Genre: novella

The following review is based on a complimentary ARC provided by Amazon Original Stories via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The Knight and the Butcherbird is an intriguing dark fantasy short story that tells a brief, yet compelling tale in a modern world where shapeshifting monsters or “demons” roam the forests and wastelands. Narrated by Shrike, the rural community’s seventeen year old historian, the short story follows the arrival of legendary Knight who is summoned to the community to kill a demon that had been seen in the area. The only problem is the demon he’s been summoned to kill is Shrike’s wife May, a fellow villager who slowly transformed into a monster. Skillfully invoking a folklore/grimm fairytale vibe and incorporating dystopian and caste elements, The Knight and the Butcherbird is condensed yet imaginative and makes full use of its limited page counts to tell its satisfying and self-contained story. Featuring the Knight’s story within the overall story, I found the focal plot twist involving the Knight’s secret to be well done, with crucial clues subtlety presented within Shrike’s stories. I previously read Harrow’s full-length novel Starling House and while I had some reservations with its plot and…

Entry #3 in Martha Wells’ Murderbot series, Rogue Protocol continues the series’ perfect formula of a great action adventure with snappy and sarcastic humor. While I found the previous entry Artificial Condition to be a bit slow and a tad heavy with its setup, Rogue Protocol felt like a welcome return to All Systems Red’s more ideal balance with a more extensively developed plot that connected back to the series’ loose overall narrative. At this point it goes without saying that the tone and humor of the series is pitched perfect for me and something I don’t really need to spend much time on (I would assume if you’re reading this review you must be familiar with the series or my past reviews unless you’re one of those chaotic and unhinged mid-series readers). Murderbot’s character voice and narration is always a joy, yet somehow Wells manages to one-up herself yet again: There needs to be an error code that means “I received your request but decided to ignore you.” Then there was Asshole Research Transport. ART’s official designation was deep space research vessel. At various points in our relationship, ART had threatened to kill me, watched my favorite shows with…

After the largely self-contained All Systems Red, the second novella in Martha Well’s Murderbot Diaries series Artificial Condition had a lot to cover within <160 pages. As the sequel in a now extended series, this novella needed to function both as a standalone story as well as a transitional piece for the rest of the series. While it ultimately accomplished both tasks, I personally found Artificial Condition to be slower and less exciting to read compared to All Systems Red (still a great overall read however). While All Systems Red featured functional, albeit limited world-building that was just enough to be functional for its story, Artificial Condition greatly expands on the Murderbot universe and spends most of its first half setting the scene for what’s to come later in the series. This story introduces several new types of bots, expands the scope of the series to other stations and moons, and introduces new characters for the hilariously dry and sarcastic Murderbot to interact with. One of my favorite elements of All Systems Red was Martha Well’s great sense of humor and witty dialogue. Artificial Condition continues the humor and cranks it up a notch with the introduction of ART. Murderbot…

Don’t let the page count and novella length fool you, Martha Wells is a literary wizard for packing so much action and content into All Systems Red’s 150 pages. I kept seeing The Murderbot Diaries popping up in book lists and booktuber recommendations, and winning a Hugo Award certainly helps give it some critical street cred. Despite its short length, I thoroughly enjoyed this and breezed right through in one day. This is a pretty short read so I’ll try and keep this review appropriate short. While many sci-fi works get bogged down with heavy exposition and detailed world-building, All Systems Red doesn’t have the luxury of length and immediately takes off running from the get-go. This novella is pure plot, though surprisingly a bit light in terms of fighting/gunfire action. Despite being called Murderbot, Murderbot isn’t a killing machine (at least on paper) and acts as a defensive security unit for hire. And they’re a weaponized tool that could care less about what happens to their human clients, at least initially. The premise of an indifferent narrator is clever in concept, allowing the book to get away with skirting heavy world-building with an effective mechanism of “I never bothered…

This was short novella was fine and a quick sub-25 minute read. Part of the Amazon’s The Improbable Meet-Cute Series featuring short stores themed around Valentines Day written by popular romance authors, I found With Any Luck to be cute yet inconsequential. 50 pages requires a concise and tidy story which With Any Luck manages by covering only two days worth of plot during Audrey Love’s best male friend’s wedding. At the wedding she unfortunately is greeted by the fiance’s best man who she had a fling with on a previous trip. The novella is essentially an enemies to lovers setup but the short length does the trope no favors. The only way to reverse the animosity is via misunderstandings which I’ve mentioned many times as being one of my pet peeves. This is exemplified by Audrey believing she ruined the wedding when her best friend goes missing the morning of the wedding following a drunken night out she can’t remember. However, the fact that enemies to lovers romantic interest was there during the drunken night and knows exactly what happened to Audrey feels like a cheap gotcha plot twist. The entire conflict could’ve been avoided had he just told…