I would like to thank Titan for an advance copy of this collection in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price – £8.99 paperback £6.99 Kindle eBook

New York Times bestseller and Hugo, British Fantasy, Romantic Times, and Eisner award-winning author of the graphic novel Monstress, Marjorie Liu leads you deep into the heart of the tangled woods. In her long-awaited debut collection of dark, lush, and spellbinding short fiction, you will find unexpected detours, dangerous magic, and even more dangerous women.

Briar, bodyguard for a body-stealing sorceress, discovers her love for Rose, whose true soul emerges only once a week. An apprentice witch seeks her freedom through betrayal, the bones of the innocent, and a meticulously plotted spell. In a world powered by crystal skulls, a warrior returns to save China from invasion by her jealous ex. A princess runs away from an arranged marriage, finding family in a strange troupe of traveling actors at the border of the kingdom’s deep, dark woods.

A short review for this collection as unfortunately it didn’t really click with me. I love Liu’s Monstress so was expecting this to be a set of stories I could relate to but unfortunately I found the tales in the majority to have a slow measured style that is not really how I enjoy my short fiction. We get varied tales from a would be super villain with an unfortunate sounding but very familiar name, alternate steampunk magical wars between China and Great Britain over opium; a female bodyguard dealing with a witch inhabiting the body of the woman she loves; and a young witch being very ruthless with her bid for freedom. They’re dark, imaginative but I really struggled to get sucked into the stories. I did find the stories felt very over descriptive which is not my favourite type of prose but not sure why this really lost me. Liu is a very capable writer clearly able to bounce between genres and I’ll definitely sample more of their work I the future but this one for me sadly was a case of not you but me. There are many reviewers loving this so I actually think this may be just the reading mood I was in this week but I would suggest if curious give this a try.