Hello, everyone! Today I’m reviewing Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead by K. J. Parker, which was published back in January. I’ve been wanting to try Parker’s work for a while now. So, I couldn’t resist snapping up this ARC when it became available. What did I think of my first K. J. Parker book? Read on to find out!

Not even the Church of the Invincible Sun is invincible – and somebody has to do its dirty work. Enter Sister Svangerd and her accompanying priest, both first-rate practitioners. Their mission is simple: to make a meddlesome princess disappear (permanently).

To get to her, they must attend the legendary Ecumenical Council, the once-in-a-century convening of the greatest spiritual minds the world has to offer. But when they arrive, they find instead a den of villainy that would make the most hardened criminal blush.

To complicate matters further, it appears that some people who were definitely grim reapered might be not quite dead after all. What began as a little assassination is about to escalate into a theological debate with terrifying consequences for everyone.

***Thank you to Orbit Books for providing an advanced copy of the book via NetGalley! My review contains my honest thoughts about my reading experience.***

I think whether someone will like Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead will boil down to one thing: the writing. The author’s writing style felt a bit unhinged, almost like a manic, word vomit rant. There were lots of tangents and so many things didn’t make sense until they did. lol. That being said, the writing was also witty and humorous. I laughed out loud quite a bit while reading, but I also found myself losing focus during some of the tangents. So, I’m not quite sure what I think about the author’s style yet. I had fun reading it, but it also felt like way too much at times.

I also need to point out that I was surprised and a bit bummed that Sister Svangerd wasn’t the main character. She was honestly kind of bad ass, but I didn’t feel like I got to know her all that well. The main character, Brother Desiderius, was an atheist priest who loved to read and seemed to attract trouble. I found his thoughts on faith and love to be interesting, and his family history and its impact on the story kept me intrigued. His sarcasm was amusing, and I adored how smitten he was with Sister Svangerd despite eschewing love. Despite the entertaining nature of the characters, they didn’t feel all that deep, and I never connected with them emotionally in any way.

The world-building in Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead was interesting, as well. It seemed like a re-skinned fantasy version of medieval Europe. The empire had fallen and with it lots of information has been lost. RIP to all those books lost to the sands of time. The Church has taken center stage as the force holding all of the different groups together. Most of the story focuses on the politics of the Church and a great deal of theological debate. The ins and outs of it all were surprisingly fun to read, especially with the comical narration of Brother Desiderius.

That brings me to the themes explored in Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead. There were a few of them, but the one explored in the most depth was the nature of good versus evil. The setup of the story and the characters’ actions all led to one question. Can good exist without evil? The implications of the answer for these characters were fun to read, and it all leaned hard into moral relativism. If good and evil are defined by each other and good deeds can lead to evil outcomes and vice versa, do the terms even mean anything at all? The characters grappled with these age-old questions, and I had a good time thinking about it all alongside them.

All in all, Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead was a fairly fun, if slightly manic, time. The writing was A LOT, but it was fun and witty, which mostly made up for the many random tangents. Therefore, I rate the book 3.75 out of 5 stars.

There you have it! My thoughts on Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead by K. J. Parker. I think I’ll probably try some of Parker’s backlist to get a better sense of his style. Do you have any recommendations from his previous work? Let me know down in the comments!