The Shape of Monsters
The Shape of Monsters by C.L. Hellisen: A gothic descent into a world of darkness, magic and twisted loyalties.
It started with an image of a tattooed man in his car, with his life in a shambles. I knew he was broken, and I knew he’d lost his family and was making a last ditch attempt to reconnect with his estranged sister.
I knew there was magic, and I knew there was going to be a monster.
The rest I needed to find out.
Where the Seeds were Sown
I’ve always drawn from a wide range of inspirations, but in The Shape of Monsters you’ll likely see my love of authors like Tanith Lee, Clive Barker, William Joseph Martin (writing as Poppy Z. Brite), Ursula le Guin, and Angela Carter. And my long-term love-hate relationship with TV series Supernatural. Those brothers and their angel…
My story was going to be dark and lush, rich with obsessions and decay, where the magic was ancient, nasty, no matter how modern the rest of the world might be. In particular, Lee, Brite, and Barker’s modern gothic carnality, the blurring of gender, their magic that feels like a fever-dream, where fantasy walks the knife-edge of horror, seeped into the earth where The Shape of Monsters was grown.
One of my favourite things is when a story digs deep into the relationship (im)balance between siblings, especially when one of those siblings has something the other doesn’t. In some families, that may boil down to who is the heir to the family fortune, but I was also playing with another idea of power – who is blessed with magic and who isn’t – who their society thinks deserves respect, and who doesn’t.
And I do love writing deeply flawed people with dubious morality. I wanted the threads of unhealthy relationships to twine together and pull the narrative deeper into an obsession with power.
Out of this, the relationship between Aleksander Kercheval and his little sister Vaira was born.
This is more than a sibling rivalry…
Take a dollop of favouritism, add in a classic car-load of trauma, obsessions, secrets, and manipulative outsiders, and it’s hardly surprising that Vai and Aleks mistrust each other.
When Vai inherits Aubrey House and finally understands just how powerful she is, the gap between the siblings widens. All the secrets that Aleks has kept from Vai come crawling out the dark, and ancient family bargains are resurrected, plunging the Kerchevals into a generations-old war between Mage Houses. Everyone wants what the Kerchevals have – control over a monster prince from the Void, to augment their magic and protect their home. But the monster has ideas of its own.
Aubrey House is a gothic monstrosity left to decay as the last of the Aubrey family faded to nothing. Now it belongs to Vaira Kercheval, and it is a house of secrets and wonders, as well as dangers she cannot understand.
To Aleks, the House is a brief moment of normality – and this is where I twist the sibling dagger by giving Aleks a shot at the power he thinks he doesn’t have, and which his sister believes doesn’t belong to him.
At its heart, The Shape of Monsters is a story about agency – what people will do to get it, and the fall-out that follows.
How I Reached the End on a Novel I Love
It took me a few years to get the shape of the story right, and then once I signed with Caro Clarke in 2021, it took a few editorial rounds before we were both happy to go on sub.
One thing I loved about writing The Shape of Monsters was its modern secondary world setting, but this kind of world can throw new readers sometimes, so something I needed to bear in mind during revisions was getting the right balance between the familiar and the new. While I didn’t want the magic and religion to be a copy of our reality, I needed it to feel bloody and real. I drew on many different religions and pantheons to create Aleks and Vai’s world, where the dead are sent to a frozen void to journey until they reach a shining palace at the end of everything. I spent a lot of time reading about different magical practices in our world – from Christian mythology, the Viking way to Voodoo stories – and let the combined influence seep through into my story’s magic.
But while magic can give people power and status and safety, it also corrupts. Their desires could destroy not only the fragile relationship between Aleks and Vaira, but free a deep magic neither understand.
In their different approaches to magic, neither sibling does the right thing, though they always tell themselves that they are doing the best they can, with all the excuses that give them the leeway to continue.
Sunlight and Shadow
My characters might be morally grey and believe they are doing what is necessary for their own survival, but under all the gothic trappings, I am something of a romantic at heart.
The Shape of Monsters is not going to give romance readers a HEA, but there is always a flicker of hope. A shift is coming in the sequel A Million Points of Light, when everyone will be forced to confront their true selves and desires, and fight to retain their humanity while they fight to entirely reshape their world and the Void.
(c) C.L. Hellisen
About The Shape of Monsters by C.L. Hellisen:
A gripping tale of a descent into darkness as two siblings enter a world of magic, secrets and twisted loyalties – for those who loved Starling House by Alix E. Harrow, Gallant by V. E. Schwab and A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid.
A lost heir inherits her House’s wild magic.
Her feckless brother inherits nothing.
When a magical fire destroyed their family as children, Aleks and Vaira Kercheval escaped. Born to a world where power was everything, they’ve hidden from it all their lives. Then a letter arrives stating that Vaira has inherited Aubrey House, a decaying Gothic mansion full of dark, wild magic.
The estranged siblings haven’t spoken for years. But together, they return to their ancestral home, where crossing the threshold plunges them into a realm of shadows and ancient feuds. As the pair are drawn into a war between rival mages, the powerless Aleks accidentally summons and binds a monstrous prince from the Void – a creature of immense power. His gifted sister must learn to unleash her inner fire as the lines between human and monster blur. But can they survive the darkness that is to come?
From acclaimed author CL Hellisen, The Shape of Monsters is a treasure trove of dark magic, demonic possession and family secrets, where betrayals linger and power corrupts.
And read more Meet the Authors of Speculative Fiction on Writing.ie here.
