In a lot of ways, “The Bone Witch” reminded me of traditional geisha or geji culture, but with magic. Tea lives in a world where witches do more than just practice their rune-based magic—they are also entertainers and performers with elaborate clothing that signifies their personality and accomplishments. The traditional witch’s presence is highly sought after in tea houses and parties and expected to entertain their guests all for a fee. That’s on top of their elemental magic which they use to heal or serve as body guards. Except bone witches, who are a type of necromancer and who slowly drain themselves to nothing to put down terrible monsters that rise from the dead every so often. They are revered and feared and generally not liked because of their relationship to the Dark, and our main character Tea just happens to be one of the most powerful in the nation. Except you are mostly told that, and rarely see it until the very end.

Harrow does a lovely job making the actual house that is Starling House become a living, breathing entity that seems to care for the unwanted things in Eden, like Opal and Arthur. Coiled up within the house is a mystery as to who the Starling’s are, and why they are so steadfast on never ever letting the coal company, run for generations by the Gravely family, have access to their land. But loneliness is an insatiable beast of its own, and when two lonely young adults find themselves in the same orbit, one small act of kindness unleashes the very thing the Wardens of Starling House have been tasked with keeping at bay for generations.

I love a good family mystery that spans generations. Throw in the creepy, small-town vibes where everyone knows each other and keeps mum on the darker aspects of this small town locked in time, and you already have the makings of a very spooky, and atmospheric thriller. But then add some ghosts and unsolved murders on top of that? Perfection. Or, mostly perfection. In “The Sun Down Motel” the story goes between a flashback and flashforward narrative between Carly (the present) and Vivian (the past) to uncover the spooky goings on of Fell, New York, and the Sun Down Motel as a whole. Both Viv and Carly have fairly tragic lives, but the one thing Carly clings too after the loss of her mother, is finding out what happened to her aunt who disappeared in 1982. While, Vivian, desperate to find herself after her parents’ divorce, lands in Fell where she immediately gets sucked into the mystery of several murdered women, and the run-down motel she works at connection to all the dead girls.

This dystopian, post-apocalyptic version of Portland takes an interesting look at the soul and necromancers. In this world, the United States has split into individual city districts, each with their own governing body and with none really seeming to get along. How we got here isn’t really explained, but it’s hinted that it was a nuclear disaster of some sort as the world is plagued by mutants lurking outside of the city’s protective walls. With so much death so readily available, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to harness the soul’s energy before the raven’s (think of them as reapers) have a chance to move that soul and their energy into the afterlife. Enter Nyle: a raven drawn to Portland’s dead problem. An overabundance of fate, or coincidence, brings Nyle immediately to Cait, a necromancer who doesn’t know what she is—she’s not a mutant or genetically modified and yet is plagued by the dead—but she is exactly the person Nyle needs to free the dead from Portland. Much like the trapped souls in Portland, an overabundance of luck plagues “Grave Cold”.

It feels a bit weird to boil down this novella as a sapphic noir style Supernatural but, in a way, it is. You’ve got deals with demons, supernatural detectives and a secret order of human magi trying to keep them all in line. Not to mention the morally grey angels. So, if you’re familiar with Supernatural, you can see why that comes to mind. But where it diverges is in its discussion of queer relationships and the homophobia surrounding Chicago during this time along with the questionable “therapies” used when someone was outed. For such a quick novella, there was a lot to cover, including the bittersweet heartache that comes with unconditional love.