The Everling and the Acid King

J. Christie’s The Everling and the Acid King is one of those books that’s hard to classify neatly, which is exactly why I enjoyed it so much. It’s like someone threw The Umbrella Academy, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Coraline into a blender, added some green electric lightning, and then told the story backward through a dream.

From the very first pages, we’re dropped into total chaos. The fall of the Greywatch, an almost mythic resistance group, sets the stage in a wildly cinematic opening where portals rip open and molers (terrifying, drooling creatures) invade. Amidst the mayhem, a strange, lightning-charged man named Winnifred Baker teleports a mysterious baby through dimension after dimension, desperately searching for somewhere safe. “We have many more to go. Many, many more,” Win says to the baby, and I was hooked.

That baby becomes Chester “Chezzy” Nithercot, our main protagonist, and he’s as charming as he is unlucky. Raised in a Dickensian orphanage, Chezzy bounces from near-adoption to near-adoption until he lands with the painfully perfect Fieldmores. That’s when things get weird. Imagine Stepford parents with obsessively matched outfits, etiquette rules by the dozen, and a secret monstrous son, “Little Stuart,” who shoots spines out of his back and eats raw meat in the dark.

What stands out most in Christie’s writing is the surreal worldbuilding. It’s like peeling back layers of a nightmare wrapped in pastel wallpaper. The Fieldmores’ house is pristine, yet hiding a twisted reality, like the mirrored bedroom in the basement that’s a mutilated replica of Chezzy’s own. “It was Chezzy’s room. It mirrored his upstairs exactly.” That moment gave me chills.

Christie has a gift for tonal shifts. One second, you’re laughing at how absurd the Fieldmores’ dinner rules are: “You will receive word on what the dress theme will be for the day,” Mr. Fieldmore announces, and the next, you’re tense with dread as Chezzy sneaks through the house to uncover what’s really lurking in the dark.

If I had a gripe, it’s that the pacing occasionally goes full throttle into the bizarre without much warning. It’s disorienting at times, though that seems intentional. You’re not supposed to feel grounded in this world. You’re supposed to question what’s real right alongside Chezzy.

Ultimately, The Everling and the Acid King is a fever dream of found family, hidden trauma, and secret power. There’s sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and humor, and it all blends in a way that works better than it has any right to. I closed the book, still buzzing from it. Like the green lightning that transports Win across dimensions, this story zaps you out of your comfort zone, and that’s what great speculative fiction should do.

I don’t know what’s coming next in this series, but I’m in.