Reviews for "Murder Baby"
In a futuristic world not too distant from our own, the human Knights of Sadira once fought evil armed with the magic of angels. But it’s been six years since their home and training ground burned, and now Knight Raffi Okamoto treks across a dystopian Japan as a ronin, or masterless warrior. She reluctantly agrees to help an old friend, Quincey Henri, a New Orleans–based mage who co-founded a group of powerful “Craft” (magic) practitioners; he needs all of his magical comrades to aid in combatting sinister witches who have unleashed a daunting soul-eater demon. He enlists Raffi, armed with her katana and her staggering agility, to track down his fellow co-founder, Insaf, a former Knight who’s now missing. A concurrent plot, which takes place decades earlier, focuses on an orphaned girl who’s lost her family and most of her memories. After saving her from vicious masked men pursuing the girl in Neo Tokyo, Asahi, a Yakuza boss, all but adopts her, naming her Aiko and taking her into his clan where she trains to become an assassin. Aiko endures the harsh and often cruel training, driven by her obsession to mete out vengeance against the Yakuza who, she believes, slaughtered her parents. The time discrepancy between these dual plotlines gradually diminishes until they converge in a violent collision between good and evil.
I was particularly impressed with the way Stoutimore writes women. Many male fantasy authors, even the likes of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, often write women in a way that comes across as contrived and stereotypical. Stoutimore expertly dodges this pitfall, and makes all of his characters feel real and individual. Raffi is one of the most interesting leads I’ve read in recent memory, and the Knights of Sadira, an order comprised entirely of females was a breath of fresh air.
Horrifying and Captivating Debut! I thoroughly enjoyed this debut novel. What drew me in immediately was Stoutimore's descriptive, rich, poetic, horrifying language. He creates a complex web of characters, human and otherwise, led by the anti-hero Raffi/Aiko. The story is intensely captivating and kept my interest with its shifts between pasts and present. The unimaginable physical and emotional abuse, drugging, and manipulation of children to create assassins without conscience suggest an indictment of fanatic religious cults. I found myself so angry and horrified at times, I had to remind myself to breathe.
Think "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" meets "Kill Bill" and "Bladerunner." Heed the introductory warning: "This is not a fairy tale. This is a nightmare." It is a very dark, disturbing, and graphically violent read. And while it is very long and at times a little slow moving early on, it becomes quite captivating, and the story line and characters are compelling. There is some levity and humor at times to balance the brooding evil so pervasive in the story. It is far from predictable.
The Series
The Knights of Sadira is a dark supernatural fantasy novel series telling the story of a once ancient sorority of demon slayers operating in secret in a surrealistic, cyberpunk future.
Firmly entrenched between dark fantasy and horror, the series follows five women in a generational struggle to overcome darkness, from the outside and within themselves.
With engaging, relatable characters caught in the familiar, classic struggle between good and evil, The Knights of Sadira tells a tale of belonging, the testing of kinship, loss, trauma, identity, and death. Murder Baby is the first of four books.
#DarkFantasy #Fiction #LGBTQIA
Trigger Warning Advisory
"Murder Baby" and The Knights of Sadira series contain brutal depictions that include but are not limited to violence, childhood trauma scenes of physical & mental abuse, gaslighting, non-sexual nudity, and other potentially upsetting themes and depictions. The stories are intended for mature readers, and the author had included individual trigger warnings before each section of text to ensure safe spaces.
The Knights of Sadira
The Angel Sadira
After the Great Ethereal War, an uneasy truce between the Angels of High Haven and the Demons of the Nine Rings was brokered. A condition of peace was that each side leave the mortal world of humans untouched.
But many Demons did not obey their Dreadlord Masters, refusing to return to the Nine Rings. The Greater Demon Mammon took the country of Bavaria for his own, poisoning the land, and corrupting its vulnerable, mortal people.
Unwilling to risk war, High Haven turned a blind eye. Anyone who resisted Mammon was slaughtered, warrior and innocent alike, until three women - Wren of the Orleans Wood, Ing Wa of the Ta'ia Sky, and Sarita of the Romani Mages - came as questing Knights to oppose him.
They fought Mammon for three days, so fearless in their fight that Angels and Demons alike watched the great battle from their ethereal towers. In the end, the Knights were still no match for him. Just as the three women faced certain defeat, the Angel Sadira was moved by their plight. The Princess of High Haven, firstborn of the Archangel Michael, flew down from High Haven and cut off his head.
Facing punishment for what she had done, Sadira left the three Knights her tears, embuing them with power to resist Mammon should he ever return. They formed an order in her name, and thus the Knights of Sadira were born.
The Author
"Thoughtful, focused, and slyly irreverent"
- The Watchers in the Bar
Gabriel Stoutimore
Gabriel is from New Hampshire. He is the second of three children, growing up with two sisters. He has lived all over, from Bristol and Leeds in England to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Providence, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and the dreaded land of hellacious Demon spawn, Central Florida.
He studied religion & sociology at the graduate level in the UK and has been working on the Knights of Sadira novels for the past six years.
Having spent most of his life as a closeted bisexual, stories that center identity and becoming are of the most interest to him. Gabriel lives with a diagnosis of C-PTSD and believes firmly in the power of processing trauma through creativity and imagination.
He refers to the Knights of Sadira as his children, and while he loves them all, Murder Baby is his favorite.
The Art of Murder Baby
