Even Though I Knew the End

June 6, 2022
World Fantasy Award winner Polk (The Midnight Bargain) does what they do best with this genre-bending fantasy noir novella that brings lofty magic to a grimy 1940s city and showcases queer love along the way. Ten years earlier, warlock and private investigator Elena Brandt made a deal with the devil, bargaining away her soul to save the most precious thing in the world to her. Now she has only three days left before her deal is up and she goes to Hell. She should be spending that precious time with Edith Jarosky, the love of her life, or Teddy, her estranged brother. Instead, her best client reveals herself to be a demon and makes Elena an offer she can’t refuse: if Elena can track down a serial killer, she can have her soul back and live out her days in comfort with Edith. Simple enough—except the murders are gruesome human sacrifices used to invoke an ancient, evil, and terribly powerful magic. Though readers will wish they had more time to explore this shadowy world, Polk’s focus on character development makes every interaction matter as they craft a layered exploration of love and power with genuine emotional stakes and a soaring, perfectly bittersweet payoff. It’s another winner. Agent: Caitlin McDonald, Donald Maass Literary.

June 1, 2022

In this latest from World Fantasy Award winner Polk, a magical detective who sold her soul to save her brother's life refuses a final assignment before being consigned to hell for eternity, then reconsiders when she's offered the chance to grow old with the woman she loves. Her task: find the White City Vampire, a vicious Chicago killer, in three days. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

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Starred review from September 1, 2022

In Polk's (Soulstar) alternate-history Jazz Age Chicago, where angels live among the godly and demons stalk the streets, Helen Brandt is a woman who sold her soul to save her brother. She has one last chance to get it back and spend the rest of her days with the woman she loves. She thinks her task is to figure out which demon is poaching on another's Chicago turf. But demons lie--and so, as Helen discovers, do angels. This bittersweet urban fantasy romance wraps its tale of love and inevitable loss in a desperate search for a serial killer that begins as a murder mystery and then grows wings--and tentacles. Polk's world, where angels answer the prayers of the faithful while demons prey on the fallen, turns standard concepts of good and evil on their heads as the heroine learns that her world is not what she thought it was. VERDICT Readers who fell into recent Jazz Age urban fantasies such as Desideria Mesa's Bindle Punk Bruja and fans of time-travel or fantasy romances with tragic endings, like Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, will love Polk's latest.--Marlene Harris

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Starred review from August 1, 2022
The 1940s hard-boiled detective story is reimagined with the role of the world-weary PI played by a sapphic magic user whose damned soul is due for collection. Helen Brandt has only three days left on Earth when she's given the chance to regain the soul she bargained away and live a long and happy life with her lover, Edith. All she has to do is track down the White City Vampire, a magical serial killer stalking the streets of Chicago. That shouldn't be a problem for the former rising-star mystic trained by the elite Brotherhood of the Compass, especially with the street smarts Helen picked up as a crime-scene augur after she was cast out of the Brotherhood. But when Helen finds herself caught in a battle between demons and angels with the two people she cares for most in the crossfire, she realizes she might have gotten the raw end of the deal. Combining the sensibilities of Raymond Chandler and Jim Butcher, with an achingly bittersweet tribute to the lesbian underground of the 1940s, this is a must-read for those who like their queer fantasy with a little grit and a lot of soul (pun intended).

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