Even Though I Knew the End

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Rafael Santandreu El método para vivir sin miedo: Cómo miles de personas han superado la ansiedad, el TOC, la hipocondría y cualquier miedo irracional Even Though I Knew the End is Polk at the height of their considerable powers: romance, enchantment, tragedy, and courage to the bitter end.” —Elizabeth Bear Two men had come around the corner—one tall and broad across the shoulder, the other shorter, standing like a boxer. But were they cops or robbers? At the end of the day, I'm a simple reader. Give me a story that feels like Passing Strange had a baby with Supernatural, make it just the right amount of noir and write it well - and I am one happy little clam.

C. L. Polk turns their considerable powers to a fantastical noir. A magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago’s divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life. This sapphic period piece will dazzle anyone looking for mystery, intrigue, romance, magic, or all of the above. The beginning, however, is a bit of a mystery. Readers meet Helen Brandt in an alley, taking magical photos (despite an uncooperative moon) of a murder scene. Ritual markings fill the walls. Helen wants nothing to do with this case and the other murders related to it. She’d much rather spend time with her sweetheart, Edith because she knows her own time is running out. It turns out that it’s been ten years since she made a bargain with a devil, and her soul’s up for collection very, very soon. But when her client makes her an offer she can’t refuse, dangling her soul like bait on a hook, Helen starts digging into the murders and finds out that she’s in far deeper than she realized. But C.L. Polk subverts the typical tropes by writing a main character who’s not only a woman, but a sapphic woman at that. In everything else, Helen stands by the conventions of the genre—she’s a down-and-out detective who doesn’t get along with law enforcement, she’s as brusque as she is charismatic, and while she might have a rough exterior, she also has a heart of gold. This is a must-read for those who like their queer fantasy with a little grit and a lot of soul (pun intended).” — Booklist, starred review There is so much I loved about this story. The setting—while necessarily lightly sketched in terms of its magical power players—is delightful: a genuinely seedy and noir-ish city that allows the reader to revel in all the hardboiled tropes (speakeasys, underground clubs, sapphic ladies in sharps suits calling each other ‘doll’) while also not diminishing the reality of living in a world that where who you are is illegal. Plus I am always personally here for angels, demons, war in heaven type stuff. It’s such a wonderful fit for noir.

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My heart thumped in my chest like it had to carry the whole band playing in my veins. Ted. My little brother, not so little now, standing right there and—his expression was hewn from ice. I loved that there was a little bit of everything in here: a noir sort of urban fantasy, a sweet because not overdrawn romance, many magical elements and some nice commentary on what has been done to homosexual people, such as conversion therapy (which, in some places, still is done, unfortunately).

The Rebel Accountant Taxtopia: How I Discovered the Injustices, Scams and Guilty Secrets of the Tax Evasion Game Lastly, if you’re an audiobook person, I highly recommend it. Narrator January LaVoy was a delight. She hit every voice, every accent, every kernel of subtext perfectly. Usually I listen to audiobooks while doing other activities, but she made it hard to concentrate on anything else. I took a bit of my eggs like I was thinking about it. "And all I have to do for my soul and a thousand dollars is find the White City Vampire." In 1941, Elena "Helen" Brandt is a private detective and augur in Chicago, who agrees to hunt a serial killer even though she knows that she will die in three days when her decade-old deal with the Devil comes due.What does detract a bit, however, is that Helen’s lover, Edith, is simply too good to be true and that entire love story had a bit of an artificial feel to it. And the possibility of a conflict with her brother Ted is resolved a bit too swiftly and too easily — and Ted was not a well-developed character even in the necessarily short novella setting. Plus, overall noir is not very much my jam, although I tried to get past that. The bittersweet ending fit the overall mood of the story though, so that was well done.

Helen would love to keep the two people she loves most—her estranged younger brother, Ted, and her lover, Edith—out of harm’s way, especially when her case is so very dangerous. But Ted is a member of a magical brotherhood, the same one that expelled Helen when she made her demonic deal, and he’s working the very same case. Edith, despite her dislike of violence, has reasons she can’t stay away from the work, as well. Those connections are another departure from the traditional noir narrative, where the lonely PI ends the story alone and unchanged; here, Helen’s relationships set the stakes of the story, showing us what’s at risk if she fails. And Polk sets up those relationships to hook readers with both the fear that we know how things will turn out, and the hope that we don’t, and that maybe, maybe there’s a happy ending out there for the characters. Blood Magic: The reason why the White City Vampire is called such is because all of their murders have painted the nearby walls in blood to perform a magic ritual to steal the victim's soul. Even Though I Knew the End won the Nebula Award for Best Novella of 2022, [1] and was a finalist for the 2023 World Fantasy Award—Novella, [2] the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novella, [3] and the 2023 Aurora Award for Best Novelette/Novella. [4] Publishers Weekly commended Polk for their "focus on character development [that] makes every interaction matter [in] a layered exploration of love and power with genuine emotional stakes and a soaring, perfectly bittersweet payoff", and judged that "readers will wish they had more time to explore [the world of the story]". [5] Marlowe had been right after all. This was one hell of a job, and I didn’t have time to take it past this consultation. I wished I could have, even though the whole thing screamed peril! Danger! Mortal threat! Awful as it was, it woke my sense of curiosity right up. Geloy Concepcion Things You Wanted to Say But Never Did: A Photographic Journal to Process Your Feelings

Serial Killer: Chicago is being stalked by the "White City Vampire", a killer that has murdered four people by the beginning of the story and literally painted the nearby walls with their victims blood. The killer is the angel Zashiel, who is using their souls to power a ritual in an attempt to return to Heaven. And for a wonder, she did. The silver light dimmed as Luna drifted behind that cloud she’d been flirting with for the last eighteen minutes. Time to step on the juice and get out of here. C. L. Polk is the author of the World Fantasy Award winning novel Witchmark, the first novel of the Kingston Cycle. After leaving high school early, they have worked as a film extra, sold... Read more But this is also a book about sacrifice and love and hope and how those three things can take so many different shapes, yet sometimes they look the very same. I highly recommend this one and pray it will be the first book in a series. A magical detective dives into the affairs of monsters to secure a future with the love of her life…