3,5 stars

"Once was Willem" had an interesting premise, but I didn't really enjoy the writing style and the story didn't really manage to suck me in.

Once Was Willem manages to be fun, heartbreaking, magical, and dark all the same time. I don’t really want to give anything away about the plot so I’ll just say that I loved the various monsters we meet. I also really enjoyed the self-aware ‘I’m telling you a story’ style of narration and I thought that the use of archaic language was brilliant—it’s enough that it firmly sets the story within the medieval period, but not so much that it overwhelms the reader.

Aside from the vividly sketched loveable and loathsome characters and wonderful use of language and narration, the story also gets major points for being unlike anything else I’ve read in recent memory!

What's this? M R Carey's latest is a rewrite of Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven, but with a village threatened by an evil necromancer and the samurai/cowboys replaced by a bunch of fantastical characters. In other hands it could have fallen flat, but in Carey's it just about works. Mainly due to the main character, and narrator, the undead revenant Once Was Willem and the other characters who join him. I could go into details about each of them, but part of the fun of the book is in our first encounter with each of them. Hopefully this won't be the first, and only, encounter we have with 'The Seven'.

Thanks to NetGalley, Orbit and the author for an advance copy.

I thought this was a really solid book and I really liked the dark elements. I'm keen to read Carey's other books now.

I enjoyed this book. It didn't hook me in so thoroughly that I was desperate to return to it, but it was beautifully written and I loved the characters

Part folklore part history part fantasy, a good story with intriguing characters and decent world building, the ending left it open for ore methinks