I first heard of Alix Harrow when her short story “A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” was nominated for a Hugo Award. I read it, and I loved it. When her first novel came out, The Ten Thousand Door of January, I read it right away, but was a little disappointed. The book felt disjointed, and I didn’t care for the protagonist or her struggles very much. I felt like the author didn’t successfully make the leap from short story to novel.
I read Ms. Harrow’s two fractured fairytale novelas when they were nominated for the Hugos and I enjoyed them, although they felt a bit glib (I think in part because I’m getting a little tired of the hard-drinking, Devil-May-care protagonist trope and because I’d read other fairytale retellings that lined up with my tastes more).
But OMG Starling House! That book was a massive leveling up - one of the absolute best books I read the year it came out. I loved it so much!!! I remember listening to the audiobook while driving on a foggy fall night and feeling throughly spooked out in the most enjoyable way.
So of course I was excited when the publisher and NetGalley granted me an eARC of a new work by Ms. Harrow. The Everlasting was a book I hadn’t heard much about and didn’t even read a blurb of before I started so I didn’t know what to expect. The beginning made it seem like a fantasy novel but then it became so much more! A story about time travel and national identity and the lies we tell ourselves, I couldn’t stop devouring it because I just had to know what happened next. This book, after Starling House, really cements Alix Harrow as a major talent and a must-read author for me.
