Reviews

It's a beautiful story. It has all the appeal of a fairy tale, but is a little bit more than that. The only problem I had was the constant changing scenes. Because if the nature of the setting & story, the setting had to shift and change like a dream, and while this helped with the feel of the book, it also created a sense of insubstantiality.

wishbea's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A mother strives to bring her recently deceased daughter back to life by journeying to Death and singing him a ballad. This is a retelling of the Orpheus myth, I think this novella is weaker than previous works by Harris, I didn't fall in love with the story like I did with A Pocketful of Crows. The side characters felt pointless to me and the answers to the riddles didn't feel satisfying. However the emotional aspect of the mother's devotion to her daughter was beautiful, the reveal at the end was heartbreaking.

Harris also added in overt references to her previous work which took me out of the story, she references A Pocketful of Crows with "A named thing is a tamed thing." and multiple uses of the word "honeycomb" as reference to her short story collection Honeycomb. I don't know if all these stories are meant to be taking place in the same universe, but the references felt very out of place regardless.

Content Warnings

gth's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

sir_presh's review

Go to review page

3.0

Reads like a fairytale, kinda satisfying

More...