Book Review: The Calamities by Chuck Wendig

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

The Calamities by Chuck Wendig

Mogsy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror, Fantasy

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Del Rey (August 18, 2026)

Length: 558 pages

Author Information: Website

Chuck Wendig has a knack for coming up with premises which make me keep coming back for more, even when I know there’s a decent chance I’ll have some issues with the execution. The Calamities is another one of those books. It’s urban fantasy that’s dark, weird, and occasionally gruesome, which is very much in keeping with the author’s trademark strangeness. Unfortunately, though, it also falls into some of the usual pitfalls I’ve run into with his work, where a compelling idea keeps expanding until it becomes more sprawling and complicated than interesting.

At the center of this story is Mourning Mayne, scion to an ancient and powerful house of fiends, demonic beings who have gained and maintained their influence since time immemorial by buying human souls. Their lives are sustained by a strange elixir created from those souls which give the Maynes and the other fiendish families their supernatural abilities, thus making the business of collecting souls as much a part of their inheritance as their wealth and power. But Mourning has never been particularly interested in being involved in family affairs, especially given all the ugliness it entails. He had been more than happy to exile himself to the opposite side of the county as soon as he was able, leaving his twin siblings to deal with the matter of who would eventually inherit their father’s legacy.

But the Mayne patriarch, Hadrian, has other plans. Out of nowhere, he summons his wayward son home, and Mourning suddenly finds himself pulled back into the world he’d desperately wanted to leave behind. Despite everything, the desire to make his father proud is a difficult habit to break, and when Hadrian announces that he intends to make Mourning his heir, our protagonist is left with a jumble of emotions he barely has time to process before his father disappears along with their house’s reserve of soul elixir. Naturally, the other fiendish families take notice, with accusations flying and old grudges resurfacing. Mourning is soon confronted by Key, a soul dealer with whom he has a complicated history, and discovers that she hasn’t really been out of his life at all, having secretly kept an eye on him the whole time he was away. And now, the two of them find themselves working together to unravel the mystery, their search eventually leading them to a mysterious artist whose connection to the fiends is far more important and potentially dangerous than anyone realizes.

The concept behind The Calamities had all the ingredients to make it instantly appealing to me. I’ve always had a soft spot for the black sheep of the family trope, and while it’s hardly a new idea, I was curious to see how Wendig would put his own spin on it within this particular world of demonic families and trafficked human souls. Mourning’s decision to walk away from this system of exploitation gives the story a solid foundation, and there’s also potential in the setup of him being dragged right back in, forced to accept his destiny. I mean, there are so many ways this could play out.

Yet, I’m sad to say the execution didn’t quite live up to the promise. What starts off as relatively tight storytelling gradually frays to become much more sprawling and unfocused. I wasn’t a fan of Key’s or Quinn’s POVs, which introduced even more characters and layers of mythology, much of which felt questionable in its relevance and ultimately served more to complicate the story than enhance it. Eventually, the plot grew to such bloated proportions, it became difficult to keep track of what was actually important, and I found myself feeling less interested and invested as it wore on.

This is also where I run into a somewhat recurrent issue with Wendig’s books. He clearly has a very distinctive voice, and I love that he’s willing to get weird, but sometimes it feels like it’s weirdness for weirdness’s sake rather than because it actually serves the story. His writing occasionally seems more interested in reminding me how unconventional the book is than in letting the story speak for itself. While some of it worked for me, other moments felt forced, and by the end, I couldn’t help thinking about how much more effective this could have been if it had simply trusted its strongest ideas and given them more room to breathe.

Ultimately, I think The Calamities would have benefited from a little more cohesiveness. The novel spends so much time building toward something enormous, with the ending throwing revelation after revelation at you, suggesting that everything is about to come crashing down. But by that point, I think I was more confused and skeptical than anything. That’s not to say I had a bad experience, as there was plenty here I genuinely enjoyed, particularly the core concept. But I also spent a good portion of the book wishing it would start reining things in rather than continuing to expand the scope. The final pages clearly leave the door open for a sequel, and if another book follows, I’ll more than likely give it a shot, though I do hope it will bring some focus to all these moving parts before the whole thing becomes too much to hold together.