I have never read a story like And What Can We Offer You Tonight. It was shorter than most books I read and it didn't dive very deep into character development or world building but it was still enjoyable.

The story opens with the main character Jewel, a courtesan, grieving the loss of her friend Winfield after she was murdered by a client. However, at the funeral Winfield comes back from the dead with the intent to get revenge for her own murder. Then Jewel has to decide whether or not to keep herself safe in a high-stakes world or help Winfield.

The setting is a world in the far future mostly destroyed by late stage capitalism. People are heavily modified with horns, wings, bionic breasts, and the like. If you're lucky enough to have a purpose and a job then you're safe but if not then you're at risk of being culled. Law no longer exists and those with money get away with whatever they want.

The cast of characters was very interesting. Jewel is a very passive main character and for most of the story is unable to make up her mind on anything she wants to do. The other two main characters were more interesting to me and yet we barely learn anything about either of them.

The stream of consciousness narration in the story is very dreamlike and poetic. There is some beautiful imagery, however at times it is hard to discern exactly what is happening. When Jewel's thoughts become confused or upset it becomes confusing to read.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this novella and will likely end up purchasing a physical copy when it comes out. I do wish it were longer, if only to to understand the world and surrounding characters better. I think that this story will appeal to fans of the dystopian and science fiction genres.

3.5 Stars

I was pleasantly surprised by the novella, I never read something close to it, it is fantasy, science fiction and crime with a touch of paranormal all at the same time, it was a good concept to get to see the search of revenge of a sex worker looking for the man who killed her. Jewel unfortunately the MC was the less interesting to me, she was just assisting what everyone else was doing, I wished more of Winfield.
As for the plot I was intrigued and I liked how it really showed as striking the differences between poor and rich people, and the slight comments on a revolutionary change but the fear of having to be a risk and potentially loosing their safety.

I received a free eARC from the author/publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

While it has an interesting premise, and fascinating hints of worldbuilding, I felt a little underwhelmed by And What Can We Offer You Tonight's plot. The themes it explored were dynamite though.

We follow a character called Jewel (who is a courtesan at the House of Bicchieri) in the aftermath of a murder. Her friend Winfield was killed by a client, and then rises from the dead at her own funeral with revenge in her heart. Jewel is torn between wanting to help avenge Winfield and all the other poor folk who have been abused, and wanting to keep the little pocket of safety she has managed to earn for herself in a dangerous world.

So I'll start with what I liked most. Jewel lives in a future dystopian world that has been destroyed by late stage capitalism. Society as we know it has collapsed. Law doesn't exist, so the poor have no protections. If you are rich, you have power, and you can get away with anything you like, even murder. Whereas the poor are considered less than human and are culled en masse. Sea levels have clearly risen, because there are canals instead of streets. Courtesans and the rich alike engage in extensive body modification. For example, Jewel has hydraulic breasts that always stay perky, while her friend Nero has paid to give himself wings. The courtesans also have monitors to prevent them getting drunk etc. crimes for which the owners can dock their pay.

I found Jewel to be quite passive in her own life (which is surprising, because she is obsessed with pointing out when she uses passive voice). She is the kind of person that follows the rules, and worries about consequences. I think Winfield's character was more interesting, but we didn't actually see that much of her. I also wasn't the biggest fan of the stream of consciousness style of narration. There was some beautiful imagery, but there was also ridiculously long sentences that were very difficult to read. They didn't correspond to emotions like panic, which would have been the perfect time to use them for greatest impact.

Overall, the story was strangely compelling, though quite simple. If anything, I think it was a vehicle to explore the themes. It is a scathing look at the destructive force that is late stage capitalism. It takes aim at systems where power and privilege are used as weapons, rendering the poor as less than human. It explores the various ways people survive in such systems. It also challenges the notion that victims should be expected to rise above the behaviour of those who have harmed them. What's the point in moral superiority, and being the bigger person, when those with wealth and power can murder you without consequences?

And What Can We Offer You Tonight is an interesting novella that tackles some big themes. I haven't read anything quite like it before, so I would recommend it to sci-fi/fantasy fans who enjoy thematic explorations, and are interested in critiques of capitalism and power.

This was a quick, interesting read. I never connected with the characters and really wanted to see more of Winfield. I’m just not a fan of weak characters so I didn’t care for the MC, hence my desire to learn more about Win’s powers/story. The world building in novellas is always hard and this story did a fine job of that, especially the mix of tech and squalor and wealth. That was very clear and well done.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this ARC.

One-Line Book Review: A gratifying voyeurism into a dead (?) sex worker's revenge against the man who killed her, glimpsed through the eyes of the sex worker's very timid and very bionically upgraded fellow sex worker. 3.75/5

Non-spoiler book review: This book is much shorter than I expected, and written in a very non-typical way (at least from the majority of standard fiction novels I read). Although the shortness doesn't provide much time or depth to the characters themselves, the story itself and the way that the world is built is quite compelling. The world is left vague, and little tidbits are dropped that make the world and the society the characters live in quite intriguing. I'm still unsure how I feel about the main character - the way she's written, it feels like we're watching the main character through the side character's perspective, which isn't necessarily bad, just different. I was a little let down by how short it was; I thought it would be a full-length novel, and although its shortness lends to its vagueness and intrigue, it left me wanting more, and not in a positive way. Like I thought the glass was half-full, but it turned out to be half-empty instead.

Spoilers-included book review: Although I enjoyed the various characters, especially Nero and Winfield, Jewel was a bit bland, although that perhaps was due to the shortness of the book rather than the actual character herself. It was also confusing at times with how the narrative shifted and jumped - like when Jewel confesses that she actually told Serpentine and Jasper about Winfield's plan, that felt surprising. It wasn't necessarily out of character, but the lead up to that wasn't really there? Also the actual scene where Winfield kills Pederssen and enacts revenge against Serpentine and Jasper felt a little underwhelming. Overall, it was a good read! Some things were a little off, but for how short it was, it was enjoyable.

In this whirlwind of a novella, readers are welcomed into a House of courtesans in a dystopian future where the once sparkling Winfield has ruined her funeral by coming back from the dead. Murdered by a client, Win will use her second chance to become an antihero vigilante seeking vengeance. But actually, our protagonist is the practical, routine Jewel rather than the fiery Win. Jewel is both worried about and drawn to her friend Win's chaos, wanting justice for the many tragedies inflicted on the courtesans as a matter of course, while also fearing the loss of her livelihood.

I found the story to be a biting commentary on capitalism in this future world where society has collapsed but the increasingly stark differentiation between the rich and poor persists. I think Jewel's turmoil shows the internal struggle with revolutionary change-- a yearning for something better mixed in with a fear of lost safety and the dangers of a fight for survival. She's a sympathetic character and a worthy guide.

My only complaint with this one is the world-building. It's a quick read, and I think the author relies on the overwhelming similarities between our world and this possible future to skip explaining things about how it functions. While I was more than happy to skip an info-dump, I had to choose not to fixate on unfamiliar terms that came up as unnecessary distractions from the meat of the story. Once I started dismissing them rather than poking and prodding at them, I had a much better time of it.

I recommend this to readers seeking a fast, gritty dystopian story peopled by complex characters facing down the capitalist system that keeps them downtrodden.

Thanks to Neon Hemlock Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this gripping novella, out 7/20.

I wasn’t sure of this book at first but at about chapter three I got really into it. I’ve never read anything like it. There’s a little bit of sci-fi, a little bit of fantasy, a tiny bit of paranormal and a bit of murder.
Even though it’s only 80 pages, there’s a good plot and good characters. It’s also gripping enough that you could read it all in one go.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I’ll definitely look into the author’s other works.

Too short for me to really connect with the characters and plot.
I thought I was heading into one story from the synopsis but git another, which would have been fine, but it's so short that it lacked what it could have been.

Wow!!! Freaking loved this man! I didn't realize this was a novella which just made this 200% better. It was a surreal, dreamlike world that felt all too close and personal.

CAWPILE: 4.43
Star Rating: 2.25 Stars
Trigger Warnings: Sexual Assault, Murder

This is one of those situations where I loved the writing style in theory, but thought that it ended up taking away from the plot. The prose and descriptions of the scenery were beautiful, creating a sense of magical realism amidst the text, but at times, it was that beautiful writing that made this difficult to read. I found myself rereading sentences and paragraphs to try and see if I missed something, a minor detail essential to what was going on.

As for the characters themselves, while I loved the relationship between Nero and Jewel, a friendship brought out of shared circumstance, Jewel did not feel like the protagonist to the novel. Winifred did. I wanted her perspective, to know what went through her head as she took revenge on the people that wronged her. Did she hesitate? Did she even actually care for Jewel or Nero? What did it feel like to come back from the dead? Jewel felt like a bystander to the Winifred's revenge.

I think that this book would be good for anyone that appreciates purple prose or stream of consciousness. It wasn't for me, but I can see it being really popular among poets and those that gravitate towards magical realism and literary fantasy.

This is my second Mohamed novella, and while I liked the other one much more, this was a quick and fun read! A bit stream-of-consciousness, a bit female empowerment, power imbalance, and above all, really great prose!

The prose is the highlight of this book, almost to its detriment. It reminded me of some of Patricia McKillip’s more flowery books: you fall in love with the way the sentences flow and can’t help but feel impressed by the way things are worded, but sometimes you just get lost in the language and forget about the story. Is that a valid complaint? The prose is *too* good?

It does its job in so few pages, managing to tell a proper story. Feels like the author has more stories to tell in this world, however. For a novella (more of a novelette, really), there was a fairly big focus on worldbuilding.

Unexpected awesomeness! Thank you, Neon Hemlock Press, for this ARC! I read <i>And What Can We Offer You Tonight</i> in one sitting, which I guess isn’t too difficult considering it’s only 80 pages, but still. The writing style threw me at first, with its stream of consciousness lack of commas/periods in some places. I got over that pretty quickly. I loved this so much. I felt like I was in Jewel’s head. I hate purple prose, and on the surface, it might seem like that to some people, but this is something else entirely. It didn’t feel like the author was trying to be edgy or trying too hard to write poetically. It’s genuinely good shit. Dreamy (or nightmarey) goodness.

I loved languishing in this dreadful world with characters I came to love very quickly for such a short book. I love the friendships and the loyalty/unity among them. I just wanted them to win one. My girl Winfield is wild. I love the visuals and the body mods. I love a good kill your masters/eat the rich story, and this one has a nice little revenge plot. I love the up-close, deep-inside, and dream-like writing style. I love it all. I’m still surprised by how much I enjoyed my experience reading this. I do wish the ending was a little more of a BANG, but I’m satisfied all the same. I’ll be buying a physical copy when this comes out.

3.5 stars
A novella full of surreal, fever dream, stream-of-consciousness writing.
We follow the thoughts of Jewel, an experienced courtesan, as she deals with the death and reanimation of her friend Winfield(I kept reading it as Winifred for some reason though)
"The dead girl sat up asked for her perfume then went back to being dead." This was definitely a catchy first line.
We follow Jewel's perspective throughout the story in a world where most people have abandoned the idea of eternal life after death, there are population culls every month and the slightest infraction can make you a candidate for culling.
Win is a side story of vengeance and murder and I would have liked to see more of that, I've never been a huge fan of single POV stories.

In a science-fiction world where only the very wealthy have funerals and everyone else is dumped into the ubiquitous filthy canals when they die, a high end courtesan comes back to life to take vengeance on her wealthy client/murderer. Jewel, the protagonist of And What Can We Offer You Tonight, is the dead girl’s friend. Having not been reanimated with a terrible purpose, Jewel’s concerns are more quotidian: meeting clients, looking after her fellow courtesans, and trying to keep from losing her job as a known associate of the vigilante dead girl haunting the city’s rich.

This is a tough novella to summarize and an even tougher one to review. It’s beautifully written. Despite being 75% run-on sentences, it never feels dense, just poetic. Jewel’s helpless, often directionless ruminating turns her world into an anxious kaleidoscope. The imagery of the courtesans’ elegant House contrasts with the crumbling city outside in a way that makes both of them seem equally alien and lovely, and Mohamed has a way of describing familiar objects like perfume that seems stranger than her futuristic technology. I wanted to highlight entire chapters.

It’s also, objectively, something that should really connect with me. I love class conflict stories and I love female characters that other reviewers call too passive or too violent or too morally impure and I love a run-on sentence. But it didn’t hook me behind the belly button the way I wanted it to, and I can’t really say why.

If I had to guess, I’d say it was probably that Jewel is very Hamlet. She wants everything and nothing. She can’t make up her mind. She acts only when her hand is forced by other, stronger willed characters. Her definite trait is her compulsion to smother her unpretty emotions in order to keep her job and her life (which is saying the same thing twice).

I don’t think this is a flaw in the writing. I mean, Hamlet. If anything, Jewel is too relatable. Her dystopian future world is too real. Like, I am living through real climate disasters and class warfare, I do not have any spare energy for lightly fictionalized versions of them.

On the other hand, reading lightly fictionalized versions of the traumas you’re surviving can be healing. I think that will be the case for a lot of people who read And What Can We Offer You Tonight. After the murders in Atlanta and this summer’s heat wave, a lot of readers are going to find catharsis in the story of a murdered sex worker who traverses a flooded city to kill her killer.

I think this novella will also appeal to a lot of readers who don’t typically like SFF. If Margaret Atwood can say The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t science fiction, then I think I’m justified in saying neither is And What Can We Offer You Tonight. Buy this book for your snobby aunt and tell her it’s Literature that happens to have some lightly futuristic technology and exactly one un-dead girl.

How blissful it is to be wealthy and free in the far-future world of Premee Mohamed's new novella; but AND WHAT CAN WE OFFER YOU TONIGHT (Washington, DC: Neon Hemlock Press, 2021) is not about them, it is about how the other half live, or attempt not to die, in the decomposed late-capitalist husk of the unnamed city that is both backdrop and protagonist in Mohamed's second novella (and third book) of 2021. Whatever catastrophe befell this city, the result is a distorted nightmare of corpse-filled canals, desecrated churches, and seedy oppulence. And even though it appears that we are long gone, the world we know buried beneath salt and chemicals and waste, there are fragments that survive – wings fashioned from the kevlar of bulletproof jackets, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA – along with a stinging sense that all this inequity and iniquity was forseeable.

The collapse that has presumably occurred has taken a lot, including the last remnants of any ethical values we cherish, and the people here are always at risk of dying when they no longer possess value (apart from the nutritional value of their meat – it's hard to see how a world as dank and polluted as this could create adequate protein for the rich, let alone the hoi polloi, without a little SOYLENT GREEN-esque magic) or are unable to be of service. The lower classes like Jewel and her friends are rats in gilded cages, spinning the wheels until such a time as they're thrown away, or their tail is chopped off. And right away in the first chapters we are introduced to Jewel, one of the people lucky not to be dead but unlucky to be alive. The tale begins with a death which is not a death, a coffin-popping-open shock that lays a priest out horizontal, and a little scene-setting that establishes just how tough a gig it is to work as a courtesan at the House of Bicchieri.

In her short stories and novels, most recently THESE LIFELESS THINGS (Oxford: Rebellion, 2021), Mohamed has shown she can 'Do the Police in Different Voices', her narrators distinct and convincing. THESE LIFELESS THINGS is notable for a meticulously designed narrative which switched between voices and built to a shattering conclusion. In the wasted capitalist land of AND WHAT CAN WE OFFER YOU TONIGHT, Jewel's voice, a patois distinguished by its rhythmic repetitions and classy cadence, signals something new; to read Jewel, to hear her, is to witness the literary flair of a writer whose confidence is growing with each and every book, and that is precious indeed, and worth the price of admission (and repeat admission for an audiobook, if and when). But come for the eloquence of the courtesan, and stay for the worldbuilding and the tension-ratcheting and the overall polish of the whole shebang. Stay for the tale of friends staying alive and sticking it to the man, or woman, or system. Stay for the way against all odds, these caged birds rage, held together by friendship and a need to survive, no matter how bleak.

Although we humans who read AND WHAT CAN WE OFFER YOU TONIGHT will likely never live in quite as degraded a world as Jewel and Winfield and Nero, many will have endured, and will continue to endure, lives that are, as Hobbes put it, 'poore, nasty, brutish, and short'. Yet there is some hope to be teased out of this fable that Mohamed has speculated up – a chaser to the toxic shot of this dumpster fire of a society – and it is that we can be comrades, we can care for each other, life never needs to be solitary. And so leaving the show, walking out of this dazzling, humorous, sparky piece speculative fiction, believe that life can change, that we can change lives, that tonight there is the offer of the impossible becoming possible.

∎

You can find more of my reviews and interviews at https://intermultiversal.space

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© Gareth Jelley

This is my third read by the author. The first two were a strangely meandering introduction, where I’d find myself liking some of it, but almost reluctantly. Which is to say, this author and this reader are not an organic match. In fact, with her last novella I pretty much decided to maybe just stay away, but the thing is…I love novellas. And this one (unlike that last one) was actually a proper novella size at only 80 pages (as oppose to 170), so I figured one more try.
Ok, it stands to mention that the main thing with this author for me is how young her novels read. They are not YA and are not marketed as such, but that’s how they often read, which really, really, really isn’t for me.
This novella, refreshingly, was somewhat more mature. Instead of the age disparity, it just had a strange poetic quality to it that didn’t quite work for me.
Mind you, it’s a perfectly fine novella and the author isn’t without talent, it just doesn’t quite sing for me the way it might for some readers. In fact, given the poetic quality of the language, the way it was meant to sing.
The basics are this…a dreamily overwritten account of a fancy futuristic high end pleasure palace and a revenge plot hatched by the fancy high end (and occasionally modified) courtesans of it against their masters and abusers, after one of their own ends up...well, not quite dead. So it has a positive empowering message, it has some elegantly froufrou descriptions, it has a certain luxurious lavishness of style. It’ll certainly find its audience, even if I’m not exactly it. Plus it reads quickly enough, so you’re not overcommitting one way or another. Thanks Netgalley.

This is one of those books which is hard to categorise, given its subject material and plot-line - it involves someone coming back to life after being murdered, which makes it lean more into fantasy, while taking place in a dystopian future where work=life, literally.

The story is set in a House, which is basically a high status brothel, with our point of view character being Jewel, who is one of the courtesans both living and working there. One of her fellow sex workers has been murdered by a client and has then come back to life, which poses all sorts of issues both in terms of their status - after all, people have to work to live but if you're not alive, then what? - and their apparent plans for revenge.

This is one of those books which, while being well-written and giving a real sense of place in particular with the writing, suffers from being novella length. Like a lot of novellas, it also just kind of stops. There's some resolution of the plot for Jewel and another main character but not for Win, the woman who came back to life. We're left with no answers about how or why, or any idea about what she's doing in the aftermath of her working out her plans.

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher via Netgalley. I am reviewing this book with my honest opinion on a voluntary basis.

I received this eARC last night from NetGalley, and as soon as I read the first sentences, I was completely hooked. This book captured me right away that I finished it in one sitting. Premee Mohamed crafted such a beautiful novella; in 80 pages, the author treats us with spectacular prose, atmospheric and surreal. The best way to describe this book might be "enchanting" or "captivating", maybe both. After I finished it, even though Premee Mohamed does a great job at giving the reader closure to the story, I still wanted more from this fantastic world. I hope this is only the beginning and hope there's more story to tell! Highly recommend "And What Can We Offer You Tonight".

This novella of 80 pages tries to do a lot, but the stream of consciousness style of wrting prevented me from getting into the story. Usually I like this kind of story telling, but in combination with its length and the amount of information the author tries to pack in I was kinda lost. There is so much going on, that I think a full novel would've worked better for me, though a lot of readers will love this work as it is. I just couldn't immerse myself into this world.

Evocative and weird. This novella is tight and compelling, and the author does a nice job of conveying the world and the characters through carefully placed details – it's almost like she gives you the opportunity to infer information about the world, rather than telling you about it, which is a neat trick. I also enjoyed the themes of capitalism and spirituality. I would definitely recommend this novella for its sheer weirdness; for Mohamed's prose, which is always a treat; and for its short length, which makes it a comfortable and easy read.

I received an eARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.