She Walks at Night - Seishi Yokomizo // Book Review

 

She Walks at Night
Seishi Yokomizo || Publication Date - 17.03.2026

A family of suspects and a few beheadings - what could go wrong?

Crime | Mystery

A mediocre crime novelist, Kosuke Kindaichi has been roped into the affairs of an aristocratic family known as the Furugami's. For the next few weeks, he would be subjected to the isolation of their estate locked away within mountains and single road access.

Within the same walls, family secrets start to trickle out and one by one victims emerge, beheaded. Fingers are pointed every which way, and as soon as new evidence or conclusions are made, something switches to put a strain on the investigation. All Kosuke wants is to solve the murders before anyone else, including himself, becomes headless. 

However, with a family full of dark secrets such as the Furugami's, sometimes murder is a lot better of an option than telling the truth.

The Review (may contain spoilers)

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me early access to this eARC for an honest review!

What I loved about this novel was the isolation experienced by all the characters. It added a significantly higher stake to the traditional Golden Age murder mystery which was being written. It had all the elements of something you might have read from Agatha Christie. However instead of a genius detective, you had a sub par crime novelist. Coming from the description for this author as being Japan's greatest crime writer, you can definitely see how the elements within the novel work together to create a mystery which was truly satisfying.

My one dislike when it came to the novel as a whole was the translation. I believe this aspect adds a whole different layer of being able to appropriately tell the story true to the authors original manuscript, and also allowing for a lot of the nuances of language to be conveyed to English readers. One example of something which happens often I have highlighted below:

This type of double dialogue happens a lot, and I know in Japanese these 'Umm', 'Ahh' and 'Hmm' verbalizations are a vital part of the spoken language, however, it could be written out when translated to English. Explicitly stating that 'Naoki sighed' would be enough without adding the dialogue translation along with it. Unfortunately it's not a vital part of English dialogue to always be verbalizing these fillers, so having this many through the novel make it obvious that it is a direct translation and a little clunky as a result.

Overall Thoughts

Despite the translation issues I had described above, which likely wouldn't affect someone who isn't familiar with the Japanese language, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Was it my favourite murder mystery? No. Would I still recommend it to those who adore golden age style mysteries? Yes.

It was atmospheric, twisty and the ending had very much surprised me. Not one I saw coming that's for sure. 

Tonight, I Burn - Katherine J. Adams // Book Review

Tonight, I Burn
Katharine J. Adams || Publication Date - 01.11.2023

Some witches move winds, some forge mountains, and others burn. 

Fiction | Fantasy | LGBTQIA+

Penny isn't just a run of the mill witch you read about in fairy tales, she's about to turn 21, and she's about to burn at the stake. Her elder sisters burned too, everyone in her Coven burns. Because they are Thorn Witches, ones with powers to cross the veil from life into death and protect it. Until one night one of her sisters, Ella, goes to patrol death and does not return.

While Ella is seemingly trapped in death, Penny is trying to convince her family and her coven to go in and save her. Unfortunately, a caveat to walking in death is that only one Thorn Witch can be in the veil at any one time. But Penny knows something is wrong, she can see her family acting strangely and she's decided to break the most fundamental rule... she will cross into death to save her sister.

What follows are countless revelations about the world she lives in, the immortal tyrannical ruler who has all covens bound to his servitude, and how Penny discovers who she really is and what she is capable of doing to destroy the suffering of everyone around her.

The Review (May Contain Spoilers)

Off the bat, this book is very descriptive, there's an air of mystery surrounding the complex world that these witches are living in. Especially when it pertains to the library, where there are books which have been restricted by the High Warden and effectively banished. There is a looming gothic presence, which I love, however, I felt the plot a little hard to grasp in the beginning. It seems to jump straight into the plot with not a lot of set up. Granted the plot isn't really that convoluted, but it does raise some questions that I have that I'll point out a little later.

Despite the jumpstart, it is incredibly dark. These witches we are following are Thorn Witches. Their job in this world is literally to die, every night, by burning at the stake and enter through the veil into death. There is a lot of description around death, and dying, and watching others go through this process that it really hammers home the idea that these witches are not to be envied. Their job in death is to patrol the veil to make sure that the souls of recently departed cross the 'Horizon' safely into eternal rest. If they do not, the souls risk twisting and turning into fog-wraiths. These nasties can cross over into Life if the veil is damaged and wreak havoc. 

Here in lies the first of my grievances with this novel. Penny at one of her first passings into the veil draws a sword into the sand, manifests this sword and slays a fog-wraith. Bad ass, good for her. However, no where previously written has she gone to any classes, or been shown training with a sword to kill them. She simply states that killing a fog-wraith was nothing for her with all her training. The only places she has been to in this book up until this point has been the burning chamber, her bedroom, the dining hall and the library... It set the stage for a lot of magic in this book to be spontaneously convenient.

One of my other issues with this book was the characters and their relationships felt very hollow. Penny doesn't seem to have any friends outside of her sisters, and her first relationships outside of her own family appear to be love interests. Unfortunately, I feel the same as I did when I was reading 'Shadow & Bone', that the relationships were only there to be a plot device to drive the narrative forward. There was nothing else about these relationships which felt compelling. Things may develop over the 2nd novel, and I am really hoping they do, because relationships of convenience are not my thing.

Overall Thoughts

I can confidently say this book did nothing new for me in terms of genre or storytelling, but it also did not suck. Katherine put a lot of work into developing a world suppressed by a tyrannical ruler, multiple different types of witches within a compound suppressed by his rule, and each coven being unique and completely different from any other. The richness of the world however, was lost on me. As I had mentioned above, a lot of the magic and characters felt convenient. There was no real development of the world, and instead of seeing a fleshed out magic system explained and then utilized, it was used but never explained.

How do the Thorn witches cross over through the veil? How do they come back into life? How does the Guilding magic actually work? When did Penny learn to fight with a sword? Why can Thorn witches draw swords into the sand in death and then manifest them physically? When did Penny learn to control her magic? These and more questions I do wish were answered in this book, and I hope maybe there will be an explanation in the 2nd.

I would recommend this book to you if you enjoyed 'Shadow & Bone' or 'The Dagger and the Flame'. The narratives are not like each other in the slightest, but have themes of practical uses for magic, faction style divisions between users of magic, and follow one main female protagonist who is trying to discover how to destroy a looming threat over their freedom. Personally I feel that 'The Dagger and the Flame' did these concepts the best, and I would recommend it if you have read this novel and wanted something similar to read in future.