The case of Stella Kruk
The first story is immediately a powerful blow of darkness. Nikita, a former assassin of the Order of the Shadows, is hired by a woman on the eve of her divorce. Someone has to protect her in order to survive the trial, which turns out to be a road through hell. A few days spent with Stella will mark the protagonist for a long time, they will return in nightmares and sad reflections in reality, as well as in the sudden silence that will reign where the murmurs of the berserkers used to sound. This is not a spoiler, because we have seen the effects before – it was this trauma that Nikita tried to heal in the Affair for a dozen lynxes .
This story is great to read, full of emotions and a black magic intrigue. In addition, it will fill in the gaps that may have made some solutions in the Affair seem too simple and coincidences too wonderful. Maybe yourselves, like Nikita, will reach for Arabic fairy tales, preferably in some old, beautifully illustrated edition?
The Stella case will come back in the last story in Rehearsals . This time Nikita, enriched with the experience of the Affair , and especially the knowledge gained from her neighbors, will try to definitively end Brynjar’s trauma and whining. What will happen? I won’t say anything, it’s a short text, a definitive postscript to a story that turned out to be more than just another commission.
A dozen lynxes on the attack
Neighborhood Chronicles so far include two books revolving around the same moment in Nikita’s life. They complement and overlap. You can read the novel without knowing the collection of short stories, in fact, the two texts already discussed constitute an independent whole, but Hands Full of Lynxes is simply an alternative view of the events described in the Affair for a Dozen Lynxes . When Nikita was investigating the city and the witches were managing the crisis from home and searching for their kidnapped husbands on their own, someone had to take care of the scratches!
Supposedly we know a story, but it is a story from a slightly different barrel, only half filled with sludge poisoned with magic Vistula. It is narrated by Anna, a wolf and a firewoman. He lives in a small, quiet town with the youngest brother of the kidnapped lynxes. Together with him, they will be aunt and uncle to a bunch of hyperactive little variables. It is thanks to her that you will taste the magic of Sava, as if it were the first time. But you will also check what happened in the cinema and whether it was possible to make popcorn there at all.
As I mentioned, two of the stories in this collection shed more light on the state of mind (and even body) of Nikita and Brynjar at the time when they searched for their missing neighbors. They also bring an explanation and closure of these two emotions and memories. The middle, longest story in this volume is actually not necessary to understand the Affair . Instead, it is a charming look from the very center of the events. As you can guess from a few of my remarks, Rehearsals are as saturated with all emotions as the related action novel – it’s your refill of hot chocolate with an insert, a pillow for a warm blanket under which you and Afera hid .
The adventures with Wars and Sawa cannot start with Trials of Fire and Water , they were designed to complement and that is exactly what they are. They have the same slightly paradoxical mix of tenderness and action as most Nikita stories do. You will notice it already on the cover of Magdalena Babińska, where our heroine, like Ben Stiller’s Scorcher, takes care of two fluffy redheads. And there’s a fire raging in the background, because you can’t put out all of them right away, but cool guys don’t look at explosions !
