Strange and erotic... The troll comes to life after hours, unleashing glittering desires

Guardian

Clever, funny, dark and tender - it's the love story you never knew you needed

Marie Claire, 'The best books of 2024'

An imaginative and engaging novel of urban fantasy... Overlapping narrative voices nicely underscore the moral of Sinisalo's ingeniously constructed fable: The stuff of ancient legend shadows with rather unnerving precision the course of unloosened postmodern desire

Washington Post

Simple but powerful... A thoughtful, inspiring and rewarding work

Gay Times

A wry thriller-fantasy... Each discovery sounds like the voice of a storyteller reminding us of how the gods play with our fates

The New York Times

A punk version of The Hobbit... Sinisalo cleverly taps the fabled legacy of myths while ditching the fairy-tale tone you might expect... Although the book exploits the conventions of the fantasy genre, it clearly transcends them... This smart, droll novel points out the absurdity of consumerism,... [and] underscores how our ad-driven culture and its images permeate our lives

USA Today

A brilliant and dark parable about the fluid boundaries between human and animal... Johanna Sinisalo creates scenes that make you laugh out loud; ten pages later you're holding your breath with anxiety. Such talent is not to be taken for granted

The Boston Globe

Shocking in parts and heartbreaking in others, this is a stunning bit of modern-day mythmaking

SFX