Garth Nix has been publishing Sir Hereward & Mr. Fitz stories in anthologies and magazines and such for years; this volume takes all those and puts them in a single collection. I had never read any of these stories, or indeed anything at all by Garth Nix before picking this up.
My overall conclusion: these are fun stories, but I think reading them back-to-back like I did is to their detriment.
Mr. Fitz is a wood and paper-mache puppet, animated by sorcery and centuries old. Sir Hereward is a knight and artillerist. Together they roam the land, Sir Hereward as a mercenary, and Mr. Fitz posing as one of the more common animated puppets who serve as entertainers rather than traveling openly as the powerful sorcerer he is. They are secretly going about their true purpose as members of an ancient order devoted to ridding the world of malevolent minor and not-quite-so-minor gods.
It’s a neat premise, and a great set-up for drop-in episodes like we have here. Each story is well done, and Hereward and Fitz are both great characters.
The problem is, when reading them back to back, I couldn’t help but notice just how many of the women they meet (generally sexy ones) end up dead. None of it seems egregious (which is more than I will say for the story where the sexy novice nun ended up naked for … reasons), but as it went on and woman after woman ended up dead I got distinctly uncomfortable.
A fun read, but better spread out than binged.