Small Miracles

Product Information

I admit, Small Miracles was one of the books in our batch that instantly caught my attention. When I reached the “fallen angel” part in the blurb, I was sold. Mentioning angels is a sure way to perk up my attention. I’ve never read Olivia Atwater‘s books before, although I’ve heard a lot about Half a Soul and intended to read it at some point.

I read (or listened to, actually) this as one of the SPFBO8 finalists, and while giving all titles a fair shot, I'm not going to pretend that this one won me over. I thought it was absolutely terrible, but that big caveat is there to say that this is absolutely not to sort of book I would ever read under my own steam (hence no rating), so there's every chance that if you like this sort of thing, it will at least work for you. I fell head over heels for Gadriel, Holly, and the characters in this book. Since for me, every great book begins with great characters and great characterization by the author, I was, pardon the shameless pun, in Heaven here.a b "Acquisition Announcement: Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater". Orbit Books. April 5, 2022. Archived from the original on May 24, 2022 . Retrieved March 2, 2023.

I won’t dwell on the story details. It deliberately seeks out the small pleasures of contemporary life that occur everyday and help you wade through the daily grind. Chocolate being one major example. I had already read and very much enjoyed an earlier self published trilogy by the author (E.g. Half a Soul) which gently satirised Jane Austen/Brontë sister storylines by inserting a slightly harder edge to life in those periods, and with more contrarian characters. Maybe that harder undertone to the plot which I’d liked wasn’t quite as clear here as in that previous trilogy. My only other concern was the use of footnotes, which I’m not a fan of, especially when reading in my preferred ebook format. Fortunately their use wasn’t excessive and I saw why they were used in some instances. The second category of footnotes provide a running score update to quantify Gadriel’s successes and failures in de-miserifying Holly’s excessively virtuous existence. For example “+10 Points of Virtue (Holly Harker): Rescuing a Lost Kitten.” One can’t help feeling that Atwater must have had an excel spreadsheet open alongside the manuscript document as the precise accounting of these numbers is both the substance of Gadriel’s challenge and an important plot-point as the story approaches its denouement.I am currently working on a Victorian faerie tale, however, which I’m very excited about! Now that I’m writing in the Victorian era, I get to explore the gothic genre, which is a bit darker. I still have some whimsy and some humour in the book, but I also get to flavour it more like a ghost story, and add a bit more gallows humour to it. The characters are allowed to be a bit more flawed, and the atmosphere feels more dangerous. This first Victorian faerie tale takes a lot of inspiration from the movie Labyrinth —so if you had a thing for David Bowie in eyeliner taunting the young heroine, this one might be for you. This is a charming little book, impossible to categorise or to predict which way its twisting plot will go. Suffice to say the story often left me bewildered, but never unengaged. Ten Thousand Stitches". Publishers Weekly. May 6, 2022. Archived from the original on March 5, 2023 . Retrieved March 5, 2023. First off I have to say that readers who are a fan of the above genre will like it more than I did.

P.S. There is another SPFBO book in the same genre as Small Miracles that I read and found much more enjoyable and that is Envy by Tim Beeden.If you liked Small Miracles then you should definetely give Envy a go.. Wilson, Nigel Robert (December 1, 2022). "Longshadow by Olivia Atwater". The British Fantasy Society. Archived from the original on March 5, 2023 . Retrieved March 5, 2023. This is a very low stakes, heart warming read. It's at times funny and the characters with their everyday struggles are interesting and likeable. Wilson, Nigel Robert (October 21, 2022). "Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater". The British Fantasy Society. Archived from the original on March 2, 2023 . Retrieved March 2, 2023.

His/Her purview is minor transgressions. He’s/she’s not really evil despite the fallen angel status, but rather mischievous, and his/her agenda is not really sinister. What Gadriel does is prod humans to succumb to minor temptations, and thus achieve overall increased happiness and satisfaction with their lot in life. If Good Omens was a rom-com and put less emphasis on David Tennant and… I mean Aziraphale and Crowley, it would be close to Small Miracles. Or the other way round. I guess one is better than the other? Perhaps? Gaiman and Pratchett vs Olivia Atwater? This was not supposed to be a difficult choice. There are many favourite parts of the book I could list, but one of them is the casual treatment of gender fluidity and queerness. As Steve Jobs would have said, It Just Works; effortless, unforced, and wonderful.

Gadriel, the fallen angel of petty temptations, has a bit of a gambling debt. Fortunately, her angelic bookie is happy to let her pay off her debts by doing what she does best: All Gadriel has to do is tempt miserably sinless mortal Holly Harker to do a few nice things for herself. After a lost bet with Barachiel, Gadriel owes the (still) angelic one favours. In this case Barachiel sets Gadriel to tempt a mortal named Holly Harker into a little bit of sin because This isn’t usually my fantasy stamping ground. I frequently wade through rivers of blood and gore in the company of the most morally corrupt people that fantasy authors can create for me to read. But I have sometimes found that more upbeat reads fill a niche for me and, in general, this story did that.Kudos to how Atwater approaches gender fluidity in the novel! As per many interpretations of Angels from a Christian perspective, which denotes them as not being assigned a gender in the way humans can comprehend. Atwater notes in her work, casually, SPFBO Finalist Interview: Olivia Atwater". fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com. April 6, 2023 . Retrieved September 9, 2023.