Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey is so so good. I rated it 5 stars because I couldn't give it more. For me it's 6 stars! Loved this plot and characters sooo much! I totally recommend everyone to read this book as fast as they can.

“Then think of how the world changes, when it passes out of summer into winter. Or think of worms and caterpils, how they knit themselves a velvet coat and come out of it with wings on their backs. You cannot say change is unnatural when all of nature bends to it."

The perfect dark medieval fantasy. I loved this book from the first page—the language, the dry humour and the intricate detail all created an immersive, compelling read.

Our narrator (the titular ‘once was Willem’) claims to be a monster, and perhaps he is. But I could not help but find him sort of adorable. I love a non-human character who is trying to work out how to fit into the world (veryyy different books but Murderbot does come to mind!). He wasn’t present for all the action of the story, but his chapters were always my favourites.

The setting of the village of Cosham was vivid and wonderfully detailed—inserting small asides about different residents of the village gave an expansive feel to the world.

For me, the heart of the book was the relationships between people—the way they change each other, for better or for worse; the ties they owe each other, even when they have done wrong or been wronged in the past. It’s about complicated communities and children doing their best to improve worlds damaged by adults. I was not necessarily expecting this book to move me so much, but in its own monstrous way, it did. Five stars and I can definitely see myself returning to this one for a reread!

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