This review was first posted on our Substack in 2025. We reprint it here for your reading pleasure.
This book lured me in with Baba Yaga. I really don’t know that much Slavic folklore or mythology but I’m fascinated by what I do know about Baba Yaga. In fact, this is the second Baba Yaga themed book I’ve read in the last year. Well, I thought it would be. As it turns out, this book really isn’t about Baba Yaga at all and that was a let down but it was still a pretty good book.
Sonny is 13 years old. He has a shaky relationship with his mom. His father has just killed himself. Sonny sees the Grim Reaper smoking a cigarette in the corner of the hospital room where his father has just died.
Sonny’s mother moves them to Oregon to a trailer on someone else’s property. This is her way of getting them a fresh start but it doesn’t do anything to reset their relationship or improve their grim financial situation. The Grim Reaper reappears in Sonny’s life and eventually makes him an offer. Death is a person who serves as death for one thousand years. Death’s tenure is almost up, he was the man captured by Baba Yaga at the opening of the book. Death is offering Sonny a way out of his miserable life and griefstricken Sonny can’t think of any reason to refuse. The remainder of the book explores the terrifying initiation Sonny must endure to die to himself and become Death.
This is really a novel about grief. Sonny, his mother, his new friend Jess, and Jess’s father are all grieving deeply. Each of them is grieving alone. Fritz’s portrayal of grief is accurate and cutting. The horror of the novel paired with the deep mourning of its characters made me wonder if actually it was all just metaphorical or hallucinations. Maybe the character of the Grim Reaper was actually Sonny feeling suicidal himself. Maybe Jess’s mother’s terrifying contortions were the feelings of wrongness and terror a young girl feels when parenting her own dying mother. Probably not but the emotional state of the characters and the supernatural events match perfectly. Metaphor or not, it all resonates.
This was a short read but a good one. Although it felt YA at times, that seemed appropriate for a book about a middle school boy. Not all horror has to be ultra adult. Not all bad things happen to adults. In fact, life’s hardships come for all ages and “A Fig for All the Devils” explores the unique hell of adolescence colliding with grief.
Darker Books 