No Knight hoped to live a long life; they hoped for a good death.
page 18, To Clutch a Razor by Veronica Roth
Table of Contents
Preamble
When I first heard about the upcoming release of To Clutch a Razor in a Elliot Brooks video back in August, I was pleasantly surprised. After all, in my review of the first book in the series, When Among Crows I said the following:
I really hope the author makes this a series and it doesn’t stay a stand alone book. There is a lot of potential in these characters, the world, and the mythology
Review: When Among Crows by Veronica Roth
So I am glad that that particular wish of mine was fulfilled and the author made it a series. The book came out on September 16, 2025, I put a hold on it at the library sometime in late September and my hold arrived last week.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
The first major difference between When Among Crows and To Clutch a Razor is that the latter is much less of a urban fantasy. Most of this book takes place in rural Poland and not Chicago. There are a few scenes set in Chicago but it is not the focus of this book. I would have loved to see more urban fantasy Chicago but I didn’t mind the change in scenery.
This book continues to focus its fantasy lens on Slavic folklore with a focus on Polish & Kashubian culture specifically. It refers to various fantastical creatures or the “monsters” using the transliterated Slavic names like strzyga, zmora, kikimori, wieszcy etc. The book also talks about Polish funerary traditions like the empty night ritual and Polish food like lazanki. Baba Yaga is a recurring character. My introduction to Slavic folklore and its various creatures came via way of The Witcher 3 video game and I have since found such folklore fascinating so I love that more fantasy is borrowing from these folkloric traditions.
The story is told from a third person perspective, an invisible narrator and I think it works well for this story. It is also a nice change of pace from the large number of first-person perspective fiction I’ve been reading over the last few months, with the notable exception of The Spear Cuts Through Water which partially uses second-person perspective.
As far as characters go, Dymitr and his boyfriend Nikodem are the standouts in so far as they get most of the page time in this short book. The rest of the characters with the exception of Ala barely get enough characterization and development and as such didn’t leave much of an impression on me. That said, both Dymitr and Nikodem are fantastic characters with a delightful dynamic and I would like to see any further books in the series really focus on them and perhaps tell the story from their first-person perspectives.
The narrative revolves around a small cast of characters, the main character Dymitr and his friends and family members. The narrative focuses on themes of betrayal and Dymitr’s falling out with his family. In the last book Dymitr is transformed into a monster and that majorly conflicts with the fact that he is part of a group that hunts such monsters and basically his entire family also is in this group. Oops. It is very messy. There are some gut wrenching scenes of betrayal and conflict that I think are really well written.
There is also the theme of “monsters are people too and have feelings and emotions” that is the book is rather heavy handed about. I don’t think this aspect of the book works all that well due to how on the nose the book is about it and also because the theme has been explored in many a fantasy story by this point and as such has lost any novelty. This book isn’t adding anything new to the discourse. That said, I don’t think it detracts too much from the overall quality of the book because the text isn’t long enough for something like this to overstay its welcome.
Conclusions
To Clutch a Razor was a short and sweet snack of a book for me. I enjoyed the world and its characters and the narrative had enough meat on its bones to keep me invested. I finished the entirety of the book in one morning reading session and as such it falls into the “novella” category of books for me. Such books make for a nice change of pace between the longer novels I read.
I hope Veronica Roth continues to write more books in this series. As with the first book in the series, I want a longer novel size book but I will take more novellas. There continues to be a lot of untapped potential for interesting fantasy stories making use of Slavic folklore so I’ll be on the lookout for more books in this series.
That’s all from me. See y’all in the next one.
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