“I should have told Brother Peter to keep the lid upon his Pandora's jar. But I have been granted curiosity by the gods. And regretfully I asked to look inside.”

A medieval detective noir-drama. You read that right. Lots of cool stuff happening here: multi-arced and rotating mystery, old timey superstitions, “dun-dun-dun” reveals, dim-witted “heroes” and devilish villains, a rude horse, sly internal banter that made me actually chuckle, the plague! I could go on, but not for much longer.

The tropes and stereotypes of detective fiction translated to a medieval setting pretty accurately: misogyny and gendered violence, racism, classism, etc. But, Sykes isn’t really creating discourse around these attributes, if that was her aim or not; destructive hegemonic values are upheld and relatively unconfronted. And I truly think she meant to offer some depth to her characters. Sure, the horny 17yr old protagonist does a lot of self reflection and aims to garner justice for the victims, but he also fell in love with a woman’s “firm but soft globes” (under her tunic, of course) and decided to marry her within approximately 3 days of knowing her, after explaining that he was the best offer she’d find due to their class disparages. Charming.

3/5 Didn’t know this was a series when I picked it up, I could be bothered to grab the next one as a buffer book!