The Anax: Call of the Cursed One
The Anax: Call of the Cursed One (CotCO) is one of the massive novels written by American author, Brandon Somerville. Canonically and chronologically, in the first series of fourteen novels, CotCO happens third. It takes place, as all the novels do, in the fictional universe known as the Anaxverse. It was originally published on the 31st of October 2017.
Title and Publication
Mr. Somerville originally published CotCO as an interactive novel with adult elements. In the future, he will be writing all the novels as ebooks. In the original versions, they are written in a second-person perspective as the author felt it worked best in a "choose your own adventure" setting. However, in the ebook form, the novels will be written in the third person allowing for far more insight and exposition. When originally published, the novel garnered much praise from the online communities on which it was posted. It helped transition The Anax into an actual brand.
Plot Summary
The Anaxverse series of novels can be read in any order, even though they follow a certain chronology. But, because the novels overlap and the stories are all interconnected in meaningful ways, it does not matter the order they are read.
Evelyn's Perspective
The first half of the book follows Eve's perspective. In the first chapter, it introduces Evelyn Addams along with her sister, Brittany Addams, and several other characters. Eve had stumbled upon the strange dimension known only as The Library and obtained the Book of Shadows. The supposed spellbook contains only one spell- how to summon The Anax. Eve and the others have come together to cast this spell with the idea to help his cursed soul find peace in the afterlife. However, things go wrong, and The Anax appears on his own volition. He sets about systematically hunting the women and corrupting them into his wicked service. He constantly hounds Evelyn and she slowly learns that she is inherently a necromancer. Finally, the powers of shadow magic become too great to control and Eve, herself, becomes a Shadow Lord not unlike The Anax. The two monsters face-off in battle and The Anax gains the upper hand. However, just as he is about to enslave Evelyn, the sun rises and he is banished to the Shadowlands.
The Anax's Perspective
Unique to many Anaxverse stories, the second half of the book follows the villain and sheds light on his formation. It starts with him as a child in the 1800's and follows his life. In his youth, his parents, Theodore Ravenhurst and Deborah Ravenhurst die under strange circumstances. As a young man, he finds a group of gypsies has settled on his land, and befriends them, especially a girl named Mizah Červeňák. He befriends and hires Brone Lorcan as his butler, and finds who he feels is his soulmate, Eliza Day. The two fall in love, however, the witch, Eleanora Blackwood, has wanted to steal hidden treasures buried in a vault underneath Ravenhurst Manor. She constantly stalks the couple attempting to enthrall Anaximanes Ravenhurst and then marry him. He has the power to break the barrier that guards the relics his parents had acquired.
On their wedding day, Eleanora casts a curse on Eliza Day. Suddenly falling ill, Eliza becomes bedridden, and the wedding is canceled. Anaximanes, desperate to save her, ignorantly goes to the witch to ask for aid. Seeing that her curse has failed to kill the young woman, Eleanora crates an intense magical poison and tells Anaximanes that the potion will cure her. He has Eliza drink the concoction only to have her die shortly after.
At this point, he spirals into a depressing madness. He isolates himself from the world, never leaving the manor. This leads the populace of the nearby town of Wakefield to wonder about him. The townspeople gossip, spurned on my Eleanora herself, to believe that he killed his bride-to-be and worships demons in the large mansion. She also uses the reverend, Roger Addams, to further incite distrust towards Anaximanes, to ensure that he will continue to fall ill with heartbreak and loneliness. They begin to use him as a way to scare children calling him The Anax. As he further falls into madness, Eleanora’s plans continue to come to fruition. She summons a powerful vampire lord named Ivor to the area in order to deal with the Roma Gypsies, especially Mizah, as she has been a thorn in the side of the witch.
The story culminates when, due to his incessant negativity, Anaximanes has driven away all his staff from the mansion, and finally, his friend, Brone, decides that he can no longer bear to see Anaximanes this way, and he makes to leave. After departing, a vision of Eleanora appears, taunting Anaximanes to come to her. She knows his mind is fragile and ready to be enthralled. However, Brone manages to see the vision as well, and realizes that his friend is not insane. Anaximanes travels to Wakefield to confront the witch, and finds her in an abandoned factory. He does not know that vampires stalk the shadows around him.
Eleanora, happy to finally crack the last vestiges of his sanity so that she can make him hers, states how she has orchestrated everything that has happened, even dressing vampires like him and having them kill gypsies so that he could find friends nowhere to aid him. She also tells him how he killed Eliza himself. All this knowledge and realization, which the witch assumed would cause him to shatter and cry, instead causes him rage. He grabs her and kills her, and Ivor refuses to aid her. The murder is witnessed, and a mob forms with Roger Addams as the leader to hunt down this killer.
Anaximanes runs through the countryside to Eliza’s grave and weeps, awaiting his death, and feeling he deserves it. Brone Lorcan finds him, and he tells his friend about some secret items in the mansion and gives him a special pocket watch urging him to run away. With this information, Brone hurries to the manor and takes the crimson Puzzle Box. With that, he flees. The mob apprehends Anaximanes and Roger has him led into the woods to the very tree that he proposed to Eliza under. Anaximanes, while looking forward to dying, pleads with the reverend to be hanged from any tree in the forest but that one, but this only makes Roger more certain to hang him there. They string him up, and he is slowly strangled.
However, having been murdered in a place that he loved, under great duress, and on Halloween night no less, causes his soul not to enter the Inner Light. Instead, with rage and revenge in his heart, his spirit rises immediately draped in the shadows of the Outer Darkness. The assembled mob flees as he systematically steals their souls. Every Halloween night, from then until Eve finds him, he appears at the Twisted Tree and stalks the land seeking souls until sunrise. These chapters of the book ends with Eve revealing to him that she intends to steal the Scepter of Osiris that night, and that they are in Portland, Oregon. This directly ties into the duo’s appearance in the novel Desideratum: Blood Bonds.
