Urban fantasy 1940s detective noir pastiche with a lesbian private eye in a Faustian deal is about as relevant to my interests as you can get. I enjoyUrban fantasy 1940s detective noir pastiche with a lesbian private eye in a Faustian deal is about as relevant to my interests as you can get. I enjoyed Helen’s hard-boiled detective narration, which is particularly strong early on, though some readers with less affection for the genre may be put off by it. It does feel like a bit of an unfair critique to want more from a novella, especially considering all that Polk has accomplished in less than 150 pages, but I would have loved for the characters, plot, and themes to have had more space to breathe in a full-length novel. It’s a surprisingly big story that leaves both the murder mystery and the romance a bit underdeveloped and lacking in tension, though not any less full of yearning and tenderness. I enjoyed the setting, atmosphere, and hints of worldbuilding most of all here, but the prose and Helen kept me reading despite the pacing issues, something I usually have little patience for. I always find novellas hard to review but I think this accomplished what it set out to do. I debated over my rating for a while, but aside from some quibbles (the back half lost my interest when the scope expanded, why did some characters call Helen by another name and why wasn’t this ever explained?) if my biggest criticism is that I wish I had more book to read I can’t help but settle on four stars. ...more
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