Even Though I Knew the End

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Another magazine slid into my camera, and I crouched to get the best frame on the markings along the north wall. My heart thumped in my chest like it had to carry the whole band playing in my veins. Ted. My little brother, not so little now, standing right there and—his expression was hewn from ice. Delaney didn’t matter. I was smiling so hard, I could feel the cold on my molars. Ted was here, this week of all weeks. Here, when I thought I’d never see him again. “Teddy. It is you. You transferred out of Ohio? Are you here in Chicago to stay? You’ve got to be an initiate by now; have you earned your third degree?” What does detract a bit, however, is that Helen’s lover, Edith, is simply too good to be true and that entire love story had a bit of an artificial feel to it. And the possibility of a conflict with her brother Ted is resolved a bit too swiftly and too easily — and Ted was not a well-developed character even in the necessarily short novella setting. Plus, overall noir is not very much my jam, although I tried to get past that. The bittersweet ending fit the overall mood of the story though, so that was well done.

Marlowe had been right after all. This was one hell of a job, and I didn’t have time to take it past this consultation. I wished I could have, even though the whole thing screamed peril! Danger! Mortal threat! Awful as it was, it woke my sense of curiosity right up. There is so much I loved about this story. The setting—while necessarily lightly sketched in terms of its magical power players—is delightful: a genuinely seedy and noir-ish city that allows the reader to revel in all the hardboiled tropes (speakeasys, underground clubs, sapphic ladies in sharps suits calling each other ‘doll’) while also not diminishing the reality of living in a world that where who you are is illegal. Plus I am always personally here for angels, demons, war in heaven type stuff. It’s such a wonderful fit for noir. fernandan on Reading The Wheel of Time: Taim Tells Lies and Rand Shares His Plan in Winter’s Heart (Part 3) 5 hours ago C.L. Polk twists the hardboiled detective subgenre into something new and fresh and enticingly queer. …[ Even Though I Knew the End is] a thrilling, charming novella.” — Tor.comGeloy Concepcion Things You Wanted to Say But Never Did: A Photographic Journal to Process Your Feelings But this is also a book about sacrifice and love and hope and how those three things can take so many different shapes, yet sometimes they look the very same. I highly recommend this one and pray it will be the first book in a series. Even Though I Knew the End won the Nebula Award for Best Novella of 2022, [1] and was a finalist for the 2023 World Fantasy Award—Novella, [2] the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novella, [3] and the 2023 Aurora Award for Best Novelette/Novella. [4] Publishers Weekly commended Polk for their "focus on character development [that] makes every interaction matter [in] a layered exploration of love and power with genuine emotional stakes and a soaring, perfectly bittersweet payoff", and judged that "readers will wish they had more time to explore [the world of the story]". [5] It’s paced well, giving just enough of this world without bogging down into unnecessary detail, with very monochrome shrouded-in-cigarette-smoke feel, it reads easily. And even if you can guess where it’s headed pretty early on, it doesn’t detract from overall enjoyment. Serial Killer: Chicago is being stalked by the "White City Vampire", a killer that has murdered four people by the beginning of the story and literally painted the nearby walls with their victims blood. The killer is the angel Zashiel, who is using their souls to power a ritual in an attempt to return to Heaven.

Many thanks to Tor Publishing and Raincoast Books for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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Helen would love to keep the two people she loves most—her estranged younger brother, Ted, and her lover, Edith—out of harm’s way, especially when her case is so very dangerous. But Ted is a member of a magical brotherhood, the same one that expelled Helen when she made her demonic deal, and he’s working the very same case. Edith, despite her dislike of violence, has reasons she can’t stay away from the work, as well. Those connections are another departure from the traditional noir narrative, where the lonely PI ends the story alone and unchanged; here, Helen’s relationships set the stakes of the story, showing us what’s at risk if she fails. And Polk sets up those relationships to hook readers with both the fear that we know how things will turn out, and the hope that we don’t, and that maybe, maybe there’s a happy ending out there for the characters. re-read: I liked this even more the second time. There's so much richness to this novella and when you know the end (lol), you can see how Polk lays the foundation for all the revelations to come. This is an excellent novella. Though I Am an Inept Villainess: Tale of the Butterfly-Rat Body Swap in the Maiden Court (Light Novel) Vol. 2 (Though I Am an Inept Villainess: Tale ... Swap in the Maiden Court (Light Novel)) MARLOWE HAD OFFERED me fifty dollars to stand out here in the freezing Chicago cold and do an augury, and like a damn greedy fool, I’d said yes. I’d computed the ideal time for the operation with Marlowe still on the telephone, flipping between my calculations on scratch paper and an ephemeris. I had to shake a leg to make it to the crime scene during the moon’s Chaldean hour, the best window for divination with the dead. Fifty dollars is a comfortable sum, and I had foolishly believed I could earn it in time to enjoy my last weekend with Edith.

I read this by accident. Or rather, I fully intended to read it, had a little speak at the first chapter and then it was a handful of hours later, I was crying, and I’d finished it. Essentially, the plot to this book is that there is a serial killer who needs stopping, and Helen has a shot at changing her (doomed) future if she catches the killer, plus she really wants to catch the killer anyway, and there are a ton of other things going on that will all make perfect sense if you have ever read a Raymond Chandler novel and are accustomed to mysteries where the mystery is only one part of the larger story. (Confession: I am a big Chandler fan even when the plots don’t make perfect sense.) (FYI – Polk does not suffer from Chandler’s occasional lapses in plot coherence.) (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, google ‘‘The Big Sleep’’ and ‘‘who killed the chauffeur.’’) one of my favorite elements is how historical queer culture is represented in the book. helen and edith frequent a gay bar where they can be together openly, but otherwise they pretend to be close friends only. they also frequent a diner, where they put on fake wedding bands to help secure their ruse as two innocent hetero wives. these are simply the facts of life, their methods of survival. LAST NIGHT AT THE TELEGRAPH CLUB meets season five of Supernatural in this fantastical and sapphic noir. Atmospheric and enthralling, I finished it in one sitting! This is a romance for the ages, and a story I can't wait to read again and again!I hadn’t had a chance to test this spell, but it’s not bad work for a gal who wasn’t supposed to know anything more dangerous than the computation of Chaldean hours and a smattering of astrology.

Noir and fantasy often seem to go together, but those two elements seldom uplift each other quite as well as they do in Even Though I Knew the End” —The Washington Post The flare of pride at my successful spell design dampened as I saw what the enchantment revealed. The crime scene was straight out of a nightmare. Blood painted the walls—not in obscene, frenzied splashes but in the cruel and deliberate lines of magical sigils. They covered the north and south walls, sprawling onto the asphalt to the east and west, and I comprehended some. But the rest? A layered exploration of love and power with genuine emotional stakes and a soaring, perfectly bittersweet payoff. It’s another winner.” — Publishers Weekly The flash of an eight-pointed silver star on the shorter man’s lapel told me who I was dealing with, and I’d be twice damned if I ever showed my belly to the likes of them. I put my hands down. “Evening, gentlemen. Nice night.”

‘Even Though I Knew the End’ published on November 8, 2022

This is a must-read for those who like their queer fantasy with a little grit and a lot of soul (pun intended).” — Booklist, starred review Tordotcom Publishing is thrilled to announce Even Though I Knew the End, a new novella from C.L. Polk! The deal was brokered by Caitlin McDonald at Donald Maass Literary Agency, and is scheduled to publish in Fall 2022. So of course she accepts. Only to discover that there is way more to it than a simple whodunnit and that many forces are involved in the struggle. That wasn’t right. Kelly McIntyre’s spirit should still be linked to her deathplace. A mediocre spiritualist can talk to the dead for three days, no matter where they end up, and I was a little better than that. She ought to be batting that silver weight around like a kitten, falling over herself to tell me what happened to her. But the pendulum hung straight down, unnaturally still, as if no one had died in this alley.