The Knife and The Serpent is a quick schlocky sci-fi tale of multiverses, secret agents, underworld crime lords, moody hyperintelligent AIs, badass women, and good ol’ fashioned BDSM!

The novel follows the perspectives of Glenn, a nerdy submissive boyfriend as he navigates his debauched, but otherwise happy and healthy relationship with his girlfriend, Vivian. Oh, by the way, Vivian is a multiverse secret agent. Think Aeon Flux meets John Wick. She is the Knife. The other perspective is of the ambitious Tamsin, who finds out that her grandmother has been found murdered. By the way, Granny is a refugee warlord from another parallel universe, who escaped her universe with baby Tamsin when a rival family nukes her oligarch family. Tamsin is now on the path to return to her home universe, exact some righteous vengeance, and take her rightful place! Meet, the Serpent!

Alright, you have all the facts I had going into this book.

The Knife and the Serpent promised a violent, bombastic narrative, with engaging characters and dynamics with that unique premise. Unfortunately, the short length of the novel prevented the narrative from really digging to any depth and left me with a very shallow plot with wafer-thin characters. The three major characters, Glenn, Vivian, and Tamsin get reduced to one-dimensional trope-lists so quickly that they quickly become realistically unbelievable and mere archetypes to carry the story along. Vivian, the hypercompetent secret-agent with a domme persona and a heart of gold with deus-ex-machina level gadgetry; Glenn, the bumbling, but still surprisingly competent insert character merely there to serve as plot fulcrum and exposition sinkhole, and Tamsin, the least developed of them all. The so-called antagonist is given such one-ply motivations and no space to develop her megalomaniacal endgame, that the whole affair felt more vacuous than rewarding. Add to that a duo of quirky but ultimately meh AIs, and you have an entire cast of beige characters, none of which will hold particular appeal to anyone well-versed in the genre.

The overt prevalence of Vivian and Glenn’s sexual relationship with the power dynamic pops up often enough throughout the narrative, along with Glenns expression of gender fluidity, by Pratt is curious. On one hand, inclusivity is always welcome in SFF spaces, and sci-fi has always been a bastion of pushing the realms of social stereotypes (along with technology etc.). On the other hand, with such little bearing on the plot besides adding to the pizzazz of Vivian’s general badassery, I found myself wondering why this aspect was such a focal point of the story. In any case, it checks both smut and LGBTQ+ bingo boxes on your reading lists folks, so chalk it up as a win?

My major issue with The Knife and the Serpent is that Pratt commits the cardinal SciFi and Fantasy sin of failing to “show don't tell”. The majority of the book is an exercise in “tell don't show”. Paragraphs upon paragraphs of lackluster exposition dumps litter the entire length of the novel, robbing the reader of ever being able to stop and “experience” the world created by the author. With a premise as diverse (though overplayed by this point) as a multiverse, the author spends more time having Vivian merely talk to Glenn (supposedly the audience insert) about various facets of the tech and lore of the many worlds. Add to the fact that very little about said multiverses ever really becomes seminal to the plot, and you’re left wondering why Pratt chose this particular backdrop when the narrative could have been more impactfully laid out on one world, without all the tropes and trimmings.

Pratt’s chosen prose style also veers dangerously close to being YA, which makes The Knife and the Serpent difficult to pin down. It has the yuppy shlock of other sci-fi standalones, but with overtly modernized prose and shallow characters, I find this book a hard sell to adults, or worse, sci-fi nerds.

All things considered, if you want a quick read of the archetypical battle between two badass women, along with some good-natured domme-sub characterizations, then perhaps The Knife and the Serpent is for you. For everyone else, there is little else to enjoy here.

This had everything that I was looking for from a space opera novel, it had everything that I enjoyed from Tim Pratt. It was a unique concept and thought the overall feel of the world worked well. I enjoyed the mystery element to this and that it uses a bit of the other genres as a adventure element. I enjoyed how great everything worked and left me wanting to read more.

Creative but a bit too scattered for me to really fall into. I love both a dual storyline and a space adventure, but this one felt disjointed and made it hard to connect to the story or characters. Some folks will probably really like this, it just wasn’t for me. Thanks to NetGalley for a chance to read and review this one!

Tim Pratt is one of my top 3 favorite writers of all time, and I love it when he writes about multiverses. Needless to say, this is one of my new favorite books. It's got the mushy love story that I've come to expect from his work, a nasty villain, and lots of complexity in the plot. It's not typical of the kind of thing I'd call "cozy" sci-fi, but it made me feel warm and fuzzy while reading it. Highly recommended, especially if you're a fan of his work.

It's a nice story, made with a lot of imagination. However, I would probably place this book in the YA genre, mostly because of the very informal speech, with a lot of dialogue, slang and sound bites. I found that a bit off-putting, but that is a personal preference. I also found it a bit repetitive at times, especially when it came to questions about how things worked in the other worlds.

I would have liked to have known Tamsin a bit better before she became a "villain", because she starts out as a regular person (or so you think) and then starts making these very radical decisions which are a bit startling without some context. On the other hand, Glenn and Vivy had SO much backstory that it became a bit dull for me until things actually started happening. Perhaps it would have been more interesting to create some mystery and suspicious behaviour and then gradually build up to the big reveal?

The best stories often "show, don't tell", and this book is heavy on the telling. And most of the telling feels bland, superficial and quick.

However, it is a fun story. I also enjoyed the inclusion of kink positivity, pansexuality and gender noncomformity. Eddie was an absolute pleasure. I just wish things weren't always so easy for the main characters... Especially for Eddie and Vivy, with their superior tech and nonchalant behaviour.

Some things were a bit on the nose, but overall it was a fun read. Not really my cup of tea, writing wise, but I can't say I didn't enjoy it either. I just wish everything was fleshed out a bit better. This was a story with enough material for more books, if done right.

Another immensely readable and fun adventure from Tim Pratt. Pratt likes to write about multiple dimensions and this snappy book follows two connected characters - Glenn and Tamsin - through individual stories that finally intersect for a prolonged, bang up conclusion in a universe around the block from ours. Don’t expect meaningful science; expect interesting and relatable characters - even the sociopathic villain - dealing with real world and extra worldly problems. All ends well, so despite a high body count it is a feel-good book, as well. If you are sensitive about diverse sexuality, that is a feature of the book that may be off-putting. I admit it wasn’t really my cup of tea but Pratt is such a likeable writer that I accepted his premise and rationale. I would read pretty much anything Pratt writes and suggest lots of folks follow my lead.

The Domme from Another Dimension?

I went into this book knowing nothing, other than really enjoying Tim Pratt’s earlier “The Wrong Stars” series. This novel contains and continues two of his short stories, “A Champion of Nigh-Space” and “A Princess of Nigh-Space”, which form the basis of the first few chapters here.

This book feels like “What if Stephen Baxter had written The Long Earth with Douglas Adams rather than Terry Pratchett, but also it was kink positive?”. And that’s a description that will either intrigue you or not. I was certainly not expecting it!

We start on present-day Earth. Glenn and Vivy have been dating for eight months, and are academics in Berkeley, California. Well, Glenn is, at least. Vivy has a suspicious number of pressing family emergencies she needs to go away and deal with. During one of these, Glenn finds himself quite unexpectedly teleported onto the wreckage of a space ship, in orbit around an unfamiliar planet, residing in an entirely different universe. And Vivy is there, dressed in high-tech battle armour, with quite a lot of explaining to do.

On the other side of the story we have Tamsin, also from our Earth, somewhere in the midwest of the US. She’s dealing with the estate of her deceased grandmother, and avoiding a pair of rather pushy gentlemen who are likely responsible for her granny’s recent change in mortality status. So, she calls up her high school ex-boyfriend, Trevor, and she finds out some important details about where she’s really from. Like, how she’s actually the last surviving heir to a powerful ruling family in the universe next door. Or as she puts it, a secret princess from another planet.

So, we have two point-of-view characters discovering the truth about the wider multiverse, and eventually their paths cross.

This is a fun sci-fi romp, if a touch on the short side. I would suggest starting with the short stories which are freely available to read online, and if they are your cup of tea, the book continues in a similar manner, and has a satisfying conclusion while still leaving things open for future tales.

Thanks to Angry Robot for the early review copy.

There is an intersection on my Venn diagram of books between "well written" and "not for me," and this book is in it.

Why did I pick it up? Especially considering that the premise of "relative dies suddenly, young woman goes to deal with the estate and discovers she's Special" is a) not a great premise in itself and b) the basis of many, many badly-written books?

Well, it was because this author has used that exact premise before, and elevated it into something wonderful, namely <i>Heirs of Grace</i>. That book has what I call the Glorious Ending, where someone makes a generous choice out of love that averts what has, up to that point, looked like inevitable tragedy.

The problem is, as I said in my review of his short story collection <i>Hart and Boot and Other Stories</i>, "Tim Pratt is an author of two very different aspects. The aspect I encountered first was in his Marla Mason stories (as T.A. Pratt), in which unpleasant people do unpleasant things to other unpleasant people, with a good deal of meaningless and often kinky sex, graphic violence, and occasional drug use." And that is the Pratt of this book, more so than the other, kinder, more joyful and hopeful Pratt that I was looking for. It isn't all the way up against the stop at the dark end of the spectrum; Glenn, though he clearly has issues, isn't a bad person, and Vivy's main issue is that she doubts everything about herself except her ideology, which is the thing she actually should be doubting (in my opinion), and their relationship, while kinky, is loving, but Tamsin is a straight-up Marla Mason character. She's a Hidden Princess, a type of character I'm particularly allergic to, and the only reason that she might look slightly like possibly a bit of a decent character if you stand a long way away and squint in a bad light is because she spends a lot of time standing next to a psychotic murderer, who is much worse. The murderer who killed her grandmother, who raised her. The murderer who she then hired to get revenge on the people who (she is just now learning) wiped out the rest of her family, who she doesn't remember; why she wants revenge on the people she hasn't met who killed her family members that she didn't know, but not, apparently, on the guy who's right there who killed the one family member she did know, may have something to do with the fact that her revenge would also make her rich and powerful. As far as I read, which is a little over halfway, she doesn't spare a single thought for the collateral damage that would be involved on innocent wage slaves who just happen to be in the way.

She also receives a bit of plot help, in the form of a necklace she accidentally finds that enables her to access her family's hidden caches of weapons and wealth.

Glenn and Tamsin are the two first-person viewpoint characters. Glenn often finds it necessary to talk about his and Vivy's BDSM relationship, which is something that I neither grok nor want to grok, and Tamsin is just stone cold. There's also a highly annoying AI called Eddie, balanced to some degree by a more jovial (but still murderous) AI named Swarm.

It's possible, even likely, that this book also has a Glorious Ending in which Glenn (I would bet) does something generous and loving that averts tragedy, but honestly, I don't want to spend the time with these characters that I would have to go through in order to get to that ending, if indeed it is there.

I received a pre-publication version via Netgalley for review.