Hellmaker? More like anxiety ridden puzzle solving geek. And that's ok.
 |
| cover art:Mina Ikemoto Ghosh |
Hyo the Hellmaker.
I’m late to this book. In fact I only picked it up because at World Fantasy at the end of 2025 I was browsing the dealer tables and saw this gorgeous physical copy with gold lettering and absolutely filled with illustrations (all done by the author).
For me it’s a classic case of a Young Adult fantasy that embarrasses us all because it highlights just how artificial that genre distinction is. Published in 2024 with a sequel out in April this year (2026) it’s a high fantasy set in an analogue of this world but one which is very definitely secondary and full of magic and ideas and ways of being that aren’t faux medieval European.
Hyo is a Hellmaker. Part detective, part judge and part executioner. Hyo is someone who can make hells for other people in retribution for what they’ve done to others. To do this though, someone has to pay the price and that price is normally right up there.
Thing is the ‘world’ as it were brings people willing to pay that price to her door, normally the relatives of the murdered, who want satisfaction for the injustice they have suffered and for which there is no one else to help.
Hyo is, kinda, a one-woman A-team.
In that sense this has all the sensibilities of a great manga and the setting is a reworked version of Shinto turned into a living breathing set of Kami together with their shrines and strong links to their places, elements and lives of origin (because kami can come from places like rivers or mountains but can also be rooted in extraordinary people).
What Ikemoto Ghosh does to elevate this is create a world in which Shinto is not just a practiced and living faith but one in which the gods walk the land as physical beings who enjoy Takoyaki as much as the mortal next to them – that extension into a fantastical world is refreshing, innovative and, most importantly, delightfully fun. It allows Ikemoto Ghosh to build an enthralling setting in which Hyo’s story sits like a little pearl to be plucked.
There are strong themes of justice and futility in the book, the sense of fighting against the inevitable, that fate is always lurking behind the scenes but that your fate is unknown to you. Your choices are your own even if they serve to deliver the world as it’s meant to be.
I like this tension a lot. We often get simplistic ideas about fate (bad) versus free will (good) and that toddler level philosophising irritates the hell out of me. So to see Hyo wrestle with a world in which so much is beyond her control – including her endings – and see her choices remain meaningful and entirely hers is deeply satisfying.
Without wanting to talk as an old man about what ‘young people’ are reading, I am often very conscious that I have two teenagers in my house who read and that I am therefore aware of the stories they’re engaging with and the ones they don’t get through. Hyo is the kind of story they approve of – because it doesn’t treat them as morally simplistic, in need of someone who’s got it together from the beginning or regard adults as a category of idiots to be manipulated, avoided or resisted.
There’s grief too, although it’s in the rearview mirror. Hyo, shaped through it and the anger and metaphor of being manipulated by the hollowness of sorrow and the futility of wishing the past were otherwise, is focused more on the present. There’s a sense of found family alongside actual family here – some of that pretty conventional (young person having to mature, coming of age etc.) but Ikemoto Ghosh handles these tropes with gentle aplomb, serving up a young person who’s basically getting on with life even when that life is far from ideal.
More to the point Hyo knows what and who she is – she’s not entirely happy with this sense of self-awareness but she doesn’t let ignorance or self-discovery get in the way of being a normal person.
The cast of secondary characters is brilliantly fleshed out with the many characters quickly establishing themselves on the page and providing motivations, quirks and experiences that help them feel distinctive, which in a large cast feels essential.
I sometimes get frustrated with the idea of YA as a genre purely because I miss books I would otherwise have found earlier and loved wholeheartedly. Hyo the Hellmaker is a great example of that – an ostensibly Young Adult novel (I think by dint of having a young person as the main character) that transcends those fake marketing requirements to be something I suspect will be of interest to readers of any age.
--
Highlights:
- Gods and spirits and demons rubbing shoulders at the noodle bar
- Detective shenanigans
- Fantastic world building leaving me wanting more
Nerd Rating: 7/10, A brilliantly executed secondary world with fun and mysteries with characters who feel distinctive, entertaining and dealing with nuanced themes of justice and retribution.
References: Ikemoto Ghosh, Mina, Hyo the Hellmaker. [Scholastic 2024].
STEWART HOTSTON is an author of all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. He's also a keen Larper (he owns the UK Fest system, Curious Pastimes). He's a sometime physicist and currently a banker in the City of London. A Subjective Chaos and BFA finalist he's also Chair of the British Science Fiction Association and Treasurer for the British Fantasy Society. He is on bluesky at: @stewarthotston.com.
