Rating: 4.5⭐️🌈
This is a harrowing excellent short story by Alix Harrow, an author I associate with imaginative, thoughtful fiction.
Set in a dystopian world, hundreds of years after a catastrophic event has permanently changed earth’s environment as well as humans beings themselves, Harrow has intriguingly narrowed down the location to a dying community of outsiders, the Appalachian community of Iron Hollow.
They, like other struggling poor people, live outside the walled compounds of the rich. High in the Mountains, living in the hollers near the poisonous streams and changed vegetation, they live life hard, dying young and often, sometimes from the very monsters emerging from the mountains itself.
Harrow creates, in the richly colored, sometimes horrifying world, a tale of love lost, love deeply mourned, and finally, love changed and found again.
It’s not a romance. Each main character has lost their wives. Both Shrike the Secretary, the young mountain woman and the legendary Knight who’s come to slay the monster.
What follows is an amazing story. One of anger, ruthless determination, dedication and finally, deep love.
I absolutely love that ending.
Highly recommended, both story and author.
Cover design by Tree Abraham Cover illustration by Colin Verdi
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Blurb
In this dystopian fairy tale from the New York Timesbestselling author of Starling House, a small town’s storyteller struggles to protect a local demon from the knight hired to kill it.
Hundreds of years after the end of the world, the Appalachian community of Iron Hollow finds itself beset by demons. Such horrors are common these days in the outlands, where most folks die young—if they don’t turn into monsters first.
When a legendary knight is summoned to hunt down the latest unearthly beast to haunt their woods, the town’s new oral historian, Shrike, has more reason than most to be concerned. Because that demon was her wife. And while Shrike is certain that May still recognizes her—that May is still herself, somewhere beneath it all—she can’t prove it.
Determined to keep May safe, Shrike stalks the knight and his demon-hunting hawk through the recesses of the forest. But as they creep through toxic creeks and overgrown kudzu, Shrike realizes the knight has a secret of his own. And he’ll do anything to protect it.
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 