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echthroi's review
3.0
Not bad, a little taste of a world where magic is just another resource to be tooled and optimized. As others have mentioned, Skarbek shone much brighter than the actual protagonist, I would have loved to get more of her story.
sarah42783's review
4.0
Newsflash: there is a pyramid in this story. I kid you not. It's in Krakow, too. And not in Krakow, Egypt either. (Because yes, there is a town called Krakow in Egypt. Of course there is.) It's in Good Old Krakow, Poland. Ah, Krakow. Such a enchanting, welcoming, immaculately unpolluted city:
“Through the coach windows flooded an effluvium of misery and sickness, of excreta and vomit and pus, overlaid with coal smoke strongly flavored with the same unidentifiable smell that in lesser concentration permeated the air of Krakow.”
Oh yeah, I bet Smelly Susie here feels right at home in Good Old Krakow.
So. This delightful little story is probably the most deliciously bleakest in the series so far. Which is quite, um, delicious and stuff. The sad thing is, I can’t tell you why it’s deliciously bleak. Because spoiler spoiler spoiler, obviously. All you need to know is that my yummy boyfriend Ritter of the Werewolf Corps (in case you were wondering, no, the werewolf is not him. Ha) gets yummiliciously yummier with every instalment. Okay, so he can be as ridiculously naïve as a newborn barnacle sometimes:
“We are talking about Europe, after all, not some benighted heathen continent. Necromancy and human sacrifice! Those are exactly the sorts of slanders a nation levels against its enemy as propaganda. We may be at war, but we are still civilized peoples—and that includes the Russians.”
Told you my boyfriend could be innocently ignorant as fish sometimes. I mean, the Russians? Civilized people? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *Waves at The Overlord*
Oh, and by the way: post-spoiler spoiler alert and stuff. Yeah, sorry about that.
Anything else to report? Why yes, as a matter of shrimp. My boyfriend Ritter is a hard case. Pretty sure Doolittle would love having him as one of hisunwilling patients.
“Can you follow my lead or must I carry you?” Ritter was a Teuton, an officer, and of noble blood to boot. He forced himself to hold his head high. “Pain is of no significance to me.”
At which the resident Damsel in No Bloody Shrimping Distress went all:
The end and stuff.
➽ The stories in this series are Slightly Very Entertaining (SVE™). The stories in this series are Super Extra Short (SES™). The stories in this series are Super Extra Free (SEF™). This particular story is SUPER EXTRA HERE (SEH™). So read it and stuff.
· Story #1: The Mongolian Wizard ★★★★
· Story #2: The Fire Gown ★★★★
· Story #3: Day of the Kraken ★★★★
· Story #4: House of Dreams ★★★★
· Story #5: The Night of the Salamander ★★★★
· Story #7: The Phantom in the Maze ★★★★
· Story #8: Murder in the Spook House ★★★★
· Story #9: The New Prometheus ★★★
“Through the coach windows flooded an effluvium of misery and sickness, of excreta and vomit and pus, overlaid with coal smoke strongly flavored with the same unidentifiable smell that in lesser concentration permeated the air of Krakow.”
Oh yeah, I bet Smelly Susie here feels right at home in Good Old Krakow.
So. This delightful little story is probably the most deliciously bleakest in the series so far. Which is quite, um, delicious and stuff. The sad thing is, I can’t tell you why it’s deliciously bleak. Because spoiler spoiler spoiler, obviously. All you need to know is that my yummy boyfriend Ritter of the Werewolf Corps (in case you were wondering, no, the werewolf is not him. Ha) gets yummiliciously yummier with every instalment. Okay, so he can be as ridiculously naïve as a newborn barnacle sometimes:
“We are talking about Europe, after all, not some benighted heathen continent. Necromancy and human sacrifice! Those are exactly the sorts of slanders a nation levels against its enemy as propaganda. We may be at war, but we are still civilized peoples—and that includes the Russians.”
Told you my boyfriend could be innocently ignorant as fish sometimes. I mean, the Russians? Civilized people? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *Waves at The Overlord*
Oh, and by the way: post-spoiler spoiler alert and stuff. Yeah, sorry about that.
Anything else to report? Why yes, as a matter of shrimp. My boyfriend Ritter is a hard case. Pretty sure Doolittle would love having him as one of his
“Can you follow my lead or must I carry you?” Ritter was a Teuton, an officer, and of noble blood to boot. He forced himself to hold his head high. “Pain is of no significance to me.”
At which the resident Damsel in No Bloody Shrimping Distress went all:
The end and stuff.
➽ The stories in this series are Slightly Very Entertaining (SVE™). The stories in this series are Super Extra Short (SES™). The stories in this series are Super Extra Free (SEF™). This particular story is SUPER EXTRA HERE (SEH™). So read it and stuff.
· Story #1: The Mongolian Wizard ★★★★
· Story #2: The Fire Gown ★★★★
· Story #3: Day of the Kraken ★★★★
· Story #4: House of Dreams ★★★★
· Story #5: The Night of the Salamander ★★★★
· Story #7: The Phantom in the Maze ★★★★
· Story #8: Murder in the Spook House ★★★★
· Story #9: The New Prometheus ★★★
lnatal's review
3.0
You may read online at Tor.com.
Opening lines:
The man who got off the coach from Bern—never an easy trip but made doubly uncomfortable thanks to the rigors and delays of war—had a harsh and at first sight intimidating face. But once one took in his small black-glass spectacles and realized he was blind, pity bestowed upon him a softer cast. Until the coachman brought around his seeing-eye animal and it turned out to be a wolf.
Opening lines:
The man who got off the coach from Bern—never an easy trip but made doubly uncomfortable thanks to the rigors and delays of war—had a harsh and at first sight intimidating face. But once one took in his small black-glass spectacles and realized he was blind, pity bestowed upon him a softer cast. Until the coachman brought around his seeing-eye animal and it turned out to be a wolf.
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