Author: Nicky

Review – Tell Me The Truth About Life

Posted March 10, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Tell Me The Truth About Life: A National Poetry Day Anthology

by Cerys Matthews (editor)

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 192
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Tell Me the Truth About Life is an indispensable anthology which celebrates poetry’s power to tap into the truths that matter. Curated and introduced by Cerys Matthews, this collection draws on the wisdom of crowds: featuring poems nominated for their insight into truth by a range of ordinary and extraordinary people: from Britain’s first astronaut, Helen Sharman, to sporting heroes and world-famous musicians, teachers, artists and politicians.

Their choices include contemporary work by Yrsa Daley-Ward, John Cooper Clarke and Kei Miller alongside classics by W H Auden, Emily Dickinson and Dylan Thomas. Here you will find poems to revive the spirit, ballads to mobilize and life-lines to hold you safe in the dark.

Compiled for National Poetry Day’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Tell Me the Truth About Life is a book that reminds us we are never completely alone in our search to glimpse the truth.

Containing nominations from a number of high-profile poetry lovers and poets, including Michael Morpurgo, Mark Gatiss, Dolly Alderton, and Helen Sharman, among others.

The poems featured in Tell Me The Truth About Life, edited by Cerys Matthews, are a bit of a mixed bag. Some are the type you come across in every single similar anthology, the famous ones that people like my grandmother have memorised. There were also a few surprises, poets I’d like to read more of.

I didn’t find that the little introductions written by various other readers were that helpful or added much, sadly: sometimes, reading someone else’s interpretation of a poem or what it means to them opens a poem right up, but the descriptions were too brief to offer much, and not very insightful.

What it did remind me was that I’d like to read more poetry again; it’s been a long time since I did, but I do have some favourites. Here’s one of them, while we’re here — Derek Walcott’s “Love After Love”:

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, poetry

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted March 9, 2024 by Nicky in General / 28 Comments

Well! Made it through another week. I had a long weekend and then also tried to take it easy, so I’m feeling a bit less stressed and snowed under, and got back to reading (whew!).

As per usual, I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Acquired this week:

So… there was a bit of a book spree. I’d like to say it was because of the British World Book Day (which we have earlier than everyone else so it doesn’t fall into our school holidays), but nope, I’d already indulged plenty before that. Classic retail therapy.

One thing I got was a bunch of new-to-me Object Lessons books. I love these as a concept, and try to get myself a little batch of new ones every so often!

I love how they all look together on shelves, too, so neat and tidy.

Anyway, other than that I also bought some other books I’ve had my eye on for a while:

The Walnut Tree sounds kinda grim, but I’ve read it already and I loved it! A Bookshop of One’s Own is kinda grim, too: I’m partway through it, and of course Silver Moon was established during the Thatcher era…

I also received a book from my mum. Sort of. For Christmas, my wife and I gave my mum a reading subscription from Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights. Each month, she receives a book chosen for her based on her preferences in the (quite extensive!) interview. However, since she has macular degeneration, the print is often too small, so after she’s had the fun of getting a package and seeing what’s been chosen for her, then I get her an ebook copy and the physical copy goes to someone who’s interested in it. Since we share quite a lot of our taste in books, it’s quite likely that will often be me… and thus did I get given her book choice for February! (My sister has claimed the book from March, Alice Roberts’ Ancestors. That’s okay, I already read it.)

And finally, I did get a new eARC this week as well — I’ve been meaning to read The Fortunate Fall for a long time, but I have no idea where my copy is, and I’m not sure if this version contains any updates. Thank you, Tor!

And — wait, that was not the end! Sneaking in at the last moment, as I was writing this post I spotted that the latest volume of A Side Character’s Love Story is out! I haven’t written a lot about this manga series here, since I read it when I wasn’t blogging or reviewing much, and also I never expected to be breathlessly devouring all (at the time) 14 volumes. It’s a sweet, slow-burn romance (though a quick read). If you’re curious about it, most or all of the series is available on Kindle Unlimited in the UK, and maybe elsewhere. Just sayin’.

Posts from this week:

It was a slightly slower week again here, since I didn’t post reviews on days I had a different post going up, but it’s still worth going over the list:

Fantasy YA comic: Stone Star: Fight or Flight, by Jim Zub et al (2/5 stars)
Non-fiction ranging through history: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, by Roland Allen (5/5 stars)
Fantasy: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett (4/5 stars)
Non-fiction about archaeology: Crypt: Life, Death and Disease in the Middle Ages and Beyond, by Alice Roberts (5/5 stars)

And non-review posts:

What I’m reading:

During my long weekend, I got a bit of my reading mojo back and managed to devour the second Emily Wilde book and Kate Morgan’s The Walnut Tree. I haven’t finished a lot of books, but I’ve been enjoying myself greatly. So here are the books I’ve read in the last week that I plan to review on here:

Over the weekend, I plan to finish A Bookshop of One’s Own (Jane Cholmeley), and maybe make a start on Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup. As ever, though, I’ll let my whim guide me.

And how’s everyone else doing?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – Crypt

Posted March 8, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Crypt: Life, Death and Disease in the Middle Ages and Beyond

by Alice Roberts

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 352
Rating: five-stars

Synopsis:
In her previous two bestsellers, Professor Alice Roberts powerfully and evocatively revived people of the past through examining their burial rites, bringing a fresh perspective on how they lived. In Crypt, Professor Roberts brings us face to face with individuals who lived and died between ten and five centuries ago.

The stories in this book are not comforting tales; there’s a focus on pathology, on disease and injury, and the experience of human suffering in the past. We learn of an episode of terrible brutality, when hate speech unleashed a tide of violence against an ethnic minority; of the devastation caused by incurable epidemics sweeping through medieval Europe; of a protracted battle between Church and State for the heart of England – a battle that saw the most famous tomb in the country created and destroyed; and a tumultuous story, forged in the heat of warfare, that takes us out of the Middle Ages into the sixteenth century and the reign of Henry VIII.

In the Middle Ages, there’s barely a written note for most people’s lives. The information we can extract from archaeological human remains represents is an essential tool for understanding our history. Most of these dead will remain anonymous. But, in the thrilling final chapter, Professor Roberts introduces an individual whose life and bones were marked by chronic debilitating disease – and whose name might just be found in history…

I was really excited about Alice Roberts’ Crypt coming out, because I enjoyed both Ancestors (my review) and Buried (my review), and this essentially concludes the trilogy, making it a survey through time about burial practices and archaeological finds in Britain. Crypt in particular was extra-exciting to me because it promised to discuss palaeo/archaeopathology, meaning looking in more depth at how people died, including whether infectious disease may have been involved. There are three chapters (of the seven) which deal heavily with this, discussing leprosy (Mycobacterium leprae), the Black Death (Yersinia pestis), and syphilis (Treponema pallidum) — obviously right up my street as someone who is fascinated by infectious disease (and especially leprosy’s cousin, Mycobacterium tuberculosis).

It was everything I’d hoped for, discussing deaths throughout the Middle Ages and going pretty in-depth about the stories we can see written into bone, plus the ways we’ve been able to find the trace of infectious diseases that are less apparent, or potentially ambiguous. The methods used weren’t too much of a surprise to me (“fishing” for ancient disease DNA using primers definitely occurred to me as a possibility), but it’s still fascinating to see it discussed at a bit more length.

As usual, Roberts writes clearly and engagingly, though maybe I could’ve done with slightly less about Henry VIII’s Mary Rose — I get that context is important, but I’m just not that interested in the Tudors and their squabbles, and I think it could’ve done with a bit less about that.

One thing I do wish is that the book used numbered references. I know it’s for a wider audience, but it’s so hard to follow up any particular interesting claim if I can’t find the paper or book it’s from, even when a detailed references section is included (as here).

Still, I enjoyed it very much, and I wish I had three more lined up just like it.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: Alice Roberts, book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, science

Review – Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries

Posted March 7, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

by Heather Fawcett

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 315
Series: Emily Wilde #1
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party—or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones — the most elusive of all faeries — lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all — her own heart.

In getting me to give Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Heather Fawcett) a shot, the key was the comparison to Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons. And it’s true: Emily Wilde definitely has a kinship with Isabella Trent, and I think they’d respect each other, and there is a similar sort of shape to the stories in some ways.

I was also promised something “whimsical” and “cosy” by the cover copy, and I have to say that I really wouldn’t call it those things. It takes faeries seriously, and that means taking seriously the cruelty of the Fae in many, many stories. It means missing children, sacrifice, compulsion, and blood. Emily’s research gets her swept up in a bigger story, and her main tool is her encyclopaedic knowledge of fairytales, her ability to know how the narratives work, and what to expect.

There is also a romance element, and that one is playful and full of banter. I didn’t really enjoy that aspect at first, wondering how it’d work out, but by the end I’d bought into it, because it doesn’t require Emily to be anything but herself — that is, prickly and awkward, and never quite sure how to handle other people.

Emily herself is a fun character. Though I said she’s like Marie Brennan’s Isabella (and certainly you could talk about the “deranged practicality” of both of them), and I can see both of them falling into exactly the same traps, she’s not a carbon copy, nor as reckless, and her relationship with Bambleby is quite different to Isabella’s relationships with those around her. There’s also less emphasis on geopolitical circumstances — they’re both scholars, but they don’t move through the world in quite the same way. At least not so far!

I’m keen to pick up the next book and see where it goes. I wonder if there’ll be any recurring characters? It would seem unlikely for most of them to turn up anywhere but their own home, but Emily certainly got swept up in a big story, and you never know what those will do.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Heather Fawcett, mystery, romance, SF/F

WWW Wednesday

Posted March 6, 2024 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Happy Wednesday! Time for the usual trio of questions:

What are you currently reading?
What have you recently finished reading?
What are you reading next?

Linking up with Taking on a World of Words.

What are you currently reading?

Thankfully, after a few days of feeling too stressed to read, I actually found my way into it over my long weekend. Right now I’m reading a new-to-me Object Lessons book, Spacecraft, by Timothy Morton. Sadly, I’m not really a fan: it’s not about real spacecraft, but about the idea of spacecraft, and it’s illustrating all its points by way of the Millenium Falcon. I liked Star Wars when I was a kid but haven’t watched the more recent movies (no, not because of Rey, just because I don’t watch much of anything), so… It’s talking to an audience that’s not me half the time.

What have you recently finished reading?

Last night I finished The Walnut Tree (Kate Morgan), which is a history of how the law has treated women in the UK. Which sounds quite dry, but I loved her book on murder which took a similar tack, and this was just as fascinating. She uses examples and case studies to illustrate the point, and it works really well.

I also finished Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Heather Fawcett) yesterday, and now I’d like the next book, please. I love Emily and how bad she is at human interaction, and how much she cares about Wendell and Shadow and Ariadne.

What are you reading next?

I don’t know for sure. Chances are my next fiction read will be Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup, because I guiltily bought myself a copy after failing to read my advance copy before publication. I’ll probably start a non-fiction read as well: possibly another Object Lessons book, in which case Sticker (Henry Hoke) is catching my eye, or possibly A Bookshop of One’s Own (Jane Cholmeley), which is a history of the feminist bookshop Silver Moon. (Man, I’m hoping there’s nothing transphobic/enbyphobic in there.)

How about you, dear reader? Anything great on your bedside table or about to drop through your letterbox?

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: To Google We Go!

Posted March 5, 2024 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

This week’s theme from Top Ten Tuesday is about weird or funny things you’ve googled thanks to a book. I couldn’t think of many weird or funny things I’ve put into a search engine due to a book. I was tempted to google about the scene with the rice wine in volume four of The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System — I’m not surprised it’s a thing, but would it have helped?! (If you know, you know. I’m saying no more. I advise against googling it if you’re not in the know, and definitely don’t do so on a work or school computer.)

Anyyyyway, moving on from that, I decided to just discuss ten times I looked up more information because of a book! Note that these don’t necessarily constitute recommendations of the book, just times I enjoyably got my nerd on and dug in!

The Notebook, by Roland Allen. This one’s fresh in my mind since I just finally put up the review: I found myself searching for more info about ICU patient diaries, because I hadn’t come across it at all and I think it sounds like a really helpful concept. And indeed, it is a thing, and the research suggests it helps a lot!
Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time, by James Suzman. The feathers of a peacock have been widely cited as an example of sexual selection in birds, but Suzman suggested this isn’t true. So far, I haven’t been able to find sources backing him up, though I admit I forgot to check whether he included a source for this.
Christmas: A History, by Judith Flanders. I googled a lot to find her sources, which eventually a question to her revealed on her website. I went on a whole journey with this one, discussed in my review: she seems to have quoted previous scholarship which I consider to be pretty fundamentally flawed.
Rebel Cell, by Kat Arney. This one had me googling a few things, one of them being contagious cancers. It’s amazing how when you google this, you get repeatedly assured that cancer is not transmissible, but in fact it is. That’s frightening and unpalatable, but heyho, it’s the truth. It’s mostly attested in Tasmanian devils (transmitted during fights) and in dogs (transmitted sexually), rather than in humans, but unfortunately it has been reported occuring in recipients of organ donation.
(While HPV can ultimately cause cancer and is transmissible, it isn’t transmission of the cancer itself. That said, quite a number of viruses can be implicated in the development of various human diseases including cancer, and we should in general get our vaccines and take all the preventative measures we can.)
Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far, by Paul Offit. The author discusses a lot of common medical interventions and the evidence that suggests they have, at best, no benefit — and at worst cause unnecessary suffering. Those are big claims, and the author knows it, so he provides details of how to go to the primary sources for yourself. I still have stuff I want to dig in on further from this one! I can’t pick an example here, it was all fascinating.
Adrift: The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea, by Tracey Williams. I read quite a bit about Lego’s sustainability efforts after reading this one, which is about Lego shipments lost at sea and how they end up on beaches. It seems that Lego had to abandon its efforts to make bricks from recycled plastic bottles, because it was ultimately going to cause a bigger carbon footprint.
An Immense World, by Ed Yong. I grabbed a search engine for a lot of things here, just to read more, e.g. about the eyes of scallops. They have little mirrors made of guanine (a nucleic acid used in DNA) in their eyes — whaaaat?
The Good Virus, by Tom Ireland. Did you know that bacteriophage therapy is actively being used in Georgia? It involves using viruses that infect bacteria to control bacterial infections, if you’re not familiar: as Tom Ireland discusses, it may well be a way we can handle antibiotic resistance. I knew about bacteriophages and the theory of using them to treat actual infections. I had no idea it was actually in use.
Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive, by Philip Dettmer. If you are curious about the immune system, I really recommend this one. And I learned new things from it myself, even though I’m doing my MSc in infectious diseases, so know a fair bit about immunology! The bit I loved was learning that neutrophils sometimes create sticky nets using their own DNA and extrude them to capture and do damage to pathogens: neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). Here’s the Wikipedia page for something a bit less technical… or you could read the book, which explains things beautifully for laypeople.
Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, by Rebecca Wragg-Sykes. I loved this one, and there was so much worth searching up and learning more about. Consider the fact that Neanderthals (widely assumed to be rather stupid compared to us) had complex methods for making glue.

I would recommend most of those books, minus #2 and #3, on balance. So if any of that sounds fascinating, you probably know where to start!

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – The Notebook

Posted March 4, 2024 by Nicky in Uncategorized / 4 Comments

The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

by Roland Allen

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 416
Rating: five-stars

Synopsis:
We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did this simple invention come from? How did they revolutionise our lives, and why are they such powerful tools for creativity? And how can using a notebook help you change the way you think?

In this wide-ranging story, Roland Allen reveals all the answers. Ranging from the bustling markets of medieval Florence to the quiet studies of our greatest thinkers, he follows a trail of dazzling ideas, revealing how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking. He tells the notebook stories of artists like Leonardo and Frida Kahlo, scientists from Isaac Newton to Marie Curie, and writers from Chaucer to Henry James. We watch Darwin developing his theory of evolution in tiny pocketbooks, see Agatha Christie plotting a hundred murders in scrappy exercise books, and learn how Bruce Chatwin unwittingly inspired the creation of the Moleskine.

On the way we meet a host of cooks, kings, sailors, fishermen, musicians, engineers, politicians, adventurers and mathematicians, who all used their notebooks as a space for thinking and to shape the modern world.

In an age of AI and digital overload, the humble notebook is more relevant than ever. Allen shows how bullet points can combat ADHD, journals can ease PTSD, and patient diaries soften the trauma of reawakening from coma. The everyday act of moving a pen across paper can have profound consequences, changing the way we think and feel: making us more creative, more productive - and happier.

Roland Allen’s The Notebook is, as the subtitle says, “A History of Thinking on Paper” — one that ranges pretty far tracking down where we began to use paper as a way to do things we can’t hold in our heads, as a tool for processing information, as a way to test things out, etc. It’s almost completely Western-oriented, focusing on areas like Italy, France and the UK for the most part, discussing various different strands of how notebooks are used. First for financial accounting, then for digesting popular culture and literature, and then evolving into diaries. It also discusses artists’ sketchbooks, the use of notebooks for collecting recipes, and of course, bullet journaling.

It’s the kind of book I love, rambling through the topic and finding examples to discuss, casting them in their context, etc. I found the stuff about da Vinci’s notebooks particularly fascinating, for example (and giggled about the cursing of his terrible handwriting), and of course, Darwin’s notebooks and the famous “I think”.

My favourite chapter of all was the one about ICU patient diaries and how they’re used, though. I didn’t expect this book to make me cry, but the topic hit unexpectedly close to home here, and I found myself crying my way through the last few pages of that chapter.

Definitely recommended if you’re interested in this kind of thing — not just notebooks specifically, but also if you enjoy history through the eye of a single object or set of objects.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Roland Allen

Review – Stone Star: Fight or Flight

Posted March 3, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Stone Star: Fight or Flight

by Jim Zub, Max Dunbar, Marshall Dillon, Espen Grundetjern

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels
Pages: 128
Series: Stone Star #1
Rating:

Synopsis:
A young thief named Dail discovers a dark secret in the depths of Stone Star and has to decide where his destiny lies--staying hidden in the shadows or standing tall in the searing spotlight of the arena. Either way, his life, and the cosmos itself, will never be the same! The nomadic space station called Stone Star brings gladiatorial entertainment to ports across the galaxy. Inside this gargantuan vessel of tournaments and temptations, foragers and fighters struggle to survive.

Stone Star: Fight or Flight is the first volume of a series, which I’d say has quite a “young adult” feel to it (despite the violence etc, there’s not a lot of gore, and the protagonists are young, there’s a mentor figure, etc, etc). The story’s not too surprising: a young scavenger has a surprising power, and ends up using it in an effort to protect a friend who gets dragged into the gladiatorial arena.

The art’s quite clear and easy to follow, unlike some of the other comics I’ve read lately — it’s all pretty straight-forward. I did find that the narrative bubbles felt… unnecessary. Like it was spoonfeeding information that you could also just get from the context.

I’ll probably read volume two because I have access to it and I’m mildly curious about Dail’s powers and why the other gladiators call Volness a traitor, but I wouldn’t be sad about not continuing, either. That said, I think I’m far from being the target audience!

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics, SF/F

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted March 2, 2024 by Nicky in General / 36 Comments

Wow, it’s been a rough week for me. I’ve just been so tired from working hard on my essays, I haven’t even really been reading much. It feels very weird.

That said, I’ve planned myself a long weekend now, so here’s hoping I’m on the upswing!

Books acquired this week:

Last week I sent my wife out for a bit of retail therapy for me, so here are the results…

As usual for me, a bit of an odd mix!

Posts from this week:

I’ve got through a lot of the backlog of reviews, and I’m trying to balance things out so there’s always a mixture rather than a huge run of graphic novel reviews, so I slowed down a bit this week. Still, here’s the recap of the reviews:

Non-fiction about a psychology experiment: The Lost Boys, by Gina Perry (3/5 stars)
Monster hunting comic: The October Faction vol 1, by Steve Niles et al (2/5 stars)
Chinese light novel: The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System vol 4, by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù (4/5 stars)
History non-fiction: Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World, by Philip Matyszak (3/5 stars)
Science non-fiction: The Hidden World, by George McGavin (3/5 stars)
Fantasy novella: Even Though I Knew the End, by C.L. Polk (4/5 stars)

Aaand the other posts:

What I’m reading:

Well… right now, nothing actively. Like I mentioned above, I’ve been really tired. I am starting to feel the itch to pick up a book, and when I do, I’ll likely pick up Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, by Heather Fawcett.

I did do some reading this week, so here’s the usual glimpse of books I intend to review in the coming weeks:

And th-th-that’s all folks! Hope everyone is doing well, and I pinky-swear I am going to try to catch up on answering comments and making return blog visits starting this evening. I appreciate them all so much and I know it takes time for people to drop by, and effort to make thoughtful comments, so I won’t be forgetting!

Tags: Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – Even Though I Knew The End

Posted March 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Even Though I Knew The End

by C.L. Polk

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 136
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
A magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago's divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life. This sapphic period piece will dazzle anyone looking for mystery, intrigue, romance, magic, or all of the above.

An exiled augur who sold her soul to save her brother's life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can't resist—the chance to have a future where she grows old with the woman she loves.

To succeed, she is given three days to track down the White City Vampire, Chicago's most notorious serial killer. If she fails, only hell and heartbreak await.

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This is a rather late review of a book I adored, because it seems I never ported over the review!

I pick up Tor.com’s novellas pretty much automatically these days, because 9.9 times out of 10, I’m in for a good (or at least an interesting) time. Even Though I Knew The End is no exception, featuring a sapphic love story, demons, deals at the crossroads, and a little detective fiction. I say a little, because although the character is a detective, that’s mostly just the framework that the rest hangs on. We don’t see a lot of serious detecting.

For those who loved Supernatural when it was on air (with all its flaws), and resonated with the sacrifices Dean made for Sam, this one’s definitely up your street. Our protagonist sold her soul for her brother’s life long ago, and her time’s almost up. In her last days, she investigates a bloody killing, tracking down the people who were possessed in order to do the murder, and discovering some secrets about her own partner into the bargain.

Because it’s a novella, everything has to get sketched in quickly, from the worldbuilding to the characters’ backstories to the love between Helen and Edith, and it works really well. I can be picky about how well novellas handle their scope, but Polk gets it right here.

My only problem is that the ending definitely left me sad. I’d been thinking at first that I might get a copy for my sister, but I try my best not to give her any tragic lesbians — the world has done enough of that already. So do be aware that this ends with a certain degree of queer tragedy; I won’t say more than that, for spoilers’ sake.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, C.L. Polk, mystery, SF/F