"[4.5/5 stars!] One of my favorite things I’ve picked up this year �� Foul Days is worth a second look!

One of those genre-bending novels, I loved this as both a fantasy and urban fantasy reader. Rich in Slavic folklore, it had an abundance of monsters and great cultural infusion. The marketing was pretty accurate when it advertised “Witcher meets Naomi Novik,�� with a similar moodiness and feel of Novik’s works (especially Spinning Silver) and an loads of dangerous magical creature encounters. I found it wildly entertaining.

The book had great pacing, with plenty of exciting moments but also enough slow stretches to form connections with the characters. The characters! All fun profiles, and the relationships between them were especially well done and realistic �� I actually felt the connections, which doesn’t happen often.

I also thought the staggering of certain reveals was particularly well-paced. There were several times throughout the book where I went, “oooh, okay, one more chapter.�� It made the pages fly by, and had enough substance to the plot to make me feel like I was getting something satisfying. The writing was superb.

Foul Days was oozing with fun-factor. This is one of those books that makes it easy to talk about and recommend. I loved it �� with so many great elements and a good sense of humor, after only one book I’m already convinced Dimova is going to be an auto-buy author for me.

I had the chance to pick up an early copy of the audiobook from Macmillan Audio about halfway through the book, and narrator Zura Johnson was an excellent match for the tone and mood of the story. With her accented delivery, she elevated the text even more, making for an immersive experience. I particularly liked how she performed the dry humor between characters - great back and forth exchanges! I definitely recommend the audiobook route. :)

There honestly wasn’t anything I didn’t like about it. The second half of this duology, Monstrous Nights, comes out October 22, 2024, and you’d better believe I’m already hounding for a copy!

Recommendations: for a fun-filled, culturally-infused, monster-tastic story, look no further! Foul Days was one of the best debus I’ve read in ages. I can’t wait to see what this author has in store for us next!

Thank you to my : Dave, Katrin, Frank, Sonja, Staci, Kat, Betsy, Eliss, Mike, Elizabeth, and Bee! <3

Find me on Booktube at:

I’d like to thank the publicists at TOR for providing me with review and finished copies of Foul Days and Macmillan Audio on Netgalley for the chance to read/listen/review this very exciting new title!

Via The Obsessive Bookseller at

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"Another fantastic entry from the prolific Tchaikovsky. It snuck just under the annual calendar flip to become one of the best reads of 2024. Interestingly, I started this mid-December but paused, feeling a 'too bleak, too current' kind of vibe. When I picked it up on the 30th, I was unable to put it down (this is a trouble I have with kindle books. I approach many of them as novellas and the 'just one more chapter' philosophy results in delayed chaos).

It begins as the narrator, Professor Daghdev, is waking from a cold sleep, the landing pod of convicts hurtling down to a penal outpost on a habitable world. Daghdev has been condemned by the Mandate, an authoritarian-type society that does not tolerate political or cultural dissidence. As an ecologist with an interest in alien biology, he reviews his luck in being sentenced to Kiln, one of only a handful of planets discovered to date that have any semblance of life.

The tone is very much fitting a professor: dry, urbane, an intellectual approach, and a tendency towards emotional distance. I should think this might be the biggest sticking point for many people, but as a long-term academic type, it was very familiar. Actually, I thought it was a great person for a narrator, as he has a strong interest in the planet life and can speculate on some of the xenobiology (as opposed to friend Murderbot, who's analysis is that it either eats humans or doesn't). Tchaikovsky does well with him, and the moments that Daghdev finds his distanced approach failing are all the more impactful.

I have a reservation or two, but I think it deserves a re-read--and a slow one--to chew on those concerns. Roughly, I have two: the narrative structure of the return walk, which in my mind deserved longer, in keeping with the build of the first part and the horror a 'long walk' (waves at Stephen King) deserves. The second is a chance to chew around the xenobiology. I'm very interested to give these things some deeper thought and perhaps do a little research to feel out likelihood.

I've had a sneaking suspicion that Tchaikovsky is influenced by his reading list. In this case, I noted strong Annihilation vibes. Overall, I think of it as a cross between some of his best works, Children of Time and Walking to Aldebaran,  a hefty splash of a more palatable Cage of Souls (which took place in an island prison, at least until the point I quit) and a dash of Doors of Eden (what kind of writer is this, that I can reference such different works by the age of 52? Simply astonishing). Highly recommended for people who might have enjoyed any of those works.

Four and a half symbionts, rounding up."