ARC Book Review: The Witch’s Compendium of Monsters

Foul Days by Genoveva Dimova

Publication Date: June 25, 2024

Summary from NetGalley:

As a witch in the walled city of Chernograd, Kosara has plenty of practice treating lycanthrope bites, bargaining with kikimoras, and slaying bloodsucking upirs. There’s only one monster she can’t defeat: her ex, the Zmey, known as the Tsar of Monsters. She’s defied him one too many times and now he’s hunting her. Betrayed by someone close to her, Kosara’s only choice is to trade her shadow—the source of her powers—for a quick escape.

Unfortunately, Kosara soon develops the deadly sickness that plagues shadowless witches—and only reclaiming her magic can cure her. To find it, she’s forced to team up with a suspiciously honorable detective. Even worse, all the clues point in a single direction: To get her shadow back, Kosara will have to face the Foul Days’ biggest threats without it. And she’s only got twelve days.

But in a city where everyone is out for themselves, who can Kosara trust to assist her in outwitting the biggest monster from her past?

ARC provided by Tor Publishing Group via NetGalley for an honest review.

Confession:

I really enjoyed this debut novel based on slavic folklore. The characters were endearing and fun, there was a lot of snark and humor in a rather dark story, and the plot was very interesting. There were some issues with it, but most of those were minor and didn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the story. I think this will be an author to watch in the future.

Kosara is such a delightful character to spend time with. She is a bit prickly and guarded, but I think that mostly has to do with her hard life. She has a good heart, but her need to prove herself often overshadows this. She also needs a little more confidence in herself and her abilities, but she does begin to see her worth towards the end of the story. She does make decisions that you will wish she hadn’t but she always realizes her mistakes and tries to correct them.

As much as I liked Kosara, I really loved Asen, the do gooder cop she teams up with. He also has a tragic past which he keeps to himself. The two of them make a good team, even when they don’t particularly trust each other. I also really liked the two of them together romantically, although I was very glad that the romance didn’t take over the main story. They are sweet together but they each have so much to over come before that romance can truely blossom.

The monsters were all proper monsters, scary and very terrifying at times. Most of these I hadn’t heard of before. Zmey, the Tsar of monsters, was everyone’s worst nightmare. He is that toxic ex, that continues to be abusive even when he is being charming. Worst yet, he does turn into a real terrifying monster when he is angry. There were some monsters that ended up being somewhat nice and helpful, and of course we have the humans who are at times more monstrous than the monsters.

The plot was well done and fairly original. I really liked the duality of the two cities and how different they were from each other. Kosara losing her shadow and all that that entailed was also a very interesting aspect to the story. The need to want to make things right was also a great storyline. The writing was solid for the most part. Great descriptions of the settings and characters. There were some things that maybe should have been explained earlier than they were and the characters backstories could have been explored a bit more, but overall a very enjoyable read.

I enjoyed this so much that I went to see when the next book was coming out as soon as I was done. I was so happy to see that, Monstrous Nights, is coming out this October, and I have already received the ARC for it. I don’t know if there is a plan for more than two books, but I certainly hope there is. This is a wonderful start, hopefully, to a long series. I highly recommend that you add this one to your TBR and read it as soon as you can get your hands on it.