Amelia lives with her mother. Driven out of their village into the big city of Medea, they live on the edges of society. Amelia and her mother have special... dietary needs. Dietary needs that cause them to pursue and hunt a particular two legged sort of prey. For, you see, Amelia and her mother are both monsters. Rippers, specifically. Rippers are monsters who hunt a particular kind of man called Alexanders.
The novella is set in a somewhat fantastical version of our own real world, in the imaginary city of Medea, in a county that is never named, but feels like from context and clues like an analogue of Great Britain during the Victorian or maybe early Edwardian Age (Amelia, it turns out, loves to read penny dreadfuls). With that set up, Sanford plunges us immediately into the nature of Amelia and her mother, what rippers do and how they do it. And quickly from there sets up the conflicts and themes of the novella. The novella is a lean and mean story that stays in Amelia’s point of view throughout.
The novella makes Sanford’s theme explicit from the get go: Rippers are monsters who only hunt men, and only men who have or do commit violence, the Alexanders.¹ The Rippers, it turns out, cannot actually hunt men who haven’t taken that violence into their heart, that violence into their hands. Amelia and her mother are in a new age (and we learn that her mother is old, and dying, and of another age). In this world, there are almost too many Alexanders, and they are too powerful to reduce their numbers. Amelia, young and uncertain and not yet strong, grows into her own. In addition to that coming of age story, Amelia slowly begins to realize she is different from her mother, different from other Rippers in fact. And as her mother slowly weakens, the outside threat that hunts them both comes to the fore: Bishop Stoll. He is, in the parlance of the novella, an incendiary : a man who stirs up anger and hatred and violence on a large scale but is not directly an Alexander himself. They convince others to do their bidding, or others are inspired by the incendiary to actually turn Alexander themselves.
The problem for Amelia’s mother is that since Stoll is NOT an Alexander, they cannot attack and harm him, and actually suffer physical consequences in trying to do so. Part of the genius of Sanford’s writing is in the antagonist of Stoll. Not only is he an incendiary and not an Alexander, he is genre-savvy enough and knowledgeable enough to know about Rippers... and about their limitations. And is willing to use those weaknesses against Amelia and her mother, as needed. There is a gloating intelligence and cleverness and evil to Stoll that shows his dark charisma not only to his followers but to the reader as well.
And given Stoll’s charisma, and his backing of the church, he is an existential threat to Amelia and her mother. Not only are there now too many powerful Alexanders to try and control, but these Alexanders, led by Stoll, have other targets. Not necessarily the other monsters (we learn and meet a vampire in the course of the novella) but Stoll sets his sights on disrupting and destroying an underground gay bar. In the course of the novella, Amelia, who has made friends with the owners and a frequenter at the bar (as well as come to an accord with a Ripper who spends time there), Amelia finds her friends and colleagues in the course of Stoll’s persecution and rage. While Stoll is genre-savvy as noted above, and wants to deal with and extirpate Rippers at all times, Stoll and his followers have this broader “culture war” target in mind. The framing is obvious and direct: Stoll sees queer folk as monsters, and to be dealt with as such. But of course, since Stoll himself is not an Alexander, merely the leader of many Alexanders, the still inexperienced Amelia and her weakening’s mother’s opposition to Stoll is necessarily fraught and perilous.
It was fascinating, taking apart the concept, once I had read it, and thinking about it. Rippers specifically target male purporters of violence. Could a ripper target, say, a female serial killer? As I further thought about it and the limitations of the food supply of Rippers, or, instead, their target base, I went again to the theme of the novel. The novel is an indictment of how male violence is institutionalized in modern society, how there are many Alexanders, and worse, as in the case of the Bishop, those who do not commit violence themselves, but instead whose words and actions incite others to commit violence. Parallels to contemporary society, and contemporary leaders come to mind and its not a big leap to see how Sanford’s Victorian world resonates with the modern day and its own problems. One can also see the transphobia rampant in modern society today as the modern inspiration for this world’s Stoll’s crusade against queer members of society, making them monstrous (like the “real monsters” Amelia and her mother and rippers and vampires are).
And there are strong themes of family and found family in the novella too. Amelia and her dying mother of course, but also the humans that they live with, the aforementioned vampire, other rippers and the sense of community in the bar. Families come in all shapes and sizes in this novella with intersecting and interesting memberships and interactions. All of these families are under threat by the Alexanders, one way or another, and grow and change as those interactions intensify as the novella progresses.
The ending of the novel, then, as Amelia finally grows into her own abilities and in fact proves herself a different sort of ripper, is one where Sanford is addressing, through the medium and milieu and the nature of this different sort of ripper, the limitations of the original ripper variety. That is to say, the limitations of old ways of combating and opposing hatred in society. Amelia represents a fantastical version and answer that points to the need in our own society for different and broader solutions to societal problems. Amelia shows that retail response to a societal problem is insufficient, and for real change and growth to occur, in this modern worlds, other, deeper solutions are needed. Amelia’s mother’s solutions are insufficient in the modern age, her encounter with the Bishop proves that. Amelia points to a potential future.
So I don’t think that is a horror novella, and is definitely much more of a dark fantasy. There are dark subjects here, sexism, queerphobia, domestic violence. One might say that Sanford himself is being provocative and incendiary in this novella in tackling these subjects, so for those who wish to avoid these subjects, this novella is probably not for you. The fantastical nature of rippers and how they kill does mitigate the impact of the violence, it's not in excruciating realistic detail. But this is a story of monsters who hunt other monsters and are hunted in turn.
There is probably a whole additional piece to be written in reading this in concert and parallel with Crista’s story in Plague Birds. Sanford clearly is still hitting the themes of Plague Birds, from a somewhat different voice , but the same strong storytelling and characterization. Consider, Crista becoming a plague bird in the titular novella, and what plague birds are expected to do, and contrast with Amelia, growing into her role and identity as a ripper. While Amelia was never human, and Crista was thrust into the role, one can see rippers and plague birds as two varieties of Erinyes that Sanford has created. To put it in musical terms, Sanford is building a fugue with this theme, with Plague Birds and We Who Hunt Alexanders as the canons, not identical but clearly in dialogue with each other, as voices in that fugue.
I look forward to more voices in Sanford’s fugue of resistance and response to violent patriarchy and the forces that nurture it.
¹ The etymology of Alexanders is something that Amelia herself wonders about and we do get an answer, but it’s a lovely bit of worldbuilding that I am not going to spoil.
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Highlights:
- Strong themes of found family, fighting against institutional violence and patriarchy.
- Vividly imagined central problems for main character: coming of age, uncertain of abilities even as their mother is clearly dying
- Rippers as strongly imagined Agents of Vengeance-- not the first use of the idea by the author.
- Stands strongly with author’s previous work.
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin
