Wren
Monsters are more often than not one-hundred percent humans, and they don’t even have the excuse of following their nature.
Yay, it’s back to Widdershins! I was worried that this spin-off series won’t live up to its amazing predecessor for me, but fortunately, those fears didn’t come true. I absolutely adored this first installment. I love how it’s both clearly a sequel to the first series and its own thing. The connections between the OG books and this one are clear, but tentative. There are several characters we’re familiar with from the first series, but they never took center stage there. There’s a nicely done small nod at the core group from the first series that explains their absence in the plot and pushes the reader to focus on the new characters. The plot of the series is shaping up to be explicitly overarching, whereas the first one started off as a bunch of loosely connected individual adventures that only gradually began to form a big whole.
My absolute favorite part here is getting to properly hang out in the Ladysmith Museum’s library. The museum has always been something of a home base to the OG characters, with the library and its mysterious workers serving as an increasingly important resource, but all of it remained woefully underexplored. The spin-off fixes that with gusto, not only showing us the library’s inner workings, but also providing some nice forays into the history of the whole establishment. It’s honestly amazing. I can’t wait for more.
The new characters are really fun and promising, and I like all the new sets of dynamics and the big emphasis on kindness. Sebastian and Vesper are both adorable; Vesper’s definitely my favorite because of his backstory and arc; that whole “raised to be a weapon, chooses to be a human, still thinks of himself as a monster” thing he’s got going on is my catnip. Sebastian is the perfect self harbor for him, and the way Sebastian’s family embraces him as well made me tear up in the best way. I particularly adore Bonnie and hope to see lots of her in the following books. She’s the sweetest.
Back to the worldbuilding for a bit—I love all the small changes in how Widdershins functions now, with the increasing awareness of the occult (not that it was ever that well-hidden, but, you know) and how these open secrets are treated. It all makes so much sense after what transpired in the finale of the OG series. I also greatly enjoyed how the author included various real world conspiracy theories, superstitions, myths, etc into the narrative, from the Halley’s Comet as a potential harbinger of doom to things like the Beast of Gevaudan.
Really, genuinely, so glad to be back in this amazing setting and to have a new set of fictional besties to follow on their adventures. Can’t wait for more tentacles and murder books!
Monsters are more often than not one-hundred percent humans, and they don’t even have the excuse of following their nature.
Yay, it’s back to Widdershins! I was worried that this spin-off series won’t live up to its amazing predecessor for me, but fortunately, those fears didn’t come true. I absolutely adored this first installment. I love how it’s both clearly a sequel to the first series and its own thing. The connections between the OG books and this one are clear, but tentative. There are several characters we’re familiar with from the first series, but they never took center stage there. There’s a nicely done small nod at the core group from the first series that explains their absence in the plot and pushes the reader to focus on the new characters. The plot of the series is shaping up to be explicitly overarching, whereas the first one started off as a bunch of loosely connected individual adventures that only gradually began to form a big whole.
My absolute favorite part here is getting to properly hang out in the Ladysmith Museum’s library. The museum has always been something of a home base to the OG characters, with the library and its mysterious workers serving as an increasingly important resource, but all of it remained woefully underexplored. The spin-off fixes that with gusto, not only showing us the library’s inner workings, but also providing some nice forays into the history of the whole establishment. It’s honestly amazing. I can’t wait for more.
The new characters are really fun and promising, and I like all the new sets of dynamics and the big emphasis on kindness. Sebastian and Vesper are both adorable; Vesper’s definitely my favorite because of his backstory and arc; that whole “raised to be a weapon, chooses to be a human, still thinks of himself as a monster” thing he’s got going on is my catnip. Sebastian is the perfect self harbor for him, and the way Sebastian’s family embraces him as well made me tear up in the best way. I particularly adore Bonnie and hope to see lots of her in the following books. She’s the sweetest.
Back to the worldbuilding for a bit—I love all the small changes in how Widdershins functions now, with the increasing awareness of the occult (not that it was ever that well-hidden, but, you know) and how these open secrets are treated. It all makes so much sense after what transpired in the finale of the OG series. I also greatly enjoyed how the author included various real world conspiracy theories, superstitions, myths, etc into the narrative, from the Halley’s Comet as a potential harbinger of doom to things like the Beast of Gevaudan.
Really, genuinely, so glad to be back in this amazing setting and to have a new set of fictional besties to follow on their adventures. Can’t wait for more tentacles and murder books!