Wilson, Nigel Robert (November 25, 2022). "Ten Shousand Stitches by Olivia Atwater". The British Fantasy Society. Archived from the original on March 2, 2023 . Retrieved March 5, 2023. The endearing, smart, yet somewhat naive and slightly fumbling and flawed Gadriel was a wonderful main character. Once she finds out she’s out of her depth in provoking Holly to acquiesce to sin, she resorts to something different, but Holly’s intractability also leads to Gadriel and Holly forming a great relationship, as they get to know one another better. What I really like about writing Gadriel is that while she isn’t a bad person, she’s definitely a petty person, in all possible respects. After thousands of years, she doesn’t see the problem with things like casual thievery or causing someone a bad day just because they annoyed her. But at the end of the day, she doesn’t want to hurt people deeply. In fact, she’d really like to see most people happier than they are.

Associating virtue with misery and sin with enjoyment might take old fashioned weight loss messaging a little too far or too simplistically into the moral domain. However, it makes for an interesting set-up as Gadriel finds the simple challenge has some surprising complications. It also means that each chapter opens, like a Bridget Jones diary entry, with a helpful running score of Holly Harker’s cumulative sin metric. (She starts on “-932” sin points – positively brimming with virtue). Gadriel, the fallen angel of petty temptations, is persuaded by her angelic bookie to pay off her gambling debt. No big deal; she has to tempt a sinless mortal, Holly Harker, into sin. Just a little bit, so her cumulative sin metric isn't so low. A piece of chocolate here, a white lie there, done. Only Holly doesn't like chocolate and seems untemptable.Holly is sweet and complex, as is her niece. Though Miss Harker seems predominantly virtuous, there are sorrowful reasons for the path she's on.. and while Ella can be brusque, that comes from a place born of pain too. While the Fantasy-Hive is not participating in this year’s Self-Publishing Fantasy Blog Off (SPFBO) – the eighth such event – we do have some overlap with people who are, which is how I got a recommendation to take a look at Small Miracles, a SPFBO8 finalist chosen by the Queen’s Book Asylum blog.

needn’t feel bad for the chihuahua. Just as God created the platypus out of spare parts, Lucifer created the original chihuahua out of spare spite. There may be many greater evils in this world, but one would be hard-pressed to find a more concentrated form of evil than the average chihuahua.🖊️ I knew I was going to like this, but even I hadn’t anticipated how much. I’ve liked all of Olivia’s books in the past and so I just opened this one up without knowing what the inspiration for the book was. So, this is my 5th book of 2023, and amazingly it only took me 3 days to read. In part because I spent nearly 5 hours on various trains, in part because it's short, and in part because it's a very easy read. And I don't mean that last bit as anything other than a positive.There are numerous witty footnotes spread throughout the book, again like Pratchett, that amusingly prompt the reader to keep their own personal tally of the sin lost or virtue gained on the balance books. I loved this feature of the worldbuilding, and laughed out loud at some of the footnotes. Longshadow". Publishers Weekly. June 3, 2022. Archived from the original on March 5, 2023 . Retrieved March 5, 2023. Anyway, an angel and a fallen angel who are on friendly-ish terms vie gently over the fate of a woman (and later her adopted child) in a comparitatively low stakes (because it involves the happiness of at most a handful of people rather than the fate of thousands), cozy, tale. Let me start by saying I was amused and entertained throughout Small Miracles. The idea of a Fallen Angel of Petty Temptation who fell from grace because of their own gambling problem is quite charming. Gadriel, said fallen angel, is in deep with their bookie, Barachiel, the Angel of Good Fortune.

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,The text is peppered with Pratchett-esque footnotes. These fall into two categories, the first being authorial asides that raise a smile, or an eyebrow or both, for example the one about how Being set in modern-day London, there isn’t much worldbuilding per se, and a lot of that happens in footnotes. Some might find that insufficient or annoying, personally, I enjoyed the added tidbits and religious references. Cozy fantasy, hot cocoa, knit vests. Yes, there are problems that can be blown out of proportion and tipped toward a more cosmic scale, but they can also be resolved through heart-to-hearts and cupcakes.

Olivia Atwater is an author based in Canada. She is best known for her Regency Faerie Tales trilogy, which comprises Half a Soul (2020), Ten Thousand Stitches (2020), and Longshadow (2021). She has also written the fantasy novel Small Miracles (2022), a novella with her husband, and non-fiction works about writing. The plot of the novel appears simple and fun, at first glance. Described as eminently unremarkable and plain-looking, Gadriel, the chocolate-loving, gambling-addicted main character, is the Fallen Angel of Petty Temptations. But he/she has “fallen” more over policy violations than any real horrific sin.

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Can you tell us anything about any upcoming projects? Or can you tell us a few teasers for your sequel? 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. 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. 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. One point of annoyance was the overuse of one phrase - I'll put it in spoilers here so as not to sensitize you to it before you read the book, but come here after and tell me you didn't notice lots of mentions of Holly's cheeks, specifically "the apples of her cheeks" .