A rural community is being taken over with an epidemic of people becoming demons... and a legendary knight has come into town to rid it of the demons the only person getting in his way is a seveteen year old oral historian who is determined to keep her wife, who has turned into a demon, a secret. Shrike is the oral historian for the small community of Iron Hollow. She has a secret, her wife has become a demon, and when the legendary knight who is a demon hunter comes into town, Shrike will do everything in her powers to keep her wife a secret. Yet the more time Shrike spends observing the knight the more she is beginning to realize he has his own secrets and reasons for hunting demons... and that they might have more in common than they both know. This was an absolutely delightful story, I adored the twist and the ending was just perfection. I have always been a huge fan of Alix E. Harrow's writing and her way of creating such unique fairytales and stories, and the way she weaves in a soft romance is just so well done. Alix is an insta-buy/insta read author for me and I am once again delightfully surprised by how good her newest work is! If you love fairytales with unique love stories, absolutely pick this one up.

Release Date: March 11,2025

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

*Thanks Netgalley and Amazon Original Stories for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

What a fun little read! I was obsessed with the characters and the world building! Alix Harrow comes up with such great ideas and I can’t wait to see what comes next!

Alix E. Harrow is a master at building atmosphere in a short period of time. While the story is short, the world is rich and fleshed out, and the revelations run deep. The style is reminiscent of a fairy tale, with just enough modern references to let the reader know that this is a post-apocalyptic tale of knights and demons, not terribly removed from our own world. A short story with big impact for fans of dystopia, dark fairytales, horror, and fantasy.

Thank you to Amazon and NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review!

In just a few dozen pages, Alix E. Harrow throws you deep into a remote world where humans morph into monsters, hunters become the haunted, and a seventeen-year-old girl dares to defy societal order by defending the demon she loves.

Shrike is a valued part of her community, as the town historian. She's also the one who has most recently seen the demon that is plaguing their town. So when a monster-hunting knight arrives on a mission to kill the demon, everyone points to Shrike as his helper. Shrike, however, has a secret of her own — the demon used to be her wife, May, and she'll do everything she can in order to prevent her death.

This was an immersive little story that blends fantasy, dystopia, and an edge of horror. I find it has stuck with me more than I expected it to. Like all short stories, I found myself wanting more, but I'm impressed with the depth that Harrow was able to achieve within such a short volume. It is beautifully written, with some sentences I had to read twice just to savor their feel on the tongue. Bravo!

Thank you to Amazon Original Stories, NetGalley, and Alix E. Harrow for an advance copy for honest review. 4.5 stars rounding up.

Once upon a time, there was a knight, with his hawk, who wandered a post apocalyptic wasteland killing demons. But what are the demons, and where are they coming from? A small, dying town on the outskirts of the wasteland might have the answers.

Goddamn! I’ve known I’m a fan of Harrow’s work for a while now, but this still completely blew me away. With elements of both Ladyhawke (one of my absolute favorite movies) & Tam Lin, while also managing to be a moving exploration of change for survival and being unable to let go this captured my imagination from page one. And this incorporated such a beautifully lyrical fairy tale feel that I desperately need to listen to this.

For such a short story, I found it completely satisfying, but I would have read a whole series of this.

Thanks to NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for this arc!

A super unique short story from Alix E. Harrow! I enjoyed every second of this and only wish there was more! It's incredible for there to be so much story and emotion packed into such a small package, but it was amazingly done. I have never read an apocalypse story quite like this one!

Look, I'm sorry. I should have been totally sold on Alix Harrow already, I know. I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to come around. But now I'm officially obsessed.

This postapocalyptic fairy tale was everything I was looking for and then some. A rich, fascinating world (without overdone world-building), complex morality and tragedy, gorgeous visuals, and just overall, a fantastic blend of fantasy and horror that scratched my brain in exactly the right way.

That being said, because I gotta do my reading disclaimers: When I say that this is a fairy tale, I really mean it—Harrow really perfectly captures that fairy tale voice. If ya love it, ya love it, but that style isn't for everyone. If you're not sure, go into the story thinking of it as a fairy tale, and I promise, you'll enjoy it so much more!

(If the rest of this review didn't convince you already...there's an Animorphs reference, guys. Ya gotta read any book that has an Animorphs reference.)

((Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free eBook copy of this story! As always, opinions are my own.))

I absolutely loved this. Although it was quite short, the concept and plot was so well executed that I was yearning for more. Honestly love how morally grey the characters in the story particularly were, especially when it comes to their loved ones. I genuinely believe that this would have been an amazing novella or novel if given the time. The concept of the “demons” and the plot twist near the middle was not so much shocking but it was a kind of “tilt-the-head” kind of plot twist that made everything make sense when it comes to the plot of the story. The queer representation was not explicit in the sense that it was the main focus but it was expressed in the way that queer relationships are not seen as this huge thing to talk or reveal for the story. Although something I did find funny, although it is just me is when the story references something that is so in this world, for example COVID that I am kind of taken out of the fantasy kind of element of the story. I would personally recommend this to people just because although it is very short, it had so many good moments.

Harrow’s lyrical writing is on full display with this eerie and dark short story. Her imagery has ramped up and this story is a great display of her skill.

This is a dystopian story, about survival, about history, about the dark lengths love will go to, for both the Knight and the Butcherbird.

I will say, content warning for those who have had cancer or someone close who does. I’m currently going through treatment and I’ll be honest and say the discussion of cancer and its use as a story device this way was not something I was ready to read. Some parts left me uncomfortable to the point it took me 3 days to finish this 36 page short story. I think the heart is there but I was nowhere near far enough in my journey to digest it properly.

I will certainly read more of Harrow’s work and I think the writing will lend itself perfectly to audiobook format.

*I received an eARC from NetGalley & Amazon Original Stories. All opinions are my own*

I'm pretty sure this was the talk Alix E, Harrow had with her editor when pitching the story:
- So, what do you want it to be?
Fantasy? Dystopian? Horror? Romance? Post-punk?
- Yes.
And she managed to fit so much story, worldbuilding and intrigue into such a small amount of pages! Talent definitely shines through.

Alix E. Harrow's writing has never been more haunting.

I say this both with affection and currently in tears over The Knight and the Butcherbird, which admittedly came into my life at an unexpectedly emotionally difficult time for me to be reading it. To say too much about the short story would be to give it away—but it centers on a storyteller, and the knight who comes to her village to kill the demon that used to be her wife.

In such a short bit of prose, Harrow paints a world I would read a dozen stories about the creation of, and a community that is both unique and familiar. She uses small bits of language to masterfully build a fleshed out universe with all sorts of dichotomies—the Kingdom of Cincinatti, for one!— that immediately tell you the sort of story you're reading effortlessly. The depictions of the eldritch horrors in the story were vivid and planted themselves in my brain at stark contrast with the shockingly emotional plot.

Harrow does so much with so little time to make you invested in these characters and the lives they live, and the message the story comes with reads like a classic parable of perseverance and what we'll do for love.

Thank you Netgalley and Alix E. Harrow for providing me with this book!!

I really enjoyed this. The book is an incredibly fast-paced tale of a knight coming to a village to slay the demon lurking there, but with a couple major twists. It’s unexpected and features Harrow’s gorgeous prose and packs an emotional punch for a story only 30 pages long.

The plot follows a storyteller, Shrike, who kept a huge secret from a renowned knight coming to slay a demon that has been terrorizing the town recently.

The author has done such a great job in crafting this exceptional, emotional tale of fantasy, horror, love, grief and tragedy with lush world-building making me feel connected to the characters within just a few pages.

The lyrical writing style delivered this story incredibly well, and the story concludes in a satisfying way.
This may be the first short book that I've felt completely satisfied with, without wishing it were a full-length novel.

This is the first book I’ve read by this author, and I absolutely love it. I will definitely check out the author’s other books in the future!

⚠️ 𝐓𝐖: grief, murder, body horror, death, terminal illness, violence, animal death

Thank you to Amazon Publishing and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed the ride of this one, its perfectly in the Alix E. Harrow vibe, but nothing mind blowing.

This is a really short, short story at just 36 pages. Yet the author manages to capture so much human emotion. At some nonspecific time in the future, when
pollution has gotten so bad that people living in the wilderness between cities have a short life expectancy and die transformed into “demons,” love still blossoms into the world. And sometimes that love is more powerful than all the terrible things that happen to people.

This was a quick read, but it was interesting and entertaining. And the setting was so easy to imagine. The author painted such richness in so few words. The characters were unforgettable and I will be thinking about that ending and what it means for a while.

Thank you to @Netgalley and @amazonpublishing for the chance to review this ARC.

I absolutely loved The Six Deaths of the Saint, so I was very excited to read another short story by Alix E. Harrow - and The Knight and the Butcherbird did not disappoint.

For a short story, this does an amazing job building both the world and the characters, establishing a sense of how the setting works as well as plenty of emotional engagement.

The apocalyptic setting isn't particularly novel, per se, but still fresh enough and executed excellently. I loved the idea of the conclaves, and the secretaries, who are basically storytellers and keepers or lore and knowledge in a world where no technology or reliable storage exists anymore. One of my favourite details was how, this was, popculture still lives on, and how historical or literary records are indistiguishable.

The twist of what the demons are, and what is going on with the knight, were not entirely unexpected, but super fun, and the pacing was excellent. The reveals are staggered together perfectly, and give you just enough emotional investment to really hit you as you read.

I also really loved the feelings of hope and determination this story fills you with, despite the simultaneous feeling of dread and futility of the setting.

I'm not usually a fan of short stories, but this one pushes all the right buttons, and I cannot wait to reread this every few years, knowing it'll hit the same very single time.

Dark, weird, wonderful, and strangely hopeful. This was a tightly paced, well-written story by Alix Harrow to whet the appetite before her lady night novel is out this fall!

Will I read anything by Alix E. Harrow? Yes. Was I sad when this ended even though I went into it knowing it's a short story? Also yes.

This was stunning. How did she fit so much world building into so few pages and somehow still make me care about the characters? Dare I say we need a novel set in this world?

Give us the war between demons and the kings now! Let us see May and our butcherbird leading the charge.

So so so well done.

It's strange how sometimes the shortest stories can leave the biggest impact on your heart. The Knight and the Butcherbird is a spellbinding dystopian short story that weaves a lush picture of love in all its forms, even at the seeming end of the world. Told in a true storyteller fashion, the way that love is described in its most beautiful form to its most painful is absolutely impossible to put down. Alix Harrow shines triumphant in this haunting tale, and I look forward to reading more of their work based on this. Thank you so much to NetGalley and the Publisher for allowing me to read this ARC!

A lady knight (kinda) novelette about a girl trying to save her wife who slowly turns into a chimera demon thing, from the knight come to kill her. Set in a dystopianesque world with people turning into demons due to a cancer.

As always Harrow aced this with her usual punchy writing style!