detective stories in his days upstairs, and lord knew those were not high art.
This, though? This book? Trash was too good of a word for it. The publisher should be kidnapped and forced to apologize to a forest for using the trees in such a debased way. The author should be drawn and quartered. He wanted to hunt the woman down and eat her spleen.
Filth. Absolute filth.
What was worse is that everyone seemed to have enjoyed it.
"I'm just sayin', I think his motivations coulda been more clear, ya know? If he had told her from the beginning..." Angel gestured as he spoke, the book grasped firmly in one hand. Alastor watched, a bland smile stuck on his face. It was such a shame that Angel often used his hands to speak, he had four of the damned things and became a whirlwind of gestures when he got heated. The lamp next to him had already been a casualty twice over.
"No, no, no, I totally get what you mean!" Charlie said, nodding along, leaning forward on the couch in her fervor. Her eyes were bright, hopeful things and her expression was one of open delight.
Hah. She thought this was going well. Being delusional certainly ran in the Morningstar family.
At least Vaggie looked just as miserable as Alastor felt. She had stayed mostly quiet but her eyebrows betrayed her. They were like semaphore flags, wiggling and arching as the discussion ebbed and flowed around her.
Charlie turned to Alastor, smile bright as a sun going super nova. "What did you think of the book, Alastor? Did you like it?"
Everyone turned to look at the Radio Demon. He so dearly loved an audience.
Well, she had asked.
"My dear, in all of my many years of being both alive and dead, I have never before read something so fanatically puerile. It is a triumph of tawdry, tired tropes and unimaginative narration. Everyone involved in this so-called novel should be ashamed of themselves, from the typesetter to the editor, to even the janitor of the publishing house. The author's grasp of language leaves so much to be desired that I feel a child using wooden alphabet blocks could write better. If this is what is considered a best seller lately then I feel that the very state of literature is in such peril as to almost be extinct! Why, the very creative soul of both Hell and Earth is in such disarray that it almost feels like a cry for help!"
Charlie's face fell as he monologued, hands gripping her knees as she fought to think of something positive to say in the face of such unvarnished criticism.
"I saw that the author had the audacity to continue to publish and I would rather be locked outside on Extermination Day in my underclothes than read one single additional sentence." Alastor continued, relishing the look on Charlie's face. What an excellent learning experience this was becoming for her!
"Gee Smiles, tell us how ya really feel, why don'tcha," Angel said, crossing his bottom pair of arms.
"You didn't like anything?" Charlie asked, voice small.
Alastor considered the question. "Well, I admit, I very much enjoyed hurling it into the ocean."
With a groan, Charlie dropped her head into her hands. Vaggie patted her back, shooting Alastor a look that was part recrimination and part chagrined relief. He gave her a bright, sharp, unrepentant grin in return.
With a cheerful little hum, Alastor laced his fingers over his knee. "So, what shall we read next?"
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Alastor looked at the cover.
He looked back at Charlie.
"It has dragons!" she said excitedly, almost bouncing in place as if the enthusiastic energy inside of her was too much for her body to contain. Part of Alastor silently hoped she would just explode like a piñata full of rainbows and self help books and get it over with.
"I don't do dragons," Alastor said, a sneer on the edges of his smile.
Angel shrugged from his place on the couch, not looking up from his phone. "Eh, I've done dragons. They're not as big as you think they are."
A loud record scratch noise rent through the air, Alastor's ambient static turning discordant and outraged. He turned to glare at the spider, eyes narrowed.
Charlie laughed nervously, shoving the book into the demon's hands. "Come on! You don't know until you try!"
"That's what the dragon said too," Angel said with a wink.
They later found the book, or what remained of it anyway, in the lobby fireplace. It seemed a rather fitting death for a book about dragons, if you thought about it.
Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver
Charlie was determined to find a book Alastor would enjoy. She spent hours combing the internet for ideas, then more hours bothering all the underpaid bookstore employees in the Vox & Noble store. Finally, she had an idea. Was she super thrilled the book involved serial killers? Not exactly. It was incredibly popular though, freshly arrived from Earth, and everyone was talking about it. Plus, Alastor and the characters would have something in common! That had to count for something!
It had to!
Angel, on the other hand, knew this was going to be a shit show. He had a sixth sense for that kind of thing. An idea struck him that day, one of those ideas that felt so clever he couldn't believe he came up with it himself.
At the book club meeting that afternoon he went live on TikTok. He shoved the phone into the breast pocket of his jacket with the back camera facing his chest so the image would be black. There was no way in Hell that Alastor would ever allow himself to show up on video but that creepy fucker loved the sound of his own voice. That rant was going to come through loud and clear.
He leaned back on the couch, a bag of milano cookies in one hand, and settled in to watch the show.
"So," Charlie said, clapping her hands together after the tea was poured and the finger sandwiches eaten, "what did we all think of this one?"
Cherri whooped gleefully, waving the book aloft like a bridesmaid waving dollars at a bachelorette party. Alastor's smile went strained and he glared at her like a disappointed school teacher.
"Must you—"
"I thought it was a riot!" Cherri yelled, cutting Alastor off without a thought. The demon bristled at the slight, grin tight and teeth bared. "Fuckin' banger of a book! When Ange told me you were doing this I thought it sounded dumb as hell but this book was explosive!"
Charlie blinked. "Oh good! Um, good! I'm so glad you enjoyed it! You know, reading can be really—"
"And the sex! Wow, who knew you could put that in a book and not just on some shady websites online!"
Angel crunched on another cookie. This was already fucking gold.
"Um," Charlie looked a little rattled, "what did you think of the serial killer thing? Now, since we're discussing how to rehabilitate ourselves, I wanted to point out that morally—"
Alastor laughed, one quick bark of derisive amusement. He couldn't help it. His radio feedback even went the extra mile to throw in a studio laugh track. Charlie turned to give him a wide eyed look.
"What an absolutely loathsome book," Alastor said, his smile almost malevolent. "I can scarcely list everything wrong with it. It wasn't realistic at all! It's as if the author never murdered anyone themselves! And that's just bad research. Write what you know, my dear! That's the best advice! And in the case of this author, perhaps they should stick to writing abysmal pornography and not try to sully the good name of serial killing!"
Angel snickered as Alastor went on to rip the book to shreds, sharing gruesome details of his own murders and how they differed from the incorrect methods the author described. Charlie went pale as Alastor continued to talk, hurriedly trying to stop him when he began to describe field dressing a corpse in a bayou so he could bring back some choice cuts to make a brisket.
Cross off another thing they could no longer cook at this place. Charlie would never be able to look at a brisket the same way again for the rest of her life. Alastor rolled his eyes at her delicate constitution but did her the favor of ending his impromptu lecture on the proper way to prepare human flesh.
They all agreed the next book should have just a touch less murder. Alastor swanned out of the room, head held high and a victorious grin on his thin face. Charlie looked ready to keel over.
She turned when Angel gasped, staring down at his phone. "What? Is something wrong? Is someone hurt?"
"Holy fuck, hon, this shit did numbers! Oh, I am so recording the next one too!"
"You're doing what?" Charlie scrambled to look at his phone, eyes wide at the amount of people who had tuned in to listen to Alastor be a catty bitch.
Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree
"A derivative, overly saccharine mess of a story that resembles less of a novel and more of a D&D campaign written by a concussed creative writing major convinced they were about to become the next Tolkein."
"Al, how the fuck do you know what D&D is?" Angel asked, echoing the fast moving questions in the TikTok chat.
The Radio Demon's expression went dark. "Ask Vox about what happened in 1976 with my sorcerer and his paladin."
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
It had been several months of this farce of a book club and Alastor was truly weary of it.
Angel's half a million followers were not. They ate up every monthly book evisceration with absolute, unfettered glee. Unbeknownst to him, Alastor had become something of a BookTok taste maker these past few months. People ran out to buy the books in question, whether to see if they were as bad as he said or in spite of it. For once, Angel's inbox wasn't full of people wanting to pay to see him naked, but instead there were publishers trying to get him to pass along book suggestions to the Radio Demon!
Was there money in this? God, he hoped there was money in this. As long as Alastor never found out he was being recorded, Angel was going to ride this wave until is crashed him into the side of a pier. He couldn't wait to see how much Alastor hated this next one!
Alastor gave Charlie a winning smile, pushing enough charm into it to kill a horse. "Charlie, my dear, would you be so kind to run to the kitchen? Silly me, I forgot the napkins."
"Of course!" she said, giving him an awkward thumbs up before jogging out of the room.
Once she was gone, Alastor whirled on the only other person attending their book club this month. Angel looked up from his phone, eyes going wide. The energy in the room changed, the temperature seemed to drop, and Angel felt a shiver travel down his spine.
"Angel, my good fellow," Alastor said, voice sweetness and light even as his neck started to crack and elongate, "would you care to explain to me what 'BookTok' is and why I saw my name used in conjunction with it in the paper this morning?"
The spider demon scrambled back in his chair, hurriedly trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and those sinister, glowing radio dial eyes.
"Listen, I can explain!"
Alastor leaned over, the air around him turning a venomous green as his magic leeched into the atmosphere, as his antlers spread into large jagged points. "₮ⱧɆ₦ ɆӾ₱Ⱡ₳ł₦," he said, vocal distortion thick and heavy.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Charlie smiled excitedly at Vaggie.
"I think this is going really well!" she said, grabbing all the napkins she could carry.
"Think so?" Vaggie asked as she poured hot water into the tea pot.
"Yes!" she sang happily with a twirl, "everyone's getting along so well!"
They both paused as they heard Angel's scream echo down the hallway. Vaggie winced and turned to look at her now crestfallen girlfriend.
"Damn it," Charlie said with a sigh.