Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz

by Garth Nix

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories
Pages: 304
Rating:

Synopsis:

Sir Hereward: the only male child of an ancient society of witches. Knight, artillerist, swordsman. Mercenary for hire. Ill-starred lover.

Mister Fitz: puppet, sorcerer, loremaster. Practitioner of arcane arts and wielder of sorcerous needles.

Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: godslayers. Agents of the Council of the Treaty for the Safety of the World, charged with the location and removal of listed extra-dimensional entities, more commonly known as gods. Together, they are relentless travelers in a treacherous world of magic, gunpowder, and adventure.

Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz is a collection of short stories in the same world, by Garth Nix, and I think it suffers for being a bunch of stories written in the same world but not necessarily for the same exact audience. The stories have similar themes and structures, and each is meant to stand somewhat alone, meaning it feels a bit… repetitive.

There are certainly concepts which I found interesting, and I might have enjoyed the stories quite a bit if I’d read them separately, one at a time, in separate magazines or anthologies. There’s some really fun worldbuilding!

But… as a sit-down-and-read-straight-through experience, it didn’t really work well for me. It’s perfectly readable, and there’s a “Nix”ness about it that I enjoy — it’s why I picked up this based on seeing his name on it, after all — but overall, no, not in this format.

Rating: 2/5