When among Crows

One shelf here is kept for the small and concentrated, and When among Crows is its current jewel: Veronica Roth's novella of Slavic folklore loose in modern Chicago, one hundred and sixty-odd pages that the desk read in a sitting and has been quietly recommending as proof that fantasy does not require a trilogy's acreage to cast a full shadow. This is Roth after the franchise years, writing compact and strange and sure, and the desk considers it some of her best work at any length.

The city is Chicago with its seams showing. The creatures of Polish legend crossed the Atlantic with the diaspora and kept house, zmory feeding on fear, strzygi on appetite, Baba Jaga presiding somewhere behind a door that moves, and an order of holy knights keeps the old accounts. Into this arrangement walks Dymitr, a young man with a saint's sword hidden in his walking staff and a purpose he holds like a wound: he needs an audience with Baba Jaga herself, and the road to her runs through favours owed to monsters. The first favour introduces the book's true centre — Ala, a zmora afflicted with a curse that is eating her family line, who agrees to guide him in exchange for the cure he claims the witch can grant. Their journey is a single night of Chicago's hidden negotiations, bargains sealed in churches and nightclubs, and the desk will keep folded both what Dymitr carries and what his errand actually costs, noting only that the novella's twist recontextualises its every kindness, and that Roth plays it with the economy of a much older storyteller.

What the desk admires is the density. Guilt, inheritance, and the question of whether atonement can be transacted — the novella runs themes that sprawl elsewhere through the compression of a fable, and the Polish texture is affectionate and specific, from the grammar of the monsters to the pierogi. Pain, in this world, is currency, and the book spends it meaningfully.

Honest notices: content guidance for self-harm adjacency inherent to the magic's cost, handled gravely; the length is a feature and the ending opens a door rather than slamming shut — a sequel now exists. The register is adult, moody, and swift.

Who is this for? Folklore readers, lapsed franchise fans curious what an author sounds like freed, and anyone with one good evening and a taste for owed favours. Pay the toll. It is worth the crossing, and the desk suspects you will be back at the door within the year, asking after the sequel.