A modern folktale set in a dystopian future where outlanders live hard short lives and those in enclaves live long lives resisting change. This story is about change, love, storytelling, and making a difference in your own small way.

With The Knight and the Butcherbird, Alix E Harrow has created an intense post-apocalyptic fantasy world with well developed characters on less than 40 pages. The short story is well rounded and thought provoking. The main message is that change is inevitable or, as they say ‘the wheel is turning’. Multiple references to real, recent events make it relevant to all of us. This is a fascinating story about love, loss, illness and survival.
I really enjoyed the combination of dystopian, fantasy, horror and historical elements with a touch of romance. The writing is perfect and leaves you wanting more. The characters are interesting and authentic.
I would like to thank Netgalley, Amazon Original Stories and the author for the opportunity to read a free advance copy. The above is my own opinion and honest review.

This captivating story unfolds in a post-apocalyptic world haunted by both demons and the past. Harrow masterfully blends sci-fi, dystopian, and fairy tale elements, crafting an immersive world with striking immediacy. Through the storyteller’s desperate struggle to save the one she loves, you can feel the raw emotion and urgency driving the narrative.

The lesson here is I really need to read more novellas/short stories. This was so beautifully written and really felt like a complete story which is sometimes my problem with short stories. I know Harrow is known for her short stories and after reading The Knight and the Butcherbird I can see why. I've never read a dystopian story quite like this but I love the idea of reverting back to the language of knights to describe the task force dedicated to essentially fighting zombies. But what happens when one of the zombies (for lack of a better term) is someone you love? The emphasis here on storytelling and what stories are told was so well done and haunting and I know this story is going to sit with me far longer than the time I took to read it.

I highly recommend this beautiful and haunting short story. I am excited to read other Harrow short stories now!

Thank you very much to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

I will always read something by Alix E. Harrow, and her ability to write well-crafted worlds and evoke feeling in short stories is astounding. The Six Deaths of the Saint is one of my favorite short stories.

The Knight and the Butcherbird didn’t disappoint, highlighting several themes appropriate for our current times: impact of climate, crafting narratives as propaganda, wealth disparity and its effects on communities, and the importance of storytelling to keep history. But it also made one think of the lengths we would go to protect our loved ones and get answers.

I enjoyed the dystopian setting, the prose, the emotion, and the characters. Harrow packs a punch in few pages. I definitely recommend picking this up, and I wish that I could purchase her short stories.

Much thanks for Amazon Original Stories and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

obsessed with the story, obsessed with the writing style, obsessed with the atmospheric setting, excellent! give me 14 of 'em!!!!

This is a wonderful short story. The dystopian setting, with a sort of medieval twist was very interesting, and I was immediately hooked.
The author does a wonderful job depicting the lengths someone will go through to protect the people they love, and how love and grief can change someone.

This story is dark, yet hopeful. I was hooked from the very beginning. My only issue is that it was over before it really began.

"May's transformation struck me suddenly as the lesser one. Would she still know me?"

Alix E. Harrow is a master at short fiction that will hit you like a punch to the gut. This story, which blends a distant—yet entirely plausible—future with themes of the far off past, was filled to the brim with feeling. In a little under 50 pages, Harrow crafted not one but two compelling love stories and brought their arcs to a satisfying—if not bittersweet—conclusion.

Honestly, if I can even become half the writer that Harrow is, I’d consider myself immensely accomplished. I can’t want to get my hands on her next full-length work.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an early copy in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.

Alix E. Harrow is one of my favorite authors. Her novels are great but she does something truly special with her short stories. She packs so much in these stories. This is an absolutely heartbreaking tale of love, grief and even hope. It is truly fascinating how much emotions she fit in under 40 pages.

Thank you to NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This story was a little bit more on the bizarre horror sode of my tastes, but seeing as it’s Alix E. Harrow, still ultimately a hit!

This is a post-apocalyptic story unlike any particular dystopian take I’ve read before: cancer has morphed over time to cause people to shift into what the world has labeled as “demons,” or really, just something that isn’t yet understood. We have a “knight,” who in this time period is more of an assassin demon hunter. He quickly finds himself at odds with our MC, but it turns out they both have something major to hide.

This begs a lot of questions for the reader, and really packs a punch in so few pages. It’s lyrical, evocative, lush in its writing style, and entirely unique. If you can get down with something a little horror and strange in your fantasy, I think you’ll enjoy this!

I really wish this was longer! This has such a great storyline and I would absolutely read more. The premise is super interesting and I loved how Alix depicted demons in this book.

God this woman can write anything!

This was a very interesting and unique post-apocalyptic fantasy by the divine Alix E. Harrow. I have only read her short fiction thus far, but her writing is divine. She can keep me hooked from the first sentence to the last one. Her creativity and ingenuity in the genre are so relevant and intelligent. I loved this story.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world that is also has some reminisces of high fantasy, it tells the story of Shrike, a young girl who has become the Secretary, or storyteller of her village and a knight, Sir John of Cleveland, who has been summoned to rid their community of a demon that has been wreaking havoc on the townspeople. They story was immaculately written and provided such a depth of both character and plot. I don't want to give too much of the plot away because the unfolding of this one adds to the tension. It gave me <i>Antlers</i> vibes, but was less horror and more human. It explores the complicated intersection of love, duty, grief, and change and was done so beautifully. I love how she wove high fantasy with the post-apocalyptic genres seamlessly and on top of that threw in current events that made this story seem extremely relevant today, but also gave its timeline some ambiguity as well.

I need to bump her full length novels on my list because I have really dug her short fiction. Just such an intelligently written and beautiful story that will stick with me for quite awhile.

Short but interesting read. I've had this author on my radar for some time and this gave me a great view into her type of fantasy stories. Definitely allegorical in it's telling, I found it interesting how the author brought this short story to life and had me thinking seriously about how it feels to perhaps have a debilitating disease and how it might FEEL and how one might equate it to the monsters that we grew up fearing as children. I enjoyed this!

I really enjoyed the writing style of this story. Harrow has a talent for atmospheric story-telling, which is portrayed well here. I know in a short story there is only so much character development that can happen, but for the length, I think it was done quite well. I actually would have enjoyed a bit of a longer story, as I wished to learn more about this post apocalyptic world. Overall, would recommend, it was quite enjoyable.

What can I say about this gorgeously haunting short story? Other than that you should absolutely pick it up.

Set in a world that feels like an in-the-future-and-not-so-far-from-our-own, Shrike is her community’s historian and the arrival of a knight whose sole role is the vanquish the demons that terrorize the town sends her life into upheaval – because one of those demons happens to be her wife she’d do anything to protect.

Somehow wholly entrancing in only a smattering of pages, this story has cemented the fact that I will read any and everything that Alix E. Harrow writes. How is it possible to introduce a brand new cast of characters with opposing viewpoints in a world that feels fully-fleshed and gritty and awe-inspiring and then somehow manage to bring it all together and tear my heart apart in only 30ish ebook pages? It shouldn’t be, but it is, and Harrow does it with the most gorgeous purple prose that will cut you to the soul.

What are you waiting for? Just read it.

Content warning: violence, death, body horror.

In post apocalyptic Appalachia, people are changing, and knights from the city come to kill them. But in the town of Iron Hollow, Shrike will do what she must to protect her wife even as she is fully transformed.

I thought it was an interesting, post apocalyptic fairy tale about change and storytelling.

This is a short story, about 30 pages in length. I didn’t know what to expect here, I went in blind, but I was pleasantly surprised! Alix did a remarkable job creating a world that was vivid and understandable in such a short time. The characters were endearing and the story made me emotional. I would love to see this story become a full length novel someday!

I was provided an ARC via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This is a strange little book set in a small Appalachian town, where demons infest the wild lands and knights are summoned to hunt them down. Information is no longer passed down electronically, but via storytellers, the current storyteller is Shrike who knows more about the town's current demon than anyone as it was once her wife May. The knight also knows much about demons but he longs to know the secret of their creation for like Shrike, his wife was also turned into a demon. Shrike is determined to keep May safe and prevent the knight from harming her. He is surprised by the history lesson given by the storyteller, but knowing what he knows about the toxic lands and the science and medicine available in the cities it all makes sense.

I really enjoyed this short story. The author packs alot of information into only about 40 pages. It is rare that I find a short story that feels complete and while the author could probably write and entire novel about this world, I think it is perfect as is. Harrow's work to date has been hit or miss for me, but this was a real hit! I loved the push and pull between Shrike and the Knight, they both have secrets and personal motivations. They both want to protect their loved ones and took their vows seriously. This also has commentary on the environment, technology, healthcare, societal collapse, religion, etc. It certainly made me think.

Alix E. Harrow proves to me once again that she is one of the biggest queen’s in storytelling (queen of the short story) in this deeply riveting and deathly sarcastic short story that focuses on love and the things we are willing to do to protect those who’ve earned it.

Shrike Secretary is harboring a secret - her wife, the person she loves most, has become a demon. Which, without needing much context, is obviously not a good thing. At least not to the people of Iron Hollow who have learned by the Enclave, an uppity up upper class society ruled by a, you guessed it, ruler to do their own version of a Salem witch-hunt on the people in Iron Hollow. Is someone changing how they dress? How they act or just switching up their entire routine? It must mean they are in the beginning changes to becoming a demon and if that’s the case, we must immediately end their life. It doesn’t matter who they are, age, or gender.

A demon is a demon and we gotta kill it.

If the town doesn’t catch the change in time and the infected person completely changes, the Enclave sends in a knight. Enter in Sir John and his very large bird that resembles a falcon (but isn’t). Shirke Secretary must do everything in her power to make sure her wife is safe, because when we love someone, we will do absolutely what we can to protect them.

The storytelling in this novella was absolutely compelling. It had some of the best lines (I particularly highlighted almost every sentence or paragraph on the page) with a subplot of looking into the hierarchy of the upper class and the lower class. It was smart, witty, and carried incredible depth that draws you in and sends you spiraling as you focus on the love of two couples, the lives we live around it, and the choices we make to keep it alive.

Thank you to Netgalley and Amazon Original Stories for this advanced reader copy!

I don’t usually pick up short stories because I love immersing myself in a good long read. But Alix E. Harrow works her special brand of word-magic into a story that seems to compress 1000 pages into a 30 page parable about love, death and memory, about making peace with suffering: ‘Nothing grows on a grave if you’re standing on it.’

The story takes place in a devastated future, 300 years from now. It is a future whose roots we can see in our own time, without need for explanation. A great unknown event has returned the world to a dark age of tribalism. A patchwork of survivor settlements, some slightly better off than others, remains, but all are, in varying degrees, poisoned, and cancer strikes those who do not die of disease or starvation or at the hands of others. The enclaves are also threatened by vicious L monsters’ or ´demons’ who are actually ordinary people, even children, overcome by a mysterious plague. It is a nightmare scenario.

Sir John, the celebrated knightly hero, is clad in armour made of tire treads and bears the marks of vicious battles, including a lost ear. He travels everywhere to kill the monsters, his loyal falcon always with him. Although no one knows, he does it for an unusual and very personal reason. 17 year old Shrike, the only resident of rural Iron Hollow to oppose his demon slaying, does so for a very personal reason. They discover each other’s truth at the end.

Harrow writes with such poetic intensity, drawing on breathtaking metaphors that made me want to write down every one, just for their beauty. This is a very dark story, but a tiny light glimmers through.

My thanks to NetGalley and Amazon Stories for the free ARC and the opportunity to express my views on it.