I was hooked from the beginning!!
It was amazing, addictive, and engaging.
I was instantly sucked in by the atmosphere and writing style.
The characters were all very well developed .
The writing is exceptional and I was hooked after the first sentence.

There is lot of complexity in this short story. I found Harrow’s writing very beautiful, and this tale of loss and longing was really lovely. Thank you to Netgalley and Amazon Original Stories for this ARC

Set in a dystopian post COVID-19 future where society has collapsed and people are turning into demons, this novella packed a lot into less than 50 pages. Shrike was a great protagonist and I loved how Harrow connected all of the dots in the end. The cause of the demons? Brilliant.

While this is a complete story and doesn't feel like it needed more pages, I would have happily read a full size novel set in this world. It's a shame this is an Amazon Original because that will severely limit how many people can read it... and it's a novella that would do well on library shelves.

Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories in exchange for an honest review.

Utterly obsessed with this. Such a beautiful piece of writing. The emotion and depth and character creation in 30 pages was incredible. I was sad that i cant dive more into this world!!! i adore a queer story told so amazingly and the detail of the demons and this mix of old and new/future world was addictive. I would have read a thousand more pages of these characters. Stunning book. Horrifying, queer and delicious

I am a big fan of Alix E. Harrow! I have loved the author’s last three books! Granted, this is a novella, but it still counts. Since this is a novella, I’m keeping this short and sweet. All you really need to know is that you need to read this!

I think Harrow did an amazing job getting her points across with a short amount of pages. From the very beginning, I was into it. It’s a love story and how love endures. It’s also heartbreaking when everything comes to light. Harrow blends different periods flawlessly. I thought we were in medieval times with the knight and nods to an apocalyptic future. It’s thought-provoking, which I was not expecting! I thought this would be a cute little fantasy story, but it’s so much more than that.

I highly recommend this little novella! It has a lot to offer and think about. I am such a fan of Harrow’s work and can’t wait to see what she comes out with next!!

Thank you to Amazon Original Stories and Netgalley for an e-arc. All thoughts and opinions are my own!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book may have been short, but it was beautiful and haunting! I am shocked by how much I loved this book and by how gorgeous it was. I wish this was a full length book because this world is so intriguing. I loved the apocalyptic world and the idea that demons are not actually monsters, but are what humans change into to adapt to the horrific world they inhabit to survive. This book delivered and I am in love with it!

2.5 stars.

Very interesting premise and would have loved to read this as a full length novel, but the short story just felt like an epic smashed into 36 pages.

Thank you for NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this story - the mix of love story and horror was perfect.

The setting was vivid and the post apocalyptic time frame really set up the story.

I love Alix E. Harrow down, ok? Auto-buy author for me. This story was really cool and I thought fit very well as a short story. As always, it was very different from the other kinds of books out there and I respect it.

This is another masterpiece from Alix E. Harrow! Wonderful short story with surprisingly great character development. This was a dark, weird, wonderful short story!

Alix E. Harrow is a master of short stories, my god. This was amazing, so much detail and depth packed into 32 pages. We got a whole fleshed out world grappling with what grief means and the ramifications of inequality. This is an incredible dystopian short story, and I highly recommend it.

The Knight and the Butcherbird is Alix Harrow's take on a post-apocalyptic fairytale. While it's a quick short read, it stays with you. I like Harrow's approach to fairytales and how they fit so many themes ( love, grief, illness) into a novella. The characters and the story were top-tier, invoked emotions and I remained engaged the entire time.


Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Harrow knows how to write short fiction! The Knight and The Butcherbird is beautifully written and packs a huge punch for less than 40 pages. The characters and the world immerse you immediately into a story that asks how far would you go for someone you love? All I can say is that I can’t wait for Harrow’s next short story!

While fantasy is not usually my jam, I have enjoyed works by this author before and The Knight and the Butcherbird held true to what I like about Alix's works: a unique twist, a story that at its heart is about love, and incredible world building that sucks you right in. This short story captured my interest from the very beginning and I loved the flawed characters we met. I really enjoyed the cautionary tale, that while presented as fantasy has a very real-world moral of the story. I would absolutely read a longer length version of this story to delve more into the characters and the scenarios introduced in this story!

This novella hooked me immediately, no hesitation.
I've been wanting to read Alix E. Harrow for so long and I'm so glad I read this one.
Cannot wait to continue their backlog

Every time I tried to guess whats going on I was happily mistaken
I immediately gravitated to the knight and I needed to know everything about him and his story
For a novella it really pulled at my heart strings and I wish I could go back to the world

Very much recommend

This story was brief but never lacking poignance. I went in not knowing even a smidge of the synopsis and I was captivated immediately. This was the perfecting pacing for a short story, plopping readers into the middle of a rich, apocalyptic world. Exploring heavy themes of grief, this story was tragic and romantic and explored heartache in a way I haven’t seen before. Mourning is a long, slow, confusing, and ever changing process and the way this story presented such was unique and quite moving.

As with any good short story, it could have gone on and on. A beautifully strange and gut wrenching read.

Alix E. Harrow just released a new short story this week: The Knight and the Butcherbird. Set in a post-apocalyptic Appalachian community hundreds of years in the future, it reads like a fairy tale with demons and knights.

Why I Chose This Book:
Though I’ve only read two of her books so far, I’m always excited for more from Alix E. Harrow. The description for this short story sounded intriguing, despite its futuristic, dystopian setting.

What I Liked:
- The writing! Alix E. Harrow consistently has such beautiful and impactful writing. As always, that is on display here.
- Great world-building despite the short format. The author packs a lot into this story, and it feels full enough that it could easily be expanded into a full novel.

What Didn’t Work For Me:
- Futuristic, dystopian setting. This is not a slight towards the author in any way; I just rarely enjoy these kinds of settings. Real life is already stressful enough haha. I like the author’s other works (set in the present or past) and was willing to give this a try, but it’s just not my thing.

Final Thoughts
The Knight and the Butcherbird is a well-crafted short story, and although it’s not my preferred genre, I think it will find the right readers to fully enjoy it. Its stunning prose and thoughtful characterization is enough to make new fans of Alix E. Harrow’s work. While this wasn’t my personal favorite from her, I will still be reading her other novels and short stories.

Wow, this novella blew me away. I've had mixed results with Harrow in the past and the first few pages were sort of hard to get into (after finishing, I went back to the beginning and appreciated it a lot more the second time), but I kept reading, and then I was hooked. I highlighted so many lines throughout the story; the prose was sharp and beautiful, and the themes were timely. And the overall thought I had of this story was how deeply romantic it was, but it was romance told in a complex, haunting way. I really applaud Harrow for this work and am grateful I had the chance to read it.

I am not at all surprised that I ended up loving The Knight and the Butcherbird. Being more familiar with Harrow’s work by now, I knew that she would throw in some twisty elements that, when they click, they click hard and she managed to do it again with this short story. This is an unconventional love story set in a dystopian future where the results of climate change, environmental degradation, illness, corruption, and war have warped the world as we know it and turned it into a bleak and disease-ridden reality. Even in this future, the ugly side of human nature continues to prevail against the weak majority. It was almost terrifying how easy it was to picture this future because of the state of our world and I think that made this an even more impactful read for me.

I don’t want to say anything that will give this story away because it’s obviously *very short* (too short imho but I will probably always say that about Harrow’s stories) but it’s also a story that I think readers should dive into knowing as little as possible. That said, I loved how Harrow took something that the world sees as horrifying and demonic and somehow turned it into this painful yet beautiful moment of transformation. She does a brilliant job of taking the natural process of change and the resilience of humans over time and creates something so poignant that can be interpreted in various ways—which I think also lends even more power to the message of this story. It’s bleak but hopeful and it’s of loss but also of new beginnings. It doesn’t necessarily have to read that way though and it can just as easily be seen as a simple and engaging short story about love and survival set in a dystopian world.

Either way, I think readers who enjoy short stories, dystopian settings, weird love, and portrayals of grief and human nature, will probably find something to enjoy in this story!

Special thanks to the publisher for providing a digital ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 5 stars!

A haunting dystopian fairytale. What it means to love til death do us part. What it means to become a demon.

“Why do people change, Sir John? Because they are cursed, pursued, poisoned, trapped, under siege. Because they have to.”