REVIEW: The way up is the death of Dan Hanks

by Junna Base November 6, 2024

If you thought Stephen King had conjured up the strangest, darkest tower of all time, Dan Hanks is here to prove you wrong The way up is death. By turns brutally disturbing, hysterically funny, and heartbreakingly poignant, this extraordinarily bizarre acid trip of a survival adventure will melt your brain and crush your soul with no regrets, and I love it all the more.

What would you do if one day, out of nowhere, you were mercilessly torn from your everyday life and dropped off with 12 other strangers in front of a mysterious floating tower that asked you to ASCEND? That, my friends, is just a glimpse into the incredibly intriguing premise of The way up is death. And as you might have guessed from the title, it doesn’t take long before things get disturbingly dark and absolutely crazy in the best way possible.

Through the eyes of Alden, a lonely and grieving teacher by day and singer by night, Nia, a tired and angry conceptual artist, and Dirk, a self-obsessed walking orator and famous children’s author, we can experience this from your front row seat observe the nightmarish madness inside the tower. Although it was sometimes difficult for me to imagine the increasingly strange and mysterious locations in the tower, I never felt lost because the strong voices of these characters kept me so grounded throughout the madness. Their virtues and vices are truly on full display (for better or for worse; looking at you, Dirk), and I enjoyed exploring how they all responded in such authentic and unique ways to the horrors they faced over the course of the single day they spend in this tower of terror (if they even make it that long).

You see, on the surface this story may seem like another brutal thrill-fest in a race against death, but at its core it is a deeply emotional and wonderfully human story that tugged at my heartstrings in completely unexpected ways. The way up is death is honestly more layered than the twisted, labyrinthine tower it’s set in, and I loved how it pulled back another layer of complexity and emotional depth with each new level the characters ascended. Heavy themes such as grief, sexism, female rage, loneliness, sacrifice, morality, memory, love, humanity and of course mortality are all explored in surprisingly profound, if often dark, entertaining ways, without ever detracting from the addictive thrill of the narrative is exactly what makes this story stand out from the crowd for me.

Now I have to admit that I found some of the (supporting) characters to be little more than obvious cannon fodder or mere vessels for the theme they were supposed to represent, which not only made some of the thematic messages seem a bit unpleasant at first look, but it also took away some of the risk and unpredictability of the story for me. The slightly cartoonish character portrayal combined with the breakneck pacing somewhat hindered my emotional investment in the broader cast of characters, and that ultimately led to some of the supposedly badass moments falling a bit for me.

However, the key characters in the narrative absolutely carried the story for me (Rakie is the MVP, just saying), and I can’t deny that all the emotional gut punches at the end just hurt so much. For the longest time, I was just along for the ride, unsure if and how we would get satisfactory answers to the deeper purpose behind the tower’s unexplained mysteries and challenges, but Hanks managed to convince me in the best (or worst) way to surprise ?) Ways with the shocking revelations. The brutally bittersweet conclusion to The way up is death was more satisfying than I could have ever hoped for, and in the end only left me with one big unsolved mystery: How the hell did Hanks manage to write a story that is at once so bizarrely alien and yet so beautifully and relatably human ?

Regardless of what your typical reading preferences are, The way up is death is guaranteed to captivate you with its dangerously addictive storytelling, dark, tantalizing mysteries, visceral emotions, and hauntingly powerful imagery that will haunt you for days and nights. It has a bit of fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, thriller and arguably even a sick and twisted version of LitRPG, but ultimately it is a powerfully moving and truly transcendental story that simply speaks to the soul and shows the incredible resilience of LitRPG the human spirit. This is one of those stories that you just can’t do justice to in a review. So please do yourself a favor and experience the brilliant madness for yourself if you dare.

Thank you to NetGalley and Angry Robot Books for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. “The Way Up is Death” is scheduled for release on January 14, 2025.