Five star review, originally posted here on March 23, 2023.
This book was recommended to me by a coworker, which made me instantly skeptical. Most of the time when people recommend a book for me specifically, it totally misses the mark, and I feel bad. The friend described the book as “Jane Austen gets guns and goes to war.” Uh oh. Sounds a lot like other Austen-based spin-offs that people assume I’ll love but always hate, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (the WORST). “No, I don’t think it’s like that,” the friend explained. “It is a bit more serious.” Then he went on to explain that this author usually writes sci-fi and fantasy. I cringed even more. I am not remotely into sci-fi or fantasy. This sounded awful. Then I saw the length. I am a very slow reader, so books take a lot of time for me to finish. “Oh God, I’ll be reading this for forever.” But on the other hand… if done well, it COULD be right up my alley. I figured I would either love it or hate it, probably hate it.
OMG I LOVED IT. Frankly, I feel like I wrote it. Part of me wonders if the author read my books (including the one still in draft mode somehow) and just copied everything out of my brain and put it to page*. I immediately went looking for a sequel and found none. I hadn’t heard of Tchaikovsky (the author) before and was amazed by the sheer volume of books he’s written, but none of them look remotely similar to this one, which is a giant damn shame.
I’m not saying that this is some sort of masterpiece of fine literature that should be placed on every essential novels list next to Steinbeck and Austen. But it was 100% the perfect story for me, and a lovely escape. You have to suspend your disbelief throughout a lot of it (I got annoyed for a moment when they get on a train in what’s supposed to be the 18th century, then I reminded myself that this book also has warlocks so I can probably chill out on the anachronism policing), but that’s fine. This is just good fun. I listened to it nonstop (the audiobook narration was pretty good) in every possible spare moment for a few days and finished in under a week (fast for me).
(*Blatant self-promotion: If you enjoyed this book, check out my significantly-less-professional work on my author page. Sequel to Hope the Little Fox is in the works as we “speak.”)
Helga without the H 