Beware the Cost of Fame

TITLE: We Sold Our Souls
AUTHOR: Grady Hendrix
PUBLISHER: Quirk Books
PUBLISHING DATE: September 18, 2018

FROM GOODREADS:  In the 1990s, heavy metal band Dürt Würk was poised for breakout success -- but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom as Koffin, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in rural Pennsylvania.

Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western - she's tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when she discovers a shocking secret from her heavy metal past: Turns out that Terry's meteoric rise to success may have come at the price of Kris's very soul.

This revelation prompts Kris to hit the road, reunite with the rest of her bandmates, and confront the man who ruined her life. It's a journey that will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a Satanic rehab center and finally to a Las Vegas music festival that's darker than any Mordor Tolkien could imagine. A furious power ballad about never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, We Sold Our Souls is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul...where only a girl with a guitar can save us all. 

MY THOUGHTS:  When "We Sold Our Souls" starts out, we are introduced to Kris, a teenager facing long evenings in the cold basement teaching herself to play electric guitar because heavy metal is her one true calling.  We then fast forward 3 decades and see Kris working the night shift as an area hotel, forced to wait on drunks who would rather urinate on her desk than go to their room as asked.  We learn Kris and her friends were able to tour for several years as the heavy metal band, Durt Wurk but right when they were ready to hit it big, "contract night" changed their fates and only the lead singer rose to fame as a single act known as Koffin.  Now Koffin is on his farewell tour and Kris is determined to find out why the rest of the band's life has gone to hell.

If you are a music fan, and in particular a heavy metal fan, "We Sold Our Souls" is the book you've been waiting for.  Hendrix does an exceptional job of weaving the music biz with horror and the result is a novel that starts out slow but ends with a band (at least it did for me).  I also think Hendrix did something really special making the main character a female.  It showed a real insight for how hard it is as a woman to make it in the rock business and I have a newfound respect for any female who chooses that path.  The books has some truly horrific scenes and instead of focusing on someone's rise to fame, it focuses on the fall.  There are no cute fairy tales in "We Sold Our Souls" and really no happy ending along the way.  Still, in the end, the novel lived up to the hype and now I'm excited to see what Hendrix has planned for his readers next.

RATING: 4 Paws