Review: A Boy’s Hammer by Alex Grass

An epic novel that combines Finnish mythology with a harrowing serial killer story, Alex Grass’ A Boy’s Hammer is a wildly creative take on the urban fantasy genre.

Fifteen-year-old Alan and his mom Lena are on their way to Helsinki when their plane crashes in the ocean. Neither are heard from again, until twenty long years later. Alan turns up in a crater in Philadelphia: naked, about seven feet tall, covered in hammer tattoos, and still with the mind of a teenager – despite the fact that he’s now a thirty-five-year-old man. So, what in the world happened?

Detective Jefferson O’Brady, a cop married to his job with a serious drinking problem, is assigned to the case. Alan tells a wild tale about the afterlife and a horrific hell world called Tuonela, where he had to defend himself against terrifying monsters. When O’Brady realizes that Alan is referring to the realm of the dead in Finnish mythology, he’ll have to decide whether he believes the strange story or not.

Alongside this main plotline are numerous interwoven and interconnected narratives, all leading back to mythological origins. One follows a man named Christian Henneman – a member of a secret organization called the Kalman Society, which is trying to bring about chaos and the eventual apocalypse on Earth. Henneman is soon selected as the new servant of Queen Kalma, a nightmarish creature from Tuonela who wants to manifest on Earth in her corporeal form.

This will involve sewing as much discord on Earth as possible and generally wreaking havoc, and Kalma proposes resurrecting a 200-year-old serial killer to help with the job. Now, O’Brady has a second issue on his hands: someone is murdering people in Philadelphia with surprising speed, agility, and strength. Meanwhile, Alan must travel to Finland to find an essential weapon before it’s too late, and his Aunt Mimi is also crafting a strange musical machine that might help in the final battle for the fate of humanity.

Alex Grass is a master of tonal shifts, as A Boy’s Hammer veers between truly grotesque scenes of body horror and mass killing and hilariously off-kilter sections of goofy humor, such as satirical passages poking fun at the local Philadelphia news and political scene, with a character based on real-life DA Larry Krasner. Readers who crave fiction that veers between gross-out and laugh-out-loud, à la John Dies At The End, will find a lot to like in Alex Grass’ writing style, which takes the genre in new, creatively bizarre directions.

While this is a lengthy novel, it always feels forwardly propulsive, and Grass expertly manages an impressive number of characters and storylines without dropping the ball on any of them. The various narrative threads do eventually tie together, although it does take some of them hundreds of pages to do so. The plot points surrounding Alan’s second adult trip to Helsinki feel a bit convenient, but overall the sheer wackiness of the novel will compel readers to just go with the flow and trust Grass along the way. After all, this is a novel about the fight between order and chaos, so a little storytelling chaos is understandable.

All told, A Boy’s Hammer is an inventive mix of the believable and the absurd, and incredibly entertaining.