How Does It Feel?

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-18

Chapters 19-24

Chapters 25-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Emotional Complexity

In some ways, the novel is an investigation of the power of emotion to impede logical thought. All of the characters allow their feelings to dominate their better judgment: Mendax falls for the human assassin, Callie, while she, in turn, falls for the deadly prince; the brown rat, Walter, and the panther, Lord Alastair Cain, risk their lives to protect Callie, for reasons they do not understand; the Queen is blinded by her hatred of humans; and Callie’s Seelie family is swayed by ancient rituals and feuds that defy common sense. Both Callie and Mendax struggle against the enormity of their feelings, especially for each other, while at the same time they are distressed by their lack of feeling, unable to experience compassion. How Does It Feel? becomes as much a taunt as a title. Ultimately, feeling anything for others entails a sadomasochistic risk within the novel, one that occasionally, if not always, pays off: Mendax and Callie find pleasure in the pain of their relationship.

Both Callie and Mendax grapple with their inability to feel much—for themselves (in Callie’s case) or for others (in Mendax’s case). When Callie is trapped in Mendax’s dungeon, she worries her wounds in order to feel pain, a “reminder” of the terror and abuse she has faced (1). It also serves to pull her out of trauma-induced apathy; the nothingness of fear is worse than the sharpness of pain. Mendax, too, exists in a state of emotional ennui. He cares nothing for the fates of others: “I could feel nothing,” he admits (146), even when on murderous rampages. The relationship between the two, for all its inherent inappropriateness, offers them both an outlet for feeling, as they are extremely similar, both possessing darkness masked by beauty. Mendax expresses this conundrum, in a thought that could come from either character: “I had always wanted to feel something—anything” (228). Until Callie, this kind of feeling is impossible.

Still, Mendax also confesses, “The only time I ever felt anything was as I watched another suffer in the pain I caused them” (147). While this does not seem an auspicious beginning for any relationship, it partially explains why Mendax is so enthralled by Callie. He watches as she bears the many painful ordeals, physical and emotional, inflicted by him. Indeed, the association of pain with pleasure forms the core of their interactions. When Mendax dresses Callie’s wounds—as he still yet intends for her to die in the arena—Callie responds to his touch: “Even the pain he had caused as he cleaned my wounds had somehow felt carnal and erotic. Like there was a forbidden layer of pain-laced pleasure I had never experienced” (216). Certainly, this belies the sadomasochistic core of the novel, a romantic fantasy wherein pain is inseparable from pleasure. Callie will echo the phrase “pain-laced pleasure” again, when Mendax sucks the venom from her breast after the second trial (262). It follows upon the heels of Mendax’s question, the question that serves as the title of the book: “‘How does it feel?’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘To know that I love you and that you have doomed me?’” (262). Thus, love and pleasure are inextricably linked with pain and destruction.

The juxtaposition between pain and pleasure is echoed by the conventions of the romantasy, wherein the two central characters often must despise each other before they love each other. This enemies-to-lovers trope is a common feature of the genre. Callie cannot love Mendax because he appears the villain: “How could I feel that way about the man trying to kill me? He was the villain. I would only feel that for a hero” (224). Yet, she falls for him exactly because he is the villain to her Seelie family, according to the tropes of the genre. Setting logic aside, Callie also invokes—and then inverts—the traditions of the old-fashioned fairy tale. In those tales, the hero saves the day and wins the love interest; this is what Callie has been taught she should want. Instead, she hankers after “the villain in [her] story” (253). This is because Callie herself is also a villain, an assassin who ultimately betrays her lover; the two are well-matched in their emotional complexity and inner turmoil.

Science and the Supernatural

If Callie had not trained as an environmental scientist, she surely would not have survived the supernatural realm of the Fae. Ironically, scientific knowledge makes Callie adept at handling supernatural problems, from bringing down gigantic, winged creatures to identifying potions from poisons. The rubrics of biology do not change much within the realm of fairies in the novel. In addition, the veneer of science serves as a convenient, if unsatisfying, explanation for the unusual circumstances in which Callie repeatedly finds herself. The collision between scientific explanation and magical expression provides support for the world-building within the novel.

Callie brings a microscope with her during her original foray into the forest. Initially, she is interested in a scientifically sanctioned investigation into the habitats of luna moths, an actual creature—which turns out to be the animal symbol of the Unseelie Fae’s crest. The luna moth, in fact, lures her to the fairy ring that acts as a portal. Thus, when Callie faces the first trial, running from the winged abominations who rain acid down upon her, she recalls her knowledge of the endangered species: “The luna moth had gotten me here, and they would get me out” (195). The moths are able to avoid bats by disrupting the bats’ sonar with “long spiral tails that acted as acoustic camouflage” (197), which Callie mimics with strips torn from her dress. Science, in this case, trumps the supernatural.

Later, she handles the second trial—discerning poisons from antidotes—by relying on her scientific knowledge of plants and other substances. She recognizes the lethal liquids from the benign by color, scent, and other properties. Even when she makes a last mistake, consuming the oleander for which she has no antidote, she is able to recall a solution, derived from her biology background: “The collection of poisons in my stomach would likely be in abundance, hence able to burn off enough of the lethal venom to where I would only be incredibly sick, but not dead” (251). She also knows that snake venom slows the heart, whereas oleander “sped up the pulse to erratically high levels” (251). Science, again, saves her.

In addition, the collision of science and the supernatural provides rational explanations for unnatural phenomena, providing a degree of verisimilitude to the text. Indeed, Callie’s previous experience with fairies is explained away by the fact that she had been gathering mushrooms; as she embarks on her current experience with fairies, she is also seeking out toxic mushrooms: “Were these mushrooms causing me hallucinations?” (64). In the first instance, the adults tell her that her sighting of the golden fairy is nothing more than a hallucination; in her current experience, she worries again that her visions might be induced by biological factors rather than actual events. In this way, the fantasy world blooms from genuine roots, lending authenticity to the tale. When Callie examines the spores of the destroying angel mushrooms—another real-world species—she notes something unusual, even fantastical about them: “Where spores normally looked like tiny beige bubbles or eggs, the destroying angel spores looked unreal, like black smoke trying to escape the glass” (49). This, of course, foreshadows the enormous, erotic black wings of the Smoke Slayer, Mendax. As biology bleeds into magic, Callie slowly becomes immersed in, and trapped between, both worlds. The novel’s blending of science and magic is indicative of its blurry boundaries between Desire and Danger as traditional binaries break down.

Desire and Danger

The coupling of Callie and Mendax represents the apotheosis of forbidden love: She is human, while he is Fae; she comes from the Seelie Fae (as an adoptee), while he rules the Unseelie Fae; she appears the picture of innocence, while he looms with menacing evil. This dynamic is not unfamiliar to readers of romance, of course, and here the star-crossed-lovers trope is heightened by danger: The objects of desire are both lethal entities, and the obsessive nature of the attraction is fraught with problematic issues of dominance and submission, of fear and violence. Their relationship, for the purposes of fantasy, feeds on the thrill of terror and the illicit desire to be consumed—romance as mutual ravishment. The novel plays with sexual desire through the lens of the apex predator hunting his weakened prey, then reveals Callie to be a predator, too. The forbidden love at the core of the novel traffics in fear, aggression, and betrayal.

Though Callie insists, more than once, that she dislikes cursing, her choice of expletive upon learning that she has been captured by the fairy prince is appropriate for its obvious double meaning: “I was fucked” (68) indicates both her unfortunate situation, ending in her brief death and longer imprisonment, and her already blossoming desire. The violent connotations of said expletive are also appropriate; The association between fear and attraction, between violence and desire, between sex and death play out throughout the course of the entire novel. Again, using the same expletive as above, Callie later asks Mendax, “Are you trying to fuck me or kill me?” (179). Sex becomes more thrilling, in this fantasy, if death follows closely behind. The impulses, for sexual congress and for lethal action, are inextricably linked.

The acting out of resistance and submission also informs their relationship. Even after they engage in sexual activity, they must deny their genuine feelings for one another. Callie tells Mendax, “‘I still hate you,’” as he replies, “‘I still want to kill you’” (220). The vehemence of the expressions reveals that this exchange is not merely an act of resistance—the love-hate dynamic common to many romances—but it is also a rejection of each other’s humanity. Callie becomes Mendax’s “pet,” and he parades her in front of the other Fae at the ball, reminding her that humans are “a bit of a sexual delicacy among the Fae” (183). Meanwhile, Callie will not fully humanize Mendax by allowing herself to openly love him because this would prevent her from killing him.

Still, Callie’s desire for freedom and her loyalty to her adoptive Seelie family serve to break Mendax’s possessive hold. When she sets his bathroom on fire—seeking revenge on the Fae mirror, which flinches at her human presence—she exhibits an agency that belies her submissiveness: “My eyes darkened with the hate and resentment I started to feel” (274). She wants to be seen for who she is, not for who others believe her to be—and this includes Mendax. The twist rests with who she is: a ruthless assassin and self-serving traitor. The two lovers are more alike than they are different, ultimately. Her betrayal frees her from his physical presence but not from his emotional spell. She still longs for the monster who would keep his equally lethal pet prisoner.