This is a dream of a book for those who like both short stories and fantasy. Somehow every story drew me in, and I was absorbed by the characters involved. I love the themes of death and life and all of the other things that go with a good fantasy. It’s emotional and fascinating and entertaining from start to finish.

I loved some of the stories and just vibing with some others. Some seemed like just a concept chapter for a full book. I absolutely loved the first story and none of the later ones lived up to that one. I think a lot of these could be full books. Like I said, it seemed like a book full of random ideas that never quite made a full book page count. Some of them it feels like your thrust into the middle of the story. Some make you go "huh?'. It was interesting. Olivie's writing is also interesting sometimes cause she has such a broad vocabulary and some words seem like they're only used because they're more fancy. This is a hard book to rate because everything story was so different. I did see a review on Goodreads of someone who rated each individual story. That might have been a better way to review this book. I'm 50/50 on if I would recommend this book. For short stories, some of them seemed too long. When my kindle says "59 minutes to end of chapter", that's not a short story to me.

Olivie Blake's books are sometimes hit-or-miss for me, and this book of short stories was definitely a hit. My favorite were the ones that were clearly adapted from fairytales. Each one of these stories drew me in, and unlike a lot of anthologies I read, there wasn't a decline in quality from one story to another.

Some of these stories have been previously published, but they were all new to me. This collection is so, so good– I never knew what to expect next and never wanted them to end, even though they broke my heart again and again. Every universe Blake creates is infused with such interesting magical places and beings, and characters who are so intensely relatable they might make you doubt having any original thoughts or emotions. Which can certainly ease the burden of loneliness, the common thread running through this collection.

Familiar stories and legends (such as Frankenstein, Greek mythology, our unfortunate political landscape) are given new life in Blake’s perfect cocktail of morbidity, longing, and morally gray characters you can’t help but be kind of obsessed with.

These were some highlights for me:
-A pair of lovers find themselves in a game of killing each other over and over and over
-Women who are literal nightmares
-Women who relentlessly make space for themselves in worlds that fear/reject them (AKA revenge!! A lot of revenge! So much delicious revenge.)
-(*mild spoiler*) Thelma and Louise-ing out of a religious oligarchy controlled by Jesus Chicken
-The inevitability of love (aw)

In these stories you will find probably the most lonely creatures ever. When they break their curses, find a reason to live, or get super sick revenge, we feel our loneliness easing a bit, too.

Thank you Tor and NetGalley for the eARC!

if there’s one thing olivie blake is gonna do, its write short stories that evoke all of the emotions in me that i’d rather not acknowledge. each story had an element of despair and hopelessness, yet a strand of love pulled the protagonists to the potential beginnings of a better life. so artfully done.

i go into olivie’s books with the expectation that they will be five star reads for me but this was otherworldly.

my absolute favorites were sucker for pain (OMG???? i need more of them IMMEDIATELY!!), the animation games (i love it in fairytales, i love it now), preexisting conditions (nicolibby?! is that you??), how to dispel friends and curse people (so full of love and wonder. so cute), sous vide (you go girl!!), sensual tales for carnal pleasures (again. even better on the second read), and chaos theory (so well done i barely have the words…. the killing of someone you couldve been fated to love but theres such an infinitesimally small likelihood of it working out that youre resigned to killing them for the greater good……… i could read novels upon novels of this)

i realize now that those ^^ are half of the book. that’s how good it is. my absolute favorites that i couldn’t bear to not list are literally half of the stories.

five stars, as if there could be any other option. a gorgeous gorgeous piece of literature.

Januaries:⁣
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Thank you @macmillan.audio #MacAudio2024 and @torbooks for my gifted copies!⁣
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The easiest way to describe Januaries by Olivie Blake as a whole is magical and whimsy. ⁣
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My favorites:⁣
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The Wish Bridge:⁣
What a freaking way to start a short story collection. This was absolutely beautiful and heart wrenching. This made me swoon like OUABH. Truly whimsical for me. ⁣
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Sucker For Pain:⁣
Very Interview with a Vampire. I’ll never skip a vampire or witch story. Not sorry. Loved this one and the finality. ⁣
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How to Dispel Friends and Curse People:⁣
I loved this one so much. Give me all the grumpy/sunshine basically in magical form. Persistent and silly, absolutely adorable. ⁣
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Fates And Consequences: ⁣
I could not stop cackling. Very Masters of Death coded. We get Hades and Persephone, so I was so excited for their little cameo. ⁣
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Sous Vide:⁣
This had me cackling. It was so snippy and I cannot stop giggling. Some gems: “(Her libertine youth, her manic freedom, the restless intellect that had driven her to art and poetry, which was now driving her to poverty and madness, just as it had done to all the artists and poets before.” “So, what do you do with the hungry? Ignore them, if you’re the government.” Audio was perfect and these landed SO WELL. ⁣
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The audio is phenomenal. Full cast and some major big names. They all delivered so well.⁣
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Januaries was such a good read, I can’t recommend it enough! Happy pub day!⁣
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QOTD: What are you reading today?

Someone knew what they were doing releasing this book called Januaries in October. This is an utterly haunting collection of stories. It honestly made me uncomfortable - but in the way reading sometimes ought to.

I think most readers - myself included - naturally look for a pattern in a collection like this. You’ll have to be okay with not finding one here, or, at the very least, with not finding solid ground.

But if I had up pick the thread that seems to run through Januaries’ stories, it’s the feeling of being trapped. In a bridge. In a house of horrors. In a relationship. In the wrong time or place. In the throes of depression.

Blake’s writing is in a league of its own for modern fantasy. I’m not sure that always comes through in these short stories, which are often meandering and colloquial, but there are glimmers of her brand of prose. For this reason, I think fans of Olivie Blake will adore Januaries, and those new to her writing will too. But, obviously, we have to approach short stories with a different set of criteria.

Not many people have done this in the popular fiction/fantasy space. And I think it’s harder to write a short story than a novel.

Did I enjoy this the same way I do a novel? No. But I wasn’t meant to.

Am I still thinking about a couple of these stories weeks later? Absolutely I am.

And that’s the five star energy. You don’t have theories about a work like this. Just good old fashioned interpretation.

As of late, I've been intentionally seeking out short stories and novellas. I don't know why, but that's just how the last couple of months have been. That's probably why it felt like divine intervention for me to learn that one of my favorite authors was publishing a collection of short stories.

Januaries is about so many things that I don't know where to start. It's about love, motherhood, sex, revenge, mortality, mental health, vulnerability, curiosity, magic and/or just plain life! I can't say that all the stories hit the same for me, but I can say with certainty that I enjoyed this wild ride. No matter how funny, gentle, absurd or sinister the tale, I think you can learn quite a bit about yourself just by analyzing which of the pieces caught your attention the most. I know that a few of them will stay with me for a while.

Fazit: 4/5 stars!

Januaries is probably one of the most unique novels I have ever had the pleasure of reading and reviewing. It’s full of fantasy, quirky characters and crazy plots which made it a very distinctive read.

The writing felt poetic and layered with meaning. The short stories pack on a lot of humor but also depth within its words. I could identify myself with a few of the characters Blake gifted us with.

I will say, I do wish some of the stories were a bit longer - a few could use a bit more development and absolutely had the chance of becoming full lenght books. I do also tend to enjoy them more when short stories are interconnected but I really enjoyed how the book was divided by the four seasons.

4.5 stars for this short story anthology! Every story is a gem. Thanks to NetGalley and Tordotcom for this e-arc.*

Thank you so so much to Olivie and Tor for the opportunity to read and review one of my post anticipated releases early!

Januaries is an absolutely stunning anthology of some of Olivie’s finest work. Honestly this woman can do no wrong in my eyes and this is definitely a book I will be revisiting anytime I need a quiet, cozy moment!

If you like:
📖 Short Stories
⏳ Various Times/Vibes of Eras in History Fatured
😡 Fuck the Patriachy Vibes
✨ Magic & Magical Realism
🔭 Sci-Fi Vibes
🥺 All the Emotions
❤️ Power of Love

Read this collection of short stories! I listened via audiobook and the full cast narration for the different stories made me so so so happy!

This was my first by this author, and oh my gosh am I glad it was as I got to have a sampling of her different wring styles all in one go that kept me hooked from the very beginning to the very end!

I truly fell in love with these stories with the section: Spring & the first short story The Wish Bridge & honestly the rest of the spring stories! Then, Winter was such a perfect ending to the short stories with Chaos Theory & A Year in January!

I don’t want to say much, because I could gush so much but in doing so, I think it would take some of the magic away from those that read it, so I’ll just say, enjoy the seasons and year of January because I think it’s one that so many will read and enjoy!

Thank you so much to Tor for my e-ARC & gorgeous gifted finished copy, & to Macmillan Audio for my gifted ALC!

Januaries is a collection of new and iconic short stories and novellas so of course some of them were hit or miss for me. My favorites were definitely 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 & 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘯𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘎𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐠𝐞 drew me in from the start. It’s about a magical bridge that appears every full moon, with a guardian who grants wishes. A wanderer stumbles upon it unprepared and keeps returning. What follows is a blend of magic, miscommunication, unrequited love, and murder. The wanderer’s push for the guardian to make a wish herself added a bittersweet twist.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 is a twisted, obsessive tale of toxic love, murder, and revenge. Think Butcher and Blackbird with eerie reanimations. It’s over-the-top but highly entertaining!

I loved this anthology of short stories from Olivie Blake. It’s always a lot of fun to see authors writing in a different manner than the usual novel form. Short stories can be hard to pull off, but most of these blew me away. I think there is something for everyone in this collection of stories.

The Wish Bridge was such a strong start and one of my favorites from the short story collection. I also really loved Preexisting Condition and Sous Vide. One or two of the stories didn’t work for me, which was okay because I easily got lost in the rest of the stories.

Januaries reminds me of collections of short stories by Harlan Ellison and Wole Talabi that I have read within the last year. All three authors are masters at evoking strong emotions in very few pages of storytelling. I also really loved the artwork at the start of each of the seasons in the book.

The audiobook narrator brought something whimsical to the fantasy storytelling that I loved.

FOUR AND A HALF STARS

Thank you to @torbooks and @macmilla.audio for the ARC and ALC of the book. All thoughts are my own.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this e-arc! 4/5 stars, I love a good collection of short stories!

I find blake's writing beautiful but tedious, especially in her full length novels. I think she tends to have a hard time finding balance between her plot/character driven writing and her more prose-like, philosophical musings - she does both well, but there's too much of both going on and I tend to lose the plot about 70% through her novels because her prose, while beautiful, distracts from my understand of exactly what's going on and I mostly end up slogging through the book to try and finish it. this is why I think short stories are the best medium for enjoying blake's writing - you can only fit so much in a short story due to their very nature, so you get blake's beautiful writing and witty character work without it getting tedious because it's dragging on. short stories are fun too - sometimes, you get a wonderful little story about love and life, and sometimes you get a kick in the teeth, and there's an great variety of both in this collection. no joke, I thought about 'the audit' for like, a whole three hours after I read it. overall, this a really great sampler of blake's writing and if you're interested in any of her other novels, this is a great place to get a hint of whether or not you'll vibe with her writing style.

4.5

I love a good short story collection, and this one did not disappoint! Ranging from magical realism to sci-fi to fantasy, we are treated to stories that include spirits and dream kings and demigods, multiple dimensions and magical bridges and dream worlds, castles and labyrinths and cramped apartments. There are several themes addressed, such as mental health, friendship and relationships, the value of time as compared to money, envy and regret, and a thirst for power.

I loved almost every story in the book, and my four favorites were about a burnt out bridge being with wanderlust who is forced to grant wishes, a multi-dimensional assassin overseeing other versions of herself, a speculative financial audit that examines time and financial stability, and a banished alien (or other being, I’m still not sure) who becomes an extroverted yet anti-social young woman’s roommate through a bizarre Craigslist ad.

If you’re a fan of fantasy and/or speculative short stories, you’ll want to check this one out! Thanks so much to Tor/Forge for the advanced e-book copy!

Olivie Blake can be a hit or miss for me, so I was anticipating this anthology and I have to say I'm no more one way or the other than I was to begin with. I've enjoyed her standalone works, like One For My Enemy and Masters of Death, more than the Atlas Six series, but I have to say I read most of her books just to prove to myself that I can. Her prose can be overly complicated and metaphorical and tbh I don't understand a lot of it, but this short story collection harbored a wide variety of stories that I would recommend, everything from fantastic to multidimensional to a story about one's mental health. They were all honestly pretty solid and very much in line with her other work. If you're unsure about picking up an Olivie Blake book, start with these stories; they'll give you a good idea of her writing style and the types of stories she tells.

Januaries is a collection of short stories and novellas about ‘love, magic, and betrayal’ that ring and resonate as every bit more than the surface of the label: ‘love, magic, and betrayal’.

Not only does this collection explore love from the Aristotelian perspective of the different kinds of love, but it also explores the varying qualities of it, too. It is a harmonious and yet also discordant blend of stories that, for the most part, reassure you that everyone deserves loves, whether they’re an agoraphobe, a leaching vampire with suave rakishness, or even ghosts with unfinished business and pleasure.

Whether your idea of magic is alchemy, the crooked spookiness of witchcraft, the childlike wonder of fairytale castles and princes (which are definitely featured in this collection, and appeal heavily to those who grew up on, and still hinge on the nostalgia of, Howl Pendragon), or even macabre lore of remote villages, where magic is a warning more than invitation, Januaries explores these varieties in a manner that is all-appealing, without compromising the core style Olivie Blake is known for.

As it pertains to betrayal…well, there is no shortage of lovers scorned in this series of stories, I fear (and love). Whether what you’re looking for is a revenge fantasy fulfilled, or a woman exacting her vengeance, you will find it. But beyond the perils and wrath of romantic rejections, this collection also explores the betrayals of women, to other women, on the basis of womanhood, which I appreciated, considering no-one knows a community’s BS better than the community themselves.

If you were to ask me for my standout favourites from Januaries, I would say: How to Dispel Friends and Curse People for its break in format; The Animation Games, for its gleeful and harmless violence (I know what I’m writing), but also this weird little exploration on the violence of ardent love; and To Make a Man, for its fateful twist of an ending, but also, the relationship between Marcelo and Lina.

I picked this ARC up the second I saw it was available to request because I consider Olivie Blake an ‘instant buy author’. For those unfamiliar with the term, simply put, Olivie Blake is an author whose titles will instantly and unquestioningly be added to my cart the second they’re available for pre-order or purchase. This is because the raw and poetic way Olivie Blake constructs her prose. Every paragraph that begins to unravel some truth about humanity inevitably sticks the landing like an anvil on my chest, leaving my soul naked and read. Januaries isn’t an exception when pitted against her previous works. It holds up just as potently, if not, then more concisely on account of the shorter, and punchier, stories.

If you’re an Olivie Blake fan like myself, go forth with the purchase of this collection, and if not, try one of her books to get a better feel for her style. If you find you like it, trying revisiting Januaries!

I always find short story collections hard to rate. On one hand, there are stories in this collection that I absolutely loved, but there were also stories that I ended up skipping after a few pages. Januaries is divided into 4 parts, each one representing a season. Olivie Bake does a fantastic job at representing each season with her stories, with my favorite stories being in Spring and Summer, which rather surprised me since I am normally more of an Autumn/Winter person. I think that over all my favorite stories were The Animation Game, The Wish Bridge, and The Audit . I enjoyed each story for dramatically different reasons. I loved the vengeful love/hate relationship in The Animation Game, and the wanderlust of The WIsh Bridge, and The Audit felt all too real and hit a little close to home if I am being honest. If your a fan of Olivie Blake or just someone looking for a way to assuage a broken heart or perhaps need to be reminded that love and happiness can arrive in your life in a multitude of unexpected ways, then Januaries is the short story collection for you. Thank you to Netgalley and Tor for providing me with an early copy!

This is such an interesting collection of short stories ranging from the lovely The Wish Bridge to the down right unhinged Monsterlove. Each story has its own fantastical elements and its own fable like story line of sorts. I liked that the stories were split into 4 sections divided by seasons. And that the tones of the stories decently matched the season they were in. Some of my Absolute favorites were The Wishing Bridge, To Make a Man, Sucker for Pain, The Animations Games, and Chaos Theory.
Overall this is one of my favorite short story collections thus far that I have come across.