Dan Hanks: "The Way Up Is Death" (ARC Review)

Title: The Way Up Is Death [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Dan Hanks [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Supernatural, Multiverse, Thriller/Mystery
Year: 2025
Age: 18+
Stars: 4.5/5
Pros: Inventive and cinematic; hard-hitting yet moving and ultimately hopeful.
Cons: Given the large cast of characters (and the very nature of the story), not all of them get to be sufficiently developed.
WARNING! Blood and gore, dismemberment, torture, near-drowning, human combustion/explosion, body horror, eye horror, rat horror, death of a loved one.
Will appeal to: Those who are in for a wild, brutal yet poetical adventure/mystery that doubles as a reflection on humanity, life and the future.

Blurb: When a mysterious tower appears in the skies over England, thirteen strangers are pulled from their lives to stand before it as a countdown begins. Above the doorway is one word: ASCEND. As a grieving teacher, a reclusive artist, and a narcissistic celebrity children’s author lead the others in trying to understand why they’ve been chosen and what the tower is, it soon becomes clear the only way out of this for everyone…is up. And so begins a race to the top, through sinking ships, haunted houses and other waking nightmares, as the group fights to hold onto its humanity, while the twisted horror of why they’re here grows ever more apparent – and death stalks their every move. (Amazon)

Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Angry Robot for providing an ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

MORE TO IT

This book's premise is impossible to resist if you're the kind of reader whose mantra is "the weirder the better", but I'm here to confirm that, if you take a chance on TWUID, you won't regret being lured in, and you'll end up getting more than you bargained for. The short-and-sweet version of such premise: thirteen everymen and women from the UK (or just passing through) are pulled from their lives and forced to ascend an impossible tower in the skies, all while trying to fathom the how and (especially) the why in the process. From videogame settings to spaceships, from haunted houses to tropical beaches, a series of equally impossible locations (but ones that are somehow tailored to the travellers' past experiences) have the characters play a deadly game of escape rooms, of which they have to figure out the rules as they go. Exciting, isn't it? But if you tend to need a little more meat on your stories' bones, or if the cosmic horror premise and the content warning list left you on the fence about giving TWUID a chance, there are a couple more things you need to know. One: for a book that sheds so much blood and put its characters through the wringer, Hank's latest is surprisingly comforting and life-affirming. Two: for a book that relies so much on nightmarish experiences and frantic escapes, and even comes close to jumping the shark a couple of times (one of which quite literally 😂), TWUID is (also) surprisingly deep, so that you end up forgiving it for not making you care more for its characters (more of that below) or not giving you all the answers (if you're the type of reader who needs them, because to be honest, they're NOT the point here). [...]

CRAMPED SPACE

When a book has a large cast of characters, it's a given that not every one of them can be fully fleshed out, more so if there's supposed to be a number of casualties among them. That being said, I think my biggest reservation about this story is that I would have liked to know some of the deuteragonists better, or see them develop beyond the trope they embodied or originated from. Not to mention, this would have enhanced the suspense of finding out who was going to reach the last level of the tower and ultimately survive, because some of the characters came across more like vessels to advance the plot (or even like actual cannon fodder) than people with real lives and personalities. On the other hand, there was an unexpected 14th character woven into the story that ended up feeling better developed (and surprisingly more relatable...I say "surprisingly" for a reason I can't spoil) than most of those we met at the start, and whose presence sent a beautiful message about overcoming our differences and helping one another across apparently insurmountable divides.

THE GOOD RACE

Speaking of messages, the one above is not the only one woven into the plot...TWUID has a lot to say about sexism, celebrity culture, the use of AI (and its proponents' inane justifications), and conversely, grief, morality, mortality and sacrifice, in a way that feels organic to the story and bends its cosmic horror premise in a very human direction. Especially in the current political and social climate (*gestures at the world*), this book is a breath of fresh air, and a gentle, yet passionate reminder that we're here to preserve/protect and create a legacy of love, not to exploit and scorch (burn, even) the Earth and the future to satisfy our whims and nurture our prejudices. You can't ask for much more from a story (besides it being entertaining), can you? 🙂

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