When Among Crows by Veronica Roth
Published: May 14, 2024 by Tor Books
Buy this book: Bookshop.org
Note: Buying this book through the link provides me a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for the support!
Synopsis:
We bear the sword, and we bear the pain of the sword.
Pain is Dymitr’s calling. His family is one in a long line of hunters who sacrifice their souls to slay monsters. Now he’s tasked with a deadly find the legendary witch Baba Jaga. To reach her, Dymitr must ally with the ones he’s sworn to kill.
Pain is Ala’s inheritance. A fear-eating zmora with little left to lose, Ala awaits death from the curse she carries. When Dymitr offers her a cure in exchange for her help, she has no choice but to agree.
Together they must fight against time and the wrath of the Chicago underworld. But Dymitr’s secrets—and his true motives—may be the thing that actually destroys them.
Rating:
Review:
I am a pretty big fan of Veronica Roth. I really loved her Divergent series and wasn’t nearly as disappointed with book three in that series as other people were. I have been wanting to read this one for awhile because it sounded very different from her other work. In the end it was, fine. Which is worse than I expected but still an enjoyable read.
The biggest hurdle that this book had was how short it was. It was a very melancholy story with a lot of people who feel emotions deeply. But the short nature of the book didn’t allow these things to be fully fleshed out. Add in that we had multiple points of view in the book, which means that we only get a surface level introduction to each of the characters. I wanted to sit with these characters and let them explore their emotions and all of the dramatic events happening around them, but we didn’t get that opportunity here.
I was also a big fan of exploring the Polish folklore. Some folklore is overdone in the fiction world, so this was a nice adventure into a folklore that doesn’t get a lot of time to be center stage. It was a lot of fun for that reason.
I didn’t expect a book so short to have a twist ending, but I wasn’t disappointed. The twist was good. The ending was good. It hooked me into reading the next book. Without that ending I think I would have put this down and forgotten that a second book even existed. The premise was a 5 star. The characters were a solid 3.5-4 stars. World building was a 1 star. It was a fun book and it made me interested to see what happens next.