In “The Knight and the Butcherbird,” Alix E. Harrow delivers a novella that strikes with the precision of its namesake bird—piercing, unflinching, and unexpectedly beautiful in its savagery. This haunting post-apocalyptic fairytale follows Shrike, a seventeen-year-old town storyteller (or “Secretary”) who’s determined to protect her wife-turned-demon from a legendary knight dispatched to hunt her down.
What begins as a seemingly straightforward monster-hunter narrative quickly transforms—much like its characters—into something far more complex: a meditation on climate change, illness, marginalization, and the stubborn persistence of love in the face of catastrophic change.
Setting: A Decaying World Reborn
Three hundred years after an unspecified apocalypse, the world has reorganized itself into two distinct societies: the walled enclaves (remnants of cities with technology, medicine, and organized religion) and the outlands (rural communities struggling with toxins, radiation, and early death). Iron Hollow sits in this latter category, mining rebar from ancient ruins to trade with the enclaves for medicine.
Harrow’s worldbuilding is economical yet richly evocative. In describing the outlands, she writes: “a dying place. A scrounging, desperate town full of sickly, short-lived people, where burials were more common than births.” The landscape feels lived-in and deeply considered, despite the novella’s brevity. Toxic quarries, kudzu-covered ruins, and heat waves that “dries up the creeks and kill the corn” paint a world where survival itself is a daily struggle.
Character Development: Monstrous Transformations
The heart of this story lies in its characters’ transformations—both literal and metaphorical. Shrike, our narrator, begins as a loyal, if somewhat unorthodox, Secretary to her community. By story’s end, she has become something else entirely: a revolutionary storyteller working to reshape her people’s understanding of change itself.
Sir John of Cincinnati initially appears as the archetypal knight—honorable, capable, driven by a tragic past. As his layers peel away, we discover a man who has spent decades searching for an impossible cure, killing others like his wife while hiding her true nature.
Most striking are the demons themselves. Rather than biblical monsters, they are people transformed by illness and necessity, changing shape continuously to survive. May, Shrike’s wife, begins her transformation with antlers pressing through her scalp; Sir John’s wife Lily becomes a hawk with glass-covered eyes that hide their demonic red color.
In these transformations, Harrow asks: What happens when survival requires becoming something monstrous? What if the only way to adapt to a poisoned world is to become something the old world would have feared?
Prose: Sharp and Unsentimental
Harrow’s prose in this novella is a masterclass in compression and impact. She alternates between blunt, unsentimental statements—“I fetched my pack from the silverberries and drew out a clay jar of mead”—and startlingly beautiful descriptions—“May lowered her chin. Her face was vaguely human, now, but sleekly feathered. The feathers were bright silver, save for a black band across her eyes like the mask of a cardinal or—my heart stuttered—or—”
The language feels perfectly suited to its narrator: a young woman who has survived abandonment, who learned the world by its harsh realities, who kills without hesitation to protect what she loves. Yet beneath this practicality runs a vein of poetry that surfaces in unexpected moments:
“She moved with a muscled, mesmeric grace, like some ancient god of the woods, back when gods were not dead men but living things, untrustworthy, changeful.”
Themes: Evolution, Survival, and Necessary Monsters
The novella’s central revelation—that demons are not biblical creatures but people transformed by cancer and other illnesses—establishes its primary theme: adaptation as survival. “Everyone thinks you get sick because you begin to change,” Shrike tells Sir John, “but it’s the opposite: you change because you get sick. Because you have to.”
This recasting of monstrosity as evolution rather than corruption is the story’s most powerful idea. The demons aren’t fallen or cursed; they’re evolving to survive in a world that no longer supports human life as it once existed. The enclaves, with their walls and weapons, represent stagnation—clinging to a vanished past. The demons, in their constant flux, represent the only viable future.
Alongside this runs a thread about storytelling itself. As Secretary, Shrike holds the community’s collective memory, guiding decisions through parables and histories. By the story’s end, she has become a revolutionary, deliberately reshaping her community’s understanding of demons through new stories that celebrate rather than demonize change.
Moral Complexity: No Heroes, Only Survivors
One of the novella’s strongest aspects is its moral complexity. Every character commits terrible acts in the name of love:
- Shrike kills her mentor Finch to protect May
- Sir John slaughters countless demons while protecting his wife-turned-hawk
- May eventually kills Sir John in her demon form
Yet the story offers no simple judgments. Instead, it presents love itself as both salvation and damnation—the thing that drives us to our most monstrous acts and our most transcendent ones. As Shrike reflects: “At seventeen, I knew better: love is whatever you’re willing to kill for.”
Critique: Brevity Both Strength and Limitation
If there’s a weakness to “The Knight and the Butcherbird,” it lies in its brevity. At novella length, certain elements feel compressed that might have benefited from more space:
- May herself remains somewhat underdeveloped, seen primarily through Shrike’s eyes rather than as a fully realized character
- The history and politics of the enclaves could be more thoroughly explored
- The final transformation of Sir John feels slightly rushed
However, this compression also gives the story its punch—like a folktale or parable, it doesn’t waste time on extraneous details, driving relentlessly toward its conclusion with the single-minded determination of its protagonist.
Connection to Harrow’s Larger Body of Work
Fans of Harrow’s previous work will recognize familiar elements: the importance of storytelling (as in “The Ten Thousand Doors of January”), the blending of fairytale elements with social commentary (as in “The Once and Future Witches”), and the creation of lush, lived-in worlds that feel simultaneously familiar and strange (as in “Starling House”).
“The Knight and the Butcherbird” feels particularly connected to “The Once and Future Witches” in its exploration of marginalized communities creating their own systems of power outside established hierarchies. However, this novella strikes a darker, more morally ambiguous tone than Harrow’s previous work.
Final Verdict: A Memorable, Haunting Read
At its heart, “The Knight and the Butcherbird” is a love story—not the kind with happy endings, but the kind that asks what we’re willing to become for those we love. It’s also an ecological fable about adaptation and survival in a world we’ve poisoned beyond repair.
Harrow has crafted something special here: a post-apocalyptic fairytale that feels both timeless and urgently contemporary. Like the shrike of its title—that small, unassuming bird with surprisingly violent habits—this novella appears deceptively simple but delivers a strike that lingers long after the final page.
Strengths:
- Exquisite, economical prose that never wastes a word
- A genuinely original take on post-apocalyptic fiction
- Complex, morally ambiguous characters
- Powerful central metaphor equating transformation with survival
Weaknesses:
- Some characters and elements feel compressed by the novella format
- May’s perspective remains somewhat underdeveloped
- The final transformation sequence feels slightly rushed
For Readers Who Enjoyed…
If you appreciated “The Knight and the Butcherbird,” you might also enjoy:
- Jeff VanderMeer’s “Southern Reach” trilogy for its ecological horror and mutating landscapes
- Carmen Maria Machado’s “Her Body and Other Parties” for its blend of horror and queer narratives
- Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” for its post-apocalyptic setting and emphasis on storytelling
- N.K. Jemisin’s “Broken Earth” trilogy for its exploration of marginalized communities developing new forms of power
Alix E. Harrow continues to prove herself as one of speculative fiction’s most innovative and thoughtful voices. In “The Knight and the Butcherbird,” she has created a story that, like its titular demon, constantly shifts and transforms before our eyes, becoming something new and necessary for a changing world.
