“ Entropy has probably peed on the carpet.”

Wherever I thought Chanchito Massoni’s Jane is the End was going, it consistently insisted on going somewhere else. Bold, wacky, and at turns profound, I’m left at a loss as to exactly how to classify Jane or what to compare it with. When the novel opens, following the titular Jane–a somewhat put-upon employee for the Ministry of Magic–it has the flavour of one of those takes on Hell (or the afterlife) that reimagines mythological worlds through the lens of contemporary corporate culture: a little like The Good Place by way of Douglas Adams. Although I’ve never read Chuck Tingle, I was somehow also reminded of him, perhaps because of how enthusiastically Massoni leans into the story’s absurdist elements. Fans of Gerard Howard’s SPFBO9 entry, The Fractured God, may also enjoy Jane for its eclectic cast. There are also several references to the Final Fantasy videogame series throughout, and once I’d made that connection, certain plot elements were also recontextualized for me. Unlike a lot of “Hell is an office job” books, Jane is set in a secondary world. This made it a little harder for me to anchor myself, but having finished the book I can see why Massoni made this choice. In many ways, Jane is a book about its message, and pivots toward a lot of theological and philosophical explorations that, if the novel were set entirely in our own world, might run the risk of coming off as preachy or trite. That said, readers will no doubt still recognize many of the figures Jane encounters from real world mythology and folklore.

As Jane progresses, the story warps and transforms, becoming something much more ambitious than its initial pages would suggest. As the back cover copy teases, Jane is actually a manifestation (or avatar) of the end of the world, and in the wake of her unwilling destruction of her home, she’s thrust into a cosmic voyage that spans the universe, time, and several mythologies. Ostensibly, Jane’s own goal is to prevent her own destiny from coming to fruition and raining destruction upon the universe, but what emerges as a subconscious motivation and journey is much more personal and esoteric. Jane is joined on her travels by a variety of colourful characters–some cartoonish, some bearing the mantle of mythological and religious gravitas–but all ultimately fascinating and compelling in distinct ways. There’s a profundity in the absurdity on the page, and while the gimmicks and larks of the story may at times suggest something whimsical (and Jane is at turns whimsical), Massoni peppers the characters’ antics with astute observations on the nature of selfhood, regret, and our relationship to the worlds we occupy and interpret. Part fable, part cartoon, Jane combines a delightful silliness with some gorgeous prosecraft. Descriptions like, “burnt bone covered in tar,” stand out from the jump, but as the story progresses, Massoni’s skill at implementing a variety of styles really shines.

The worldbuilding–better put as “universe-building”–of Jane is impressive, but it’s arguably also one of the book’s flaws. I did occasionally find myself longing for something concrete to anchor me, or clearer answers to do with the nature of specific characters. That said, too much rigidity would almost certainly ruin what Massoni’s attempting with Jane, and I’d rather less explanation, in this case, than too much. There are, despite the strength of the writing, occasional small errors (typically missing words and minor typos) dotted here and there that feel as though they ought to have been caught through proofreading, but it was nonetheless a smooth read.

Jane won’t be for everyone, but the most intriguing books never are. In many ways, this is the kind of thing I hoped to run into in SPFBO, and it’s also one of few books in my time as a judge to give me a book hangover. I desperately want more people to read this one so that I have people to chat with about it.

“You, sir, are dead. Well, undead at this point apparently. And you are traveling with a Magical Girl,” Godfrey declared.

The man looked over at Jane. “Do you know what this thing is talking about?”

“No, I’m just a Ministry Worker, not a literary trope.”

The world “apocalypse” doesn’t actually mean “end of the world,” it means “revelation.” It’s pretty clear that Chanchito Massoni, author of Jane Is the End, understands that because this is a book that is full of revelation after revelation after revelation, and also the universe unravels. It is a wild ride from start to finish, and I guarantee that you will never know where it’s going from one part to the next.

If I had to describe Jane Is the End by genre, I’d say it’s an absurdist apocalyptic secondary world mythopoeic sci-fi portal fantasy. It is set in a modern version of a traditional fantasy world where typical fantasy races like elves and satyrs and orcs live in a racially stratified city in the aftermath of a colonizing war that left the “dark” species as second-class citizens. Dark elf Jane and her satyr co-worker Bill work for the Ministry of Magic and are responsible for making sure that nobody is using magic illegally, and of course as “dark” species themselves they spend a lot of time managing and policing and punishing people like them, who have not done as good a job a they have at integrating (which of course means being forcibly integrated) into mainstream society, which is ruled by light elves and overseen by an Evangelical-coded religion worshipping a deific rodent called Godfrey Gopher.

Confused? Don’t worry, the world blows up pretty fast.

The pacing in Jane Is the End is breakneck. There’s always something new happening and there’s always a new character waiting to join Jane’s growing crew and there’s always a new layer of what’s going on to be revealed. Jane Is the End unfolds across a bunch of different PoVs, and also through dreamlike flashbacks of past lives, and mythological excerpts that describe the creation of the universe. My experience was that you have just enough time to get used to whatever the new situation is before it starts to unravel and collapse. Destruction and chaos follow Jane around, as does Death in the form of the underworld goddess Leviathan in her giant space whale, and so she can’t stay in one place for too long. For me this was both a positive and a negative. On the one hand, I really wanted to find out what was going to happen next and foolishly started reading on a day when I was at work, and then had to wait desperately for the weekend so I could read the rest of it all in one sitting. On the other hand, I occasionally felt disoriented reading the book. It’s a really weird book, which is a compliment, but there’s so much happening in it that I empathized with the characters who were barely keeping their heads above water, because there were stretches where I felt like I was having a hard time keeping up. Not all of the strange places Jane and friends travel to are created equal either; a few of them didn’t really hold my interest and I kind of wondered why we were spending time there, but since the book moves so fast, we were never any of those places for too long.

There are a lot of characters here, and all of them have a secret or tragic backstory that we learn over the course of the book. Massoni does a really good job of balancing them all, giving them all enough screentime to feel distinct and interesting, and making sure they and their individual goals and motivations stand out. Though almost everyone has a general desire not to see the universe end (even the villain), they all have individual and interesting motivations that are unveiled over time. The book has a fairly distant PoV to help conceal everyone’s secrets, which works in its favour. There are a lot of moments where you can feel the camera panning out and showing everyone’s reactions, or where the characters are moving or a scene is framed as though Jane Is the End is a cartoon, which is an energy you rarely see in this type of book, and which was really fun.

Jane Is the End is written in the register of a comedy. Everything in it is absurd and ridiculous and Jane’s reactions in particular are undershot with comedic timing. I don’t think this book is a comedy, because there aren’t really jokes in it and scenario is absurd but not humorous, in my opinion. But it’s written like a comedy, and that is something that threw me for the first few chapters. The premise reminded me of Robert Rankin, and the descriptions reminded me of Terry Pratchett, the energy of the narration reminded me of Douglas Adams and those are all comedians. That Jane Is the End is not a comedy with comparisons like that isn’t a bad thing, but it’s a confusing thing (one other author I see strong influence from is Jeff VanderMeer, who is not a comedian but whose work is very weird like this is).

Though the book has a lot going on and is pretty complicated, it is very consistent on its main theme, which is that obsessively insisting on any definition of perfection is the path to insanity. There are several characters who do just that and they are insane, and I can’t talk too much about any of that without spoilers, but I will say that we see that especially in the mythological framing of the story, which is written in a the register of a tragedy rather than a comedy and features gods and entities who are caught up in grudges and desires they can’t shake, and are letting those shape them and the universe they’re making. Nobody is immune from this; even Jane is caught up in how she thinks things should be and causes trouble because of it. Even the dimension-hopping science-cats are single-minded in their view of reality. The recognition that some things aren’t perfect and some things can’t be explained, and that that’s okay and healthy, is important for everyone to learn, even the reader.

For that reason I feel funny even criticizing Jane Is the End. Is it a perfect book? No. Is it supposed to be? Also no. I think it needed some more editing, in some places the tone could have been refined and I think the pacing needed a second look and maybe it needed to be a bit longer. I really liked it a lot despite having problems with it, though.

I enjoyed reading Jane Is the End and I think a lot of other people will as well. I really do highly recommend this one to fans of any of the authors I’ve mentioned above, but also just to anyone who wants to read something that is really, really different from everything else you’ve read. If that’s what you’re looking for, you will definitely not regret grabbing Jane Is the End.

“This is madness.” The man led her from the window, back into the airy blue. “We can question reality once it’s no longer trying to kill us.”

Quick Pitch:

Being a busy civil servant in a magical world is exhausting for Jane the elf. That or maybe her past life as a Priestess of the Moon is catching up with her. Either she’s losing sleep over it and can’t find a quick win to fix it. And when an alcohol-infused night out with her work family feels like the right the ticket to recharge, the world is rudely ended by an asteroid. 

The End. (Just kidding.) 

Jane wakes to destruction & Tam Lin, the unalived protector. It’s not a hangover delusion when he takes her to meet the assumed god of her world only to find out the “God” title was an exaggerated embellishment. Oops. Now there talk of time travel to find the Fates and the Sea Witch – because maybe they’ll know a remedy for the destroyed world. 

But when their first place leads them to a place where cannibalism is on the menu, and Jane must embrace her clever (and magical?) ways to save herself so she can help save the world. 

She probably misses paperwork and red tape bureaucracy right about now.

Overall Thoughts: 

“It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine” – I kept hearing that REM song in my head as I read. 

This is a strange one to pitch. It’s like Pixar’s Onward x “I’m a civil servant” you get from Zootopia. Sprinkle in some Alice in Wonderland like transitions. Oh & a  FMC that isn’t fully ready to embrace her past and the uncertainties the future may bring. 

It sort of has Hannah Nicole Maehrer and Olivia Atwater vibes. Like there are stakes, but it’s also kinda adorably weird? 

Though everything is understandably chaotic, I wanted almost more internal dialogue to help process this level of insanity a little more.

Even though this harder to maybe emotionally connect with, the mashup is wild enough to be intriguing.