If Found, Return to Hell

by Em X. Liu

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 162
Rating:

Synopsis:

Being an intern at One Wizard sounds magical on the page, but in practice mostly means getting yelled at by senior mages and angry clients who've been turned into platypuses alike. So when Journeyman Wen receives a frantic call from a young man who's awoken to a talisman on his bedroom wall and no memory of how it got there, they jump at the chance to escape call center duty and actually help someone for once.

But the case ends up being more complicated than Wen could ever have anticipated. Their client has been possessed by a demon prince from Hell, and he's not interested in leaving...

I love playing around with point of view, and Em X. Liu makes an interesting choice: the book is narrated in second person, which I feel like a lot of people will bounce right off. I love playing with it myself, and I think it was pretty well done here.

I loved Shine and Wang Ran, their negotiation of their situation, the way they quickly decided to make the best of it. You end up with certain expectations from the opening, from other stories like it, and then there’s Wang Ran, and really he’s just a kid. The way all that plays out — and Wang Ran and Shine’s relationship with the character addressed by the narrative — is all really fun.

Things did seem to happen really suddenly, though, and I wasn’t so sure about that part. On the one hand, it is a novella, but… I don’t know, the bond between Shine, Wang Ran and the main character feels a little undercooked for me. I wanted to believe in it, I just didn’t quite. I don’t know what more I’d have liked that wouldn’t feel like filler, but still, I wasn’t quite 100% there in time.

On a side note, I feel like I was oddly better prepared for some of this through becoming such a fan of The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System.

Rating: 3/5