The Curator

I really enjoyed Owen King's short story "The Curator" so I was thrilled to see it more fully fleshed out in this offering.

A great mystery story and cats worshipped as gods (as it should be if they could tell you I'm sure), I feel like this book will only get better with rereads, well done Owen King!

This is a long form expansion of the short story "The Curator" by Owen King. A fantastical story of illusion featuring cats worshipped and revered! Set in an unnamed city, we meet Dora, a retired domestic servant who is searching for sign of her brother following his death. She is quick witted and attempts to take over curating a museum where he once worked. Thwarted, she continues to pull at clues, slowly unraveling a conspiracy as well as the end of the world.

If you are a fantasy fan or a cat fan, or both. If you are an Owen King fan, or fan of the Kings plural, if you are looking for your next great trip into an amazing and creative imagination, The Curator is for you!

Excellent world-building and a great storyline. I look forward to more books from this author. It's difficult not to draw comparisons between the author and his father, but hey, greatness is greatness.

The Curator is a creative longer version of Owen King's short story of the same name. The world-building is phenomenal. The premise is clever. You'll never look at your cat the same. Highly recommended!

owen king writing a fantastical horror novel about cats, religion, thieves, and and revolutions was absolutely not on my bingo board. but my god was this fantastic! king perfectly blends a fanatical conspiracy with eerie worldbuilding and it’s so compelling. dora is such an awesome main character and i didn’t feel bored once within the 450+ pages. anyone that was a fan of sleeping beauties and double feature is sure to like this one!

What a vivid, magical, lovely and FANTASTICAL book. Superb, sublime, and really really pretty! Loved this.

For fans of V.E. Schwab and Alexis Schaitkin, The Curator is terrifyingly delicious. Venture into a world full of magic, museums, and godlike kittens -- it will keep you entranced to the very last page.

Owen King's The Curator

I give it 4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️s

Was given a eARC from NetGalley for an honest review!

What do you get when you mix history and fantasy and uprising of never never existed.

Owen King's The Curator is full of the weird and the unexplained.
A slight of hand, an upside down cake of feline prowess 🙀
A Bizarro world indeed!!

A woman searches for the Truth and is fearless!
Mystery & Curiosity
Conspiracy and

The Magic unleashes in Kings wonderful prose!

Very different yet ,very nineteenth century appeal and memorable!

Unsettling, but I found it difficult to find a spot to stop for the evening and try to get some sleep.
In ‘The Curator’, the novel’s city was, of course, fictional yet I seemed to take away some of its grime on my hands, odors settling into my clothing. The characters were wretched yet bold, brave but broken, and they often drew my fondness only for their actions to be sometimes questionable.
To summarize the story - power struggles, magic, politics, doomed relationships, a ghost ship, cats, cholera - would seem impossible to this reviewer. I’ve tried to convey an emotionally wrenching dream in which the description of the images and feelings laid out for others seemed silly with the handful of words that I used. To attempt to do so for ‘The Curator’ would fall flat and not do it the service it deserves.
Inventive and imaginative, I would recommend ‘The Curator’ to those who aren’t frightened off by an author who makes ballsy choices.

If you’re looking for a story about a fantastical city, cats doubling as religious figures, and characters leaping off the page and into your reality, refusing to remain merely two-dimensional, this book and all the charm that it entails is for you.

It’s going to take you a minute to get acclimated to the world, to its environment. Don’t get frustrated, and don’t give up. This is a book that’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey. Navigate it slowly; take in the scenery; enjoy the company. Reading this one is a rewarding endeavor. It’s magically delicious, and its literary devices will delight your senses, if you let them.

I absolutely adored every page, every inch of it, and I’m beyond thrilled to share it with everyone. This isn’t simply a book for you to read, it’s a gift to unwrap carefully and treasure always. Books like this one don’t come around every day. Seize this day, and seize the opportunity to place it lovingly upon your shelves. Just the memory of it will bring you joy for years to come.

Enjoy!

Owen King crafts quite the universe. This was a pleasure to enjoy as King gives back story and social elements to this world — and it’s one I would gladly revisit.

"From New York Times bestselling author Owen King comes a Dickensian fantasy of illusion and charm where cats are revered as religious figures, thieves are noble, scholars are revolutionaries, and conjurers are the most wonderful criminals you can imagine.

It begins in an unnamed city nicknamed "the Fairest", it is distinguished by many things from the river fair to the mountains that split the municipality in half; its theaters and many museums; the Morgue Ship; and, like all cities, but maybe especially so, by its essential unmappability.

Dora, a former domestic servant at the university has a secret desire - to find where her brother went after he died, believing that the answer lies within The Museum of Psykical Research, where he worked when Dora was a child. With the city amidst a revolutionary upheaval, where citizens like Robert Barnes, her lover and a student radical, are now in positions of authority, Dora contrives to gain the curatorship of the half-forgotten museum only to find it all but burnt to the ground, with the neighboring museums oddly untouched. Robert offers her one of these, The National Museum of the Worker. However, neither this museum, nor the street it is hidden away on, nor Dora herself, are what they at first appear to be. Set against the backdrop of a nation on the verge of collapse, Dora's search for the truth behind the mystery she's long concealed will unravel a monstrous conspiracy and bring her to the edge of worlds."

Eastern European in scope and mythmaking.

My thanks to both NetGallley and the publisher Scribner for an advanced copy of this fantasy novel about missing relatives, cats, and looking for answers in a city loaded with questions.

Fantasy books don't always need dragons, swords or halflings to work. Some of the best fantasy tales are those that take the familiar and make them slightly different. A little more gaslight, a little more polite in society settings, a different mode of dress, even the importance of cats. Add in unsettling feelings, political disorder, an a mystery of life beyond death, and again cats, one has a very good setting for a fantasy book. Owen King in The Curator has all this and more and has created a city, a time and people trying desperately to get answers for questions that make others uncomfortable, and over them all are the cats.

The tale takes place in a city with out a name, but called "the Fairest" by those who inhabit the city's environs. The city has its charms, beautiful rivers, and ports, morgue ships and many, many museums, some well known, others forgotten on side streets for reasons. The city has also recently been wracked by revolution, and suddenly those who fought so long against those in power, suddenly have the power, which is causing quite a bit of upset and dissent. Into this comes Dora, a retired domestic from the university who is looking for what happened to her brother after his death. Dora starts looking of answers at the Museum of Psykical Research, but finds that has been the one museum that has been burned to the ground, during the change of government. Soon the more that Dora digs the more people around her try to get in her way or stop her from looking for answers for questions that should just stay dead.

The Curator started as a short story and has been expanded on and added to, making the novel almost 600 pages. I have not read the short story, so I am not sure where the changes come in, but enjoyed the book quite a bit. As in a lot of books this length, some cutting could have been done, some of the side quests were a little long, and some dialogue was a little, rough I guess. However the story, the setting and most of the characters, in fact a few of the characters really stand out and I would like to see more about them, are quite interesting. The world is almost like a Dickens story, with the political influence of Kafka tossed in, especially in the revolutionaries. The museum ideas were quite good, and much can be done with that idea, which I am not sure if that was what King was planning, but one can hope. The cats will please a lot of people, and is something that is pretty pivotal to the plot. Getting into the story does take a bit, but once the writing style and the descriptions that King is giving, plus how certain characters interact with each other, readers get more of a sense of what is going on, and will want to know more. Patience is helpful, and worth the journey.

Recommended for fans of fantasy novels that aren't sword but a little bit of sorcery. Readers of V.E. Schwab works or Adrian Tchaikovsky's City of Lost Chances novel, which has a similar vibe and setting. Also readers of Charles Palliser as both books have that city as the star of the book kind of feel.

For now my thoughts are on Goodreads, but when the release date approaches I will post on social media and on Amazon.

Owen King has created such an interesting and fun and scary world in The Curator. Cats, wax figures, interesting characters and a mystery. What more could you ask for?

Dora is searching for where her brother went after his death and along the way meets strange and funny people AND the end of the world.

I really enjoyed learning more about this other world and the mystery of what happened to Ambrose. The world in this story was often times scary and yet I still kind of wanted to be there to see it for myself. Owen did a wonderful job of describing the scenes and the surroundings. You could almost see and smell them for yourself!

I found out this is based on a short story that he’s also written and now I want to go read that as well.

Put this one in a frame to admire! Come visit the other worlds. You won’t be sorry.

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!!

I really wound up loving this. It's bizarre, whimsical, and has cat worship! I do feel like this is the kind of fantasy that half of the readers will not enjoy saying it doesn't make sense, and the other half will enjoy immensely as the treat it is.

Dora is the main character in this story, and really, the heart of this tale. There are many other characters throughout the book that different chapters follow, which, admittedly, was a bit confusing at first. But, my feelings on books like this is to simply go with the flow and trust the author and in this case, that definitely worked out!

There is revolution, a secret society and a whole entire community of people interacting throughout this novel. What made me really fall in love with this was how all these tiny pieces started fitting together at the end to make this quite amazing full picture that really is quite beautiful.

Out March 7, 2023!

There are some disturbing scenes and images, suicide, violence, torture.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for providing an eARC copy of The Curator by Owen King.

There is something about the way that Owen King writes that I love, especially after reading Sleeping Beauties. There is a beautiful twist on the third/second person voicing that draws you in and the wonderful world building makes you feel like you are there. I even more the love the fact that Owen King is expanding his short story and who wouldn't want to be in a world where cats were seen as gods? Dora is also a beautifully written character.

An absolutely brilliant fantasy in a world not so different from ours. But there is another plane of existence that is trying to make its way through. And cats may secretly run the world, or not. Fans of Thomas Pynchon would likely enjoy this book.

I enjoyed this story from Owen King. Great characters, good story line and CATS! Immense talent definitely runs in the King family, but with each a unique style of their own.

This is a long form expansion of the short story "The Curator" by Owen King. A fantastical story of illusion featuring cats worshipped and revered! Set in an unnamed city, we meet Dora, a retired domestic servant who is searching for sign of her brother following his death. She is quick witted and attempts to take over curating a museum where he once worked. Thwarted, she continues to pull at clues, slowly unraveling a conspiracy as well as the end of the world.
Such a treat! Any book that holds cats in such esteem is #1 in my opinion. :)

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for this e-arc.*

This book was bizarre! It was a wild ride and I trusted that the author would weave all of the magic together, and he did. We follow D as she takes the curator position at a weird museum. Characters enter and exit the story along with a long list of cats. King drops leads throughout the novel and the reader must trust that they will make sense by the end! I thoroughly enjoyed this work and hope to see more from the author soon!

The Curator is a fantastical, complex story with an overlay of horror. It is a multiple POV and can be hard to follow at first. I held out hope that all the characters and scenarios would come together and they did. I enjoyed the second half of the book more than the first simply because I was able to understand the connections.

This book is very descriptive and can make you feel like you don’t have the brain capacity to understand it at times. Power through that feeling and you will be thankful you did! The payoff is a story of love, loss, battle and terror. And who doesn’t love a world where cats are beloved and revered?

This review will be posted on my Instagram (link below) as well as Goodreads and Amazon.

Here lies a Victorian city, crawling with divine cats, haunted by ghost ships, & drowning in revolution.
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The city, nicknamed, "The Fairest", is presented through mesmerizing prose - sentences that glide down the avenues of your imagination, spewing syntactic iridescence to & fro. There's a humor, too, that's woven throughout. It's specific, presented with a certain sophistication yet juvenile all the same.
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In the veins of this cityscape, a woman, Dora, seeks answers regarding her brother's mysterious death. Her search for the truth leads her to a curator position at The National Muesum of the Worker, & it's there where this dark, fantastical conspiracy unravels.
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With THE CURATOR, Owen King presents a narrative in pieces. Early on, at times, the book feels disjointed. King relays us with small, unrelated vingettes; he seems distracted from the story's central focus. But these digressions prove to be crucial to the latter half of the novel, giving it more narrative complexity.
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Sure, at nearly 500 pages, perhaps King gets a little TOO lost in the minutiae of his own story, but when the characters are this intriguing, the world is this enveloping, & the atmosphere is this enriching, it's forgivable.
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THE CURATOR is a winding, winding labyrinth, & you'll long to follow the endless spools of twine to their nasty, wondrous, & bitter ends.

I received an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion. Thanks go to NetGalley and Scribner. THE CURATOR is an expansion of the original short story.

Raise your hand if you enjoy "weird fiction"...

Then you're in the right place. The author, Owen King, has created something new that I've never quite seen before. I expect this is one I will read again. This is a little bit fantasy, some horror, thriller, and don't forget the cats. And some history.

This book took a minute for me to get into because I wasn't expecting as much politicking. But "Fairest" is such a strange place—somewhere where anything seems possible. Even cat worship (and if you have a cat, you certainly understand the look of condescension). Certainly it contains conspiracies. Secrets. Murder. But does it hold the answers that Dora seeks about her brother?

The crux of the book for me is the search for truth.
It would be interesting to see what the take-away is the next time I read it.

Part of the delight in this story is in the unexpected.
Is Dora what I expected—not really. Can I tell you why? Absolutely, not.

I recommend going into this book with eyes open to the wonder (and grime) of a new land—to experience it for yourself.

May a cat smile on you.

Happy Reading!

I am so grateful to Scribner and NetGalley for this chance to read and review Owen King's 'The Curator.'

Having only previously read his 'Sleeping Beauties' - written with his father, Stephen King, where you don't really know whose bit is which - I didn't really know what to expect from Owen on a solo basis.

My reaction is that it's one of the most creative and imaginative books I've ever read. I'd only relatively recently finished Stephen King's 'Fairy Tale' and 'The Curator' felt a bit like a companion piece to that both in terms of the setting and in the power of the imagination and creativity behind them.

'The Curator' is set in a weird steampunk-like, Dickensian setting that could be a slightly off-kilter version of 19th century Europe but could be a completely alien place. Different timelines bleed into it in a hands-on way which further confuse the reader (in a good way) as to where or when this is all happening. As well as the 'real-world' settings, the supernatural exists and interacts with the 'real world' and there are plainly alternative dimensions at play. I've seen the words 'world-building' used to describe what's going on here and I'd totally agree with that description. He creates a whole world in toto and we get glimpses into several others - one of which could be 'our' world.

It's a steampunk fantasy, I guess, but it deals with inequality, corruption, idealism, war, social issues, insanity, and more.

There are a handful of key characters with whom we connect and they're all well-fleshed out throughout the novel - both heroes and villains - and they're not spared the realities of those conditions listed above.

Did I mention the cats? There are cats and in acting the way cats act you begin to ask questions about your own cat's activities!

This really was a revelation - bravo, Owen King.

A surprising and fascinating fantasy story. An enchanting fairytale with a historical feel to it. The town nicknamed The Fairest is a place where cats are gods and every that you have known is opposite. An enthralling story, imaginative characters and an alluring plot. A combination of different genres mixed together to make a very entertaining book.
A must read.
Disclaimer: Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for this review copy and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

What a wild and weird romp into the unknown!
I've never read Owen King's work before, and I wonder if I've been missing out! A bizarre look into a parallel world that dissolves into disarray during a political coup - and where unrest and misinformation align, villains come out to play!
When D, a local maid turned rebel member, takes over a museum, she begins the process of cleaning and restoring the exhibits - mostly wax mannequins with tattered clothing and missing eyes. But her interest in the strange, destroyed society next door and the odd man performing his specific skills are going to send her in a spiral of hard questions, terrifying answers, and even stranger associations.
This story is a slow burn story with multiple narrators and and a racing finish! Escape to a scary new existence that you'll be happy to escape after the last chapter!

I just reviewed The Curator by Owen King. #NetGalley