Welcome to BookPleasures.com! We are thrilled to hostKirill Khrestinin, a Russian-American novelist and filmmaker based inLouisville, Kentucky.

Kirill is the authorbehind dark psychological fiction that delves into the unsettlingintersections of AI consciousness, crime, confession, and humanidentity. 

His connected Simulacrum4.6 series—beginning with Dear AI, I Killed Her andcontinuing with Mythos—explores the chilling boundary wheretechnology, creation, and human secrets collide. 

Outside of his fiction, hehosts the K.G.I. Podcast and writes insightful essays on technology,psychology, and the collapsing line between reality and fiction.

Today, we will bediscussing his latest novel, Via Dolorosa.

Norm: Kirill, thank youfor joining us today to share your work and insights with ourreaders!

The title ViaDolorosa  refers to Jesus’s path of suffering, and thebook opens with biblical epigraphs—what drew you to frame such aviolent, modern, morally dark story with explicitly religiouslanguage, and do you see your characters as trapped in a kind ofcontemporary Passion narrative or simply using the imagery forcontrast? 

Kirill: It’s a verypersonal book. I’ve been struggling with my own faith in God foryears. In my first draft of this book the end was quite different,much darker and more hopeless. 

It took me years to reconsider it, andthis reconsideration came to me through rediscovering my faith inGod. And yes, my characters are trapped in some sort of contemporaryPassion narrative as, in some sense, all of us are.  

Norm: Harry Dolan issimultaneously a father, a husband, a cop, a criminal, and a druguser—when you created him, did you intend him to be read asirredeemable, or is there a point in the story where you believereaders might still feel some empathy or even hope for him? 

Kirill: I wanted to saveHarry Dolan, but I just couldn’t. He redeems himself in the end butthe price for his redemption is too high. I think the hope comes fromhis final interaction with Matilda and then at the end of his walkthrough Via Dolorosa. 

He’s not a bad man. He’s just deeply brokenand he knows his brokenness and this knowledge makes himredeemable.  

Norm: Jennifer Dolan’salcoholism and self-destructive behavior are depicted in rawdetail—what do you want readers to understand about her beyond“broken wife,” and do you see her as complicit in the family’scollapse or more as a victim of circumstances she can no longercontrol? 

Kirill: She’s a victimand victimizer at the same time. You know Jordan Peterson said thatif you think you cannot make everything much worse in your life you’dbetter watch out. 

This is what the character of Jennifer Dolan is tome. She thought she found herself at the very bottom but somehow, shekeeps discovering a new layer of her own personal hell underneath.And with these new layers of discovery, she’s collapsing not onlyherself but her family as well.   

Norm: Lidia, paralyzed andemotionally isolated, tells Matilda to steal from her father andframes it as helping—but she also seems to want to hurt Harry—doyou see her as morally compromised, tragically desperate, orintentionally manipulative, and how much agency do you believe shetruly has in her situation? 

Kirill: Lidia is too youngand she jumps from one edge to another exploring the world, expandingthe boundaries of the permissible. She’s very intelligent and sheunderstands more than she wants to admit to herself. 

She wants tohurt her father because Harry doesn’t know how to behave with heranymore. And she wants to have her own agency and unfortunately as aresult of her youth and inexperience, and also her physical state shekeeps making the wrong move in her situation. 

I think she’s justtragically desperate. Another character I desperately wanted to savebut I couldn’t.

Norm: Matilda’s decisionto steal the money is one of the most tense moments early in thebook—what were you trying to say about immigration status, economicdesperation, and moral compromise through her character, and do youthink she made the right choice given her circumstances? 

Kirill: Stealing is neverthe right choice and never justifiable. Her immigration status forcesher to live a very uncertain life with no security. I used to live inLos Angeles for many years and I knew people like her. 

She’s a goodperson it’s just not many of us can make the right choice underpressure. Also, she tried to convince herself using Lidia’s wordsthat she’s just borrowing and would return every cent sheborrowed.     

Norm: Tony Frey’sbackstory—witnessing his mother’s gang rape, his own abuse,addiction, and cycles of violence—is extremely harrowing—why didyou choose to depict such extreme trauma so explicitly, and do youbelieve readers can still find humanity in him despite everything hehas done? 

Kirill: I don’t know. Igave him such an extreme trauma to understand that life is not aneasy ride. I used to work in prison and met people with similartragedies. 

I hope readers would find humanity in him because theentire point of this book is to walk with those tragic people theirwalk of Via Dolorosa and you can only walk this road with them if youtry to see through their eyes, try to understand them. 

But,understanding doesn’t mean accepting, nor forgiving. Often, I askmyself a question: what kind of a person would I be if I grew up in asimilar environment. 

Norm: Laura clings to thefantasy of Hollywood stardom and a “prince charming” while beingexploited—what commentary were you making about illusion, socialmedia validation, and the myth of rescue in her storyline, and do youthink she is capable of breaking free from Tony’s world? 

Kirill: She did break freefrom his world, but the price of her freedom was too high as itusually is. Unfortunately, Hollywood itself is the place of failingfor almost everyone and some of those failings are brutal anddestructive. 

As I said in the book there’s nothing easier than tofeed someone else’s illusions, it’s even easier than to feed yourown. Tony fed her promises and Laura lived off those promises whileboth of them kept spiraling down into Dante’s hell. 

When you dreamhigh, your life is usually low. 

Norm: John Eagle isportrayed as even more openly sadistic than Harry, especially towardwomen—what role does he play thematically in the novel, and do yousee him as a symbol of unchecked power, pure evil, or something morepsychologically complex? 

Kirill: John Eagle is agood father, a man who believes in God but perversely, the way thathelps him to keep his madness under control and in some sense tojustify his homicidal desires. 

He’s a psychopath who gravitatedtoward the police force to be able to safely explore his vices. 

Inthe book he only does it to prostitutes. He’s a psychologicallycomplex character though he’s bad. I don’t think pure evil existsin the world though some people come close to it and John Eagle isone of them.   

Norm: The novel repeatedlyshows victims becoming perpetrators—Tony after his mother’sabuse, Harry after his own unnamed past, even Lidia manipulatingMatilda—do you believe people can truly break these cycles, or isthe book arguing that trauma inevitably reproduces itself? 

Kirill: Most people dobreak these cycles otherwise the world would be a very bad place tolive. And two of my examples who broke these cycles are Laura andDegory Jones. Friedrich Nietzsche said that if you know the “Why”to live for, you can handle almost any “How”. 

Most people whodon’t break this horrible cycle have no “Why” to live for. Mybook is the argument to find that “Why” and to break that cyclewith these findings. 

Norm: Sex, violence, anddegradation are depicted unflinchingly throughout the book—whatbalance were you trying to strike between realism and sensationalism,and how do you respond to readers who might find some scenes toographic or disturbing? 

Kirill: When do you havemore appreciation for light – after greyness or completepitch-black darkness? You have to ask yourself this question when youfind some of the scenes too graphic or disturbing.   

Norm: Harry nearly killsTony but the gun jams, and Tony interprets this as divineintervention—do you believe God or fate plays any real role in thestory, or is this moment meant to highlight the randomness andabsurdity of survival in such a brutal world? 

Kirill: It might be God.Or it might be the absurdity of survival inside of a brutal world. Orit might be both. It’s whatever your heart tells you. I’m stilltrying to figure this out. 

Norm: The Dolan familyhome is filled with symbols of a lost happy past—the family photo,the biblical verse in the frame—but the present is chaos anddespair—what were you trying to express about memory, nostalgia,and the impossibility of returning to “how things used to be”? 

Kirill: You can’t returnyour life to how it used to be. The family photo is what they couldstill have only if they were sensible enough to practice it.Everything in our life is a practice of good things. That’s whytheir bedroom, a place of love, a shrine, was shown in such a mess. 

If you’re unable to clean your own room, how can you fix yourlife? 

Norm: Where can we findmore about you and Via Dolorosa?

Kirill: You can visit MY SITE  where you can find the rest of my work,also my Substack  

Norm: As we end ourinterview, given how dark and unrelenting the story is, what do youhope readers take away emotionally or intellectually afterfinishing Via Dolorosa—do you want them disturbed, provoked,reflective, or something else entirely, and is there any message ofhope you intentionally embedded in the narrative? 

Kirill: I want people tounderstand through my book what I understood myself through writingit – it doesn’t matter how dark and hopeless your life is,there’s always hope and this hope is closer than we think. Light ishidden within us while the darkness tries to consume usunapologetically. 

We just have to be brave enough to discover thislight within us and to defend it because this light is all we have,especially when life treats us brutally. This light is our “Why”to live for if we want to handle any tragedy that might come ourway.    

Listen Here to An AI Discussion of the Novel