Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor Nightfire, and Netgalley for an e-arc of When the Wolf Comes Home! You can catch this novel when it releases oThank you so much to the publisher, Tor Nightfire, and Netgalley for an e-arc of When the Wolf Comes Home! You can catch this novel when it releases on April 22, 2025.
[4.5 stars]
For those of you with daddy issues, do I have the book for you!
Synopsis: A woman down on her luck and the young boy she comes across one terrible evening flee on a road trip across the country, finding terror and horror in their wake. That is all you need to know! Oh, and there's a huge werewolf. Wolfman? Gigantic beast.
I love a good creature feature, so I was so excited when this novel was released, even though werewolves are often a hard sell for me. And, I'll be honest, I was unsure how I felt about this novel for the first 30% or so of the novel. The plot is propulsive, barely giving the reader time to breathe. It's also a little wacky (when it's not incredibly gory -- the body horror in this is top notch), feeling like a campy 90s horror movie. It didn't feel like what I was promised in the synopsis.
It is, but it's not. There's also a lot of heart here, as our main character, Jessa, attempts to befriend and keep her young charge safe. She's battling more than just a twenty foot werewolf; her father has just died and her acting career has fizzled out, leaving her unsure of what she's even doing. We watch as she's trying to navigate her own fears while quelling the young boy's, and I found her voice to be authentic and realistic. She's kind of a mess, but wouldn't we all be in this situation?
What I love about Cassidy's work is how he manages to balance the moments of gore and horror with a message that resonates with many of us: in this case, it's centered around fear and insecurity and the darkness that terrifies us because it reflects our own faces back at us. This novel, while not perfect (I wish the last 5% had a bit more space to breathe), is great and so fucking gross and a big win for those of us with daddy issues. And by big win, I mean emotionally devastating, of course.
And, I hope Cassidy continues writing such heartfelt afterwords. They're beautiful....more
Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc of this novel!
[4.5 stars]
In A Drop of Corruption, we find Din and Ana in Yarrowdale, whThank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc of this novel!
[4.5 stars]
In A Drop of Corruption, we find Din and Ana in Yarrowdale, where a seemingly impossible crime has occurred. A man has been disappeared, all traces of him vanished, but his room and windows have been locked from the inside with no sign of entry.
That's all you really need to know: Din and Ana are off to solve an impossible crime, and what an impossible crime it is.
Robert Jackson Bennett does such a fantastic job at blending fantasy and mystery, both in the first novel in this series and in this one. Starting with the infamous locked room mystery set up, Jackson Bennett expands out, revealing more of this world than we've previously been introduced to. This is a novel that is rife with politics and mythmaking (particularly of the regal variety), and it is so well done. If I had any critiques, it would be that it's a bit heavy handed, but that did not take away from the story for me.
As with the first novel, I loved Din and Ana here, though I do wish we had learned just a bit more about their characters. I'm hoping as we delve into future books, we get to see more of their personalities outside of their roles in the Iudex.
There's a great secondary cast of characters here. I especially enjoyed Malo, a warden with augmented senses of smell, hearing, etc, who helps them as they unravel what's been happening in Yarrowdale.
As with the first novel, there's a great array of quite nasty body horror as we learn more about the consequences of coming into contact with any part of a leviathan. There's a scene in this that's particularly brutal, but so well done.
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