A quick and interesting read! I love Harrow’s writing and this one was great. I plan to recommend this novella to everyone! Thank you NetGalley for the eARC.

I am not a short story lover. I never feel like a get enough character development or enough time to become immersed in a story but I saw this was by one of new favorite authors and figured I would give it a shot. I am SOO glad that I did. I don't care that this was less than 40 pages, this story packed a punch. It was haunting and atmospheric, even without full back stories of the characters I felt like I knew their stories, their struggles and their hopes. I love the story of demons and demon hunters but with twists.
It was a story that I never really heard before but still almost felt like a dark fairy tale that I knew. I truly fell into the world and was basically on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen. So good and highly recommend. Would be an amazing dark and stormy afternoon read.

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Didn't wow me as much as Alix E. Harrow's first short story but it still was really good. Harrow has an incredible ability to fit twists into less than 30 pages and make you feel connected to characters in barely any time.

It’s so short it almost feels like cheating counting this as a book, but the story left me aching for more. How you can fit so much in so little pages leaves me wondering…hauntingly beautiful!

The Knight and the Butcherbird is a weird little dystopian horror novella. I don‘t know how but Alix E. Harrow managed to create such an immersive and full read in just 36 pages. She is amazing at creating an unsettling atmosphere, both the characters and the world felt so weird and eerie. I can only recommend going into this story blindly, I thoroughly enjoyed getting lost in the atmosphere and puzzling out what is going on in this world.
This is a story about change and love and survival! 4 stars.

Alix Harrow moved up to an autobuy author for me fairly quickly and this book did not let me down. While I'm not a huge fan of short stories, I found these to be absolutely perfect with pacing and length. She truly gives crawling up your spine a whole new meaning!

Harrow instantly draws you into a new world with this short story. A quick but impactful read! I would definitely read something else with these characters if the author ever wanted to do more!

Queer, post-apocalyptic, sometimes funny, and romantic in the most devastating kind of way. And most importantly, despairingly relevant.

4.5 stars
The Knight and the Butcherbird is a dystopian near future short story with fantastical elements that I loved. A knight comes to the Appalachian town of Iron Hollow to kill the demon tormenting their town but runs into the town storyteller who is willing to risk everything to protect said demon. This is a dark & haunting tale with an atmospheric setting I loved. The author's incorporation of modern day elements into the dystopian world she built worked so well for me. She managed to cram a well formed tale into just a few pages of short story. Definitely worth the read!

Excellent! Great world building in such a short piece. It would make a great novel! Combining dystopia and myth, great writing made this story work for me.

"She knew me then, at the beginning of ourselves, and she knew me now, here at the end, when she did not even know herself."

HOW did Alix E. Harrow write such a fantastic, complex story in 36 pages? I am stunned. I am not surprised, though, because she also wrote another one of, if not my actual top favorite, novella ever with The Six Deaths of the Saint. This work is short but something so soul-churning, it's been on my mind since I read it, and I know I will not easily forget it.

The Knight and the Butcherbird is a dark, dystopian fantasy novella that feels like a classic fairytale. This is set in a post-apocalyptic world where knights slay demons that were previously humans, descending into strange creatures that can be feathered or furred and have sharp teeth and claws. In a small town where a demon is lurking, a legendary Knight has been hired to eliminate it--and trailing behind in secret is the local storyteller with her own goals to keep that same demon safe.

What I really appreciate about this story is the exploration of grief in losing people you love so horrifically and how you can fight back for those people and honor them. It is a story of perseverance and loyalty and what lengths we will go to for the people we love. I also loved the slow unveiling of the secrets of the two main characters and their conclusions.

While this is definitely a horror, there are elements of romance and kinship that I really thought was lovely. The ending is just superb. Truly a masterpiece of short fiction. I highly recommend it and cannot wait to see what Harrow writes next. 5 stars!!!

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

Thank you to NetGalley, Amazon Publishing, and Alix E. Harrow for the advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I wasn’t sure what to think going in, because I have tried some of Harrow’s longer works, but I absolutely loved this. There was so much packed into such a short story, that it made it feel like a full length novel. The world building was there, the emotion, the connection to the characters. After such a short amount of time with Shrike and the knight, I felt so much for them. I agonized with them as they made their decisions. It’s a heartbreaking, yet beautiful tale of love and loss.

I definitely need to check out Harrow’s other shorter works.

A very weird—but good—dystopian horror short story. This was my first time reading Alix Harrow, and while it’s only a small sample of her writing, I can see why she’s a genre favorite. The way she wove a complete story—with emotional depth, social commentary, romance, and grief—into just 36 pages is astounding.

Thank you, NetGalley for an advanced ARC of this book

This was a fun quick read about love and what you are willing to do to protect the one you love but also see beyond the monster they have become to still see them, but the world is afaird of these mythical beings forming and a hunter sent to kill them but we find out more about him and why when he asks a certain question he asks it.

Love is something we all cannot fight and when u truly love someone your be willing to do anything.

Really enjoyed this

“You see the pattern, don’t you? That’s the true work of a Secretary, of course: not only to remember the stories but to make sense of them.”

I love stories like this. Stories that are hard and gritty and poetic and beautiful. Normally, novellas are not my jam because they often feel hollow and just shy of satisfying. However, Alix E. Harrow delivers a fully developed world and fully-fleshed characters in fewer pages than essays I wrote in college.
I’m a sucker for apocalyptic worlds, especially those that reference or deify the life that we’re currently living now i.e. the Hulk and Animorphs references. I like finding the little tidbits and deciphering them. The novella was so poetic that I struggled finding the one quote I wanted to include with this review. I think that’s a talent in an of itself, making hard topics beautiful but inaccessible.
If you like love stories that aren’t easy, people surviving in spite of the odds, and little 30ish page novellas, I would absolutely recommend The Knight and the Butcherbird to you.

A warming and clever short story from the ever imaginative and original Alix E Harrow.

This was a charmer, and notably well plotted for something that takes very little time to read. Harrow is so good at playing off of traditional Fantasy tropes and weaving them into something unique and nuanced.

If there’s a bit where this one doesn’t quite get where it needs to it is in the world building, which is of course incredibly difficult to fully realize in a short story. Fantasy in particular seems to not lend itself well to shorter format prose for exactly this reason, save for stories set in a world that readers are already familiar with from previous full length novels.

Still, Harrow gives us a good enough idea of where we are for this tale, and gets surprisingly good character depth and nuance for something that had to be contained in so few pages.

A hauntingly romantic futuristic tale exploring power, healthcare, authority, love, devotion, justice, and fairness. In 36 pages!

I am a big fan of Alix Harrow and so it was with joy and interest that I read this short story. Despite being short, it packs a full punch and even though I hope it could be expanded into a full novel, since I really want to know more about the apocalypse that made such drastic changes to the land, plus how and why the demons are happening and how it may be the next stage in evolution to keep the human race alive in such a poison filled radioactive place. That being said, it was a great little story that captured my interest immediately and kept it. I will happily read anything this author writes!

Thank you to Amazon via Netgalley for the eARC of this story! I love Alix E. Harrow's writing, and this story was no exception! It is a poignant look at love and loss and how we cope with change. I absolutely loved it, and I can see myself rereading it again and again.