A Night at the King's Inn

The author very graciously sent me a digital copy for my reading pleasure. The cover of this book right off the bat made me want to read it, it's elegant, it's beautiful. If only I had known that it was also very dark! This is a scifi/thriller with twists and turns, and a heist?!

This book is very elegantly written, with flowing prose, beautiful vocabulary, and wonderful imagery. It can be a shock to get into, because most books are not written in this style, but it's very worth it! I will say it took me around 200 pages to get into the story (slightly longer than usual), but after that I was completely hooked and flew through it. It's definitely a slow burn, but it absolutely pays off. 

This story covers perhaps more genres than I've ever seen? And I mean that in a good way, I'm impressed. It's a coming of age story, a trauma story, a science fiction story, a thriller, a heist story, a mystery, a beautifully historical story, and also kind of a horror. Somehow all of this is put into 465 pages and it really works. I mean how do you overcome being whipped 86 years into the past without mixing some craziness in?

There are some great characters here, and they differ greatly. There's the book smart, reclusive protagonist, his adventurous sister, a hygienically-challenged roommate, a bathtub gin guy, and an Ed Gein reminiscent baddie. What more could you ask for? 

If I had to give one criticism, I'd say that at some points, the beautiful vocabulary, which I did love, would kind of bleed into the dialogue of characters that didn't have the believability to talk like that. Not impossible to get passed, but I did notice. 

Absolutely worth a read, and with a cover like that, absolutely worth having on a shelf! I need a physical copy stat.