When Among Crows was one of my most anticipated releases this year as Veronica Roth is an all-time favorite author! I was nearly desperate to get my hands on an ARC, so when I saw it was an option for MacMillan’s Audio Influencer program, it was my number one choice! When Among Crows is a novella about compassion, magic, and found family, and it packs so much into its small format. Of course it takes place in Chicago, but the city is an urban fantasy den where “monsters” and knights war for peace. Dymitr’s pain is pungent on the page, his emotions literally succulent smells to the zmory, stryga, and other creatures around him. Ala and Niko, two of said creatures, are so clearly people too, but the Holy Order has prejudice and hypocrisy at its core. Dymitr’s tenuous allyship with Ala and Niko leads the three on a chase through Chicago for the witch Baba Jaga, and while the book is small, the journey is epic. In less than 36 hours, Dymitr, Ala, and Niko struggle against curses, family, and each other to overcome hate and violence spread down generations and discover the true meaning of humanity and family. As for the narrators, I particularly liked Helen Laser’s voice. I felt it was fitting to have two different male-timbred voices because the forest guardian’s leszy voice brought something other to the sound of his thoughts and dialogue. I honestly didn’t know what to expect from this story going in, but in the end I was left with a feeling of wholeness, of fulfillment, that all the best books give me. Five stars!

Well this took me by surprise. Such a lovely, well-written, well-crafted story that just hit me in the feels in all the right ways. Excellent cast of characters, it's obvious the author loves them in the way she writes them. It's... soft, and beautiful. Definitely worth a re-read one day.

This is a gritty urban fantasy drenched in Slavic mythology; we open with a Leszy and are soon surrounded by Zmory, Banshees and Stryga, all of whom feed on negative human emotions. Our main character Dymitr is a Knight dedicated to the order who hunt these creatures – he has cleaved his soul in two to create a weapon mighty enough to defeat them. But when we meet Dymitr and, through him, the creatures he was created to hunt, we find the story is not quite what we might have expected it to be. This is an exceptionally well executed idea that leaves you both satisfied and desperate for more; each book in the series feels like a chapter from a beloved book. Roth achieves so much in a very short span of pages, from establishing the world to introducing the characters and plonking us in the middle of a wonderfully dysfunctional found family scenario. I was rapt for the entirety of this novella and, upon finishing, promptly went back to the beginning to experience it again. Overall a wonderful book and one that is absolutely worth the read!

At about this time last year I read Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth and absolutely loved it, so was really looking forward to this novella as soon as I saw it on NetGalley… and I wasn’t disappointed, from the very start we were immersed in a magical culture so different from the usual worlds we see portrayed in fantasy and urban fantasy. The first chapter started the story off in such a vivid and fascinating manner I was hooked, then late on I was going to bed to finish a chapter and continue it the next day but just couldn’t put it down! So finished it at 1am, I’ve not done this for a long time. Full of dark stories of blood, revenge, guilt, remorse, ancient hate, and curses all set in modern day Chicago where the various creatures of Slavic mythology have come across running from some of the same things that other waves of immigrants were running from. Finish this with a great tale of found family and an eventual kiss that seals the story. The world building is amazing for such a short work and throws you full blown into the dark underworld that these creatures inhabit and the magic systems which are based on debt and/or blood. My only disappointment is that I had to leave the world so beautifully and carefully described. I’m always a sucker for stories with a depiction of Baba Jaga, and combine this with a quest story was brilliant, the depiction of the leszy at the start of the book was brilliant and this was the introduction to the idea of magical places coming from some form of debt. As I said I just couldn’t put it down until finished and would love this world to be revisited at some point. I received this from NetGalley and Titan Books in exchange for an honest review.

A perfectly crafted novella, full of rich world-building and wonderful characters and an intriguing plot and all accomplished in less than 200 pages. Honestly, I just really loved this story. So much was done in so few pages and it worked so well - I would gladly spend hundreds more pages reading about this trio but I also don't need to because there was nothing lacking in this story. A tale full of found family, curses, slavic folktales and monsters who were never the monster at all. I binged this in an afternoon and it was exactly what I was in the mood for - a modern, urban fantasy inspired by folklore and myth. I've never read any Veronica Roth before (I know, ok) so I wasn't sure what to expect here, but the blurb intrigued me enough to dive in and I'm glad I did.