Kameron Hurley is a master in writing skills. This short stories actually are a great entrance gate for her thicker books. And I just love Nyx!!

I ended up purchasing a physical copy to read after I finish the books in a trilogy set before this! I love Hurley's work, so I'm sure I'll be enjoying this one as well.

Be prepared for a sci-fi adventure. I can occasionally get lost in heavy science fiction and I found that happening here. zBur overall decent reaf.

Kameron Hurley is brilliant.
The World Build believable.
Reading God's War, Nyx will own you
Apocalypse Nyx dare not be the end

Set in the Bel Dame Apocrypha series, Apocalypse Nyx is a collection of five stories set at various points in time throughout the series. Author Kameron Hurley has previously released two of the included stories on her Patreon. Here, they are collected with three others as a part of a series of books about Nyx and her band of misfits.

Nyx was once a government assassin. Now, she’s a bounty hunter with a team of misfits. The short stories included here are set between books within the Bel Dame Apocrypha series. Each portrays some kind of a mercenary job Nyx becomes involved with. Some are ones she’s signed up for, others don’t prove to be quite so straightforward.

The four stories included are: “The Body Project”, “The Heart Is Eaten Last”, “Soulbound”, “Crossroads at Jannah”, and “Paint It Red”. The first two are much longer than the last three, bordering more on novellas or novelettes than short stories. As with all collections of short fiction, some stand out more than others. Each provides an exciting story in the lives of Nyx and her mercenary brethren, featuring some characters more than others depending on the story at hand.

Science fiction and fantasy blur together in a world with insect based technology, shapeshifters, rejuvenating bioengineering, and hedge witches. The world is imaginatively built and wonderfully detailed. The nation they live in is a matriarchically one, perpetually at war with a neighboring country. Racism is at play. Religious sects search for the organ which houses the human soul. While the world is clearly well thought out and very immersive, it is one which is perhaps best realized in the series proper; newcomers to the Bel Dame Apocrypha series will have little reference point for the magic, technology, politics, and religions at play within the stories.

This particular volume is more focused on exciting plot than any sort of character development. This is born out of necessity; no deep character development can rightly be made in short stories set in between the major books of a series. Nyx herself isn’t a very sympathetic main character. She’s a hard, sometimes brutal woman. Life hasn’t been a simple thing for her. Booze and sex are used sometimes as blinders to mask the pain and effects of her past. Yet, she is good at her job, and, at times, behaves with uncharacteristically empathetic behavior, no matter how brief that might be.

Readers of the Bel Dame Apocrypha series will find a lot to enjoy here. Apocalypse Nyx by Kameron Hurley is a great collection of short stories and good companion to the other books within the series.

Fast-paced and often brutal sequel to Hurley's earlier Bel Dame Apocrypha, and a must-have for any fans of the earlier book.

You can't beat Nyx for some hard-boiled sci-fi thrill rides. Things never seem to go her way but she gets there in the end. If you like the God's War trilogy then you'll love this — a series of short adventures that throw you straight back into the mad, bug-filled sand storm of Nyx's life.

Apocalypse Nyx takes us into the world of Hurley’s Belle Dame Apocrypha series, giving us glimpses of the hardened, masterful character across five equally impressive novellas. I haven’t read the original trilogy, and feel like this is a great introduction to Nyx. Each story is filled with fight scenes, puzzles and the dynamics of a team with vastly different backgrounds and belief systems. The novella format fits the material perfectly, giving you a chance to meet the characters fully amidst shorter plots. I strongly recommend the collection, both for newbies and for existing fans.

Full review at: https://reviewsandrobots.com/2018/12/10/apocalypse-nyx-book-review/

Apocalypse Nyx
by Kameron Hurley
Tachyon Publications
Multicultural Interest , Sci Fi & Fantasy
Hurley is a genius in creating believable worlds down to a mote. These stories are related to a series apparently of a female mercenary/assassin and her group set in a future set of worlds with a strong feminist line where the women are definitely on top. While I really enjoyed these stories in this book on one hand there was something seriously disturbing on the other. As women and the original matriarchal societies were in many ways better and then to once again reach beyond that pint for the future one would hope we would grow beyond the lowest denominators biggest faults of a patriarchal society be it mentality,greed, criminal activity or on a larger scale wars and subjugation of other peoples. While the delight at the detail of this world wrapped me up the main character was not my favorite and led me to once against question why so many futuristic scenarios put down will show the same downfalls that the present holds, why women can't be ass kicking for good & triumph and not have the negative attribute of their male counterparts instead of showing the benefit of being female. I think if nothing else [which there was so much to love] I truly enjoyed Black Panther movie because it gave us strong and hopeful women and scenarios. This world put forth while well written and engrossing is something I hope we would learn better from now rather than continue the same road regardless of who is in charge. Just something to ponder with an added point: if you love sci fi this is a must and will probably now look up & read the series as I want more

I love everything with Nyx in it. What a great, totally messed-up, yet still great character. And I also love her great but messed-up world. I choked up a bit when reading this, realizing some characters in it are now dead in book 2 or 3. But I also remembered how I came to love every single one of them. A fabulous addition to the Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy.

I am a fan of the Bel Dame series and revisited it after devouring these novellas. I forgot how much I enjoyed Nyx as a character.

These novellas are ... well, they're weird. They are capital "W" WEIRD AS FUDGE. Sludge. Bio-punk urban fantasy sludge. They're light, they're fun, they're set in a world which is implicitly matriarchal. They're the light, dark, gritty, fun follow-up to "The Stars Are Legion" that you never knew you needed, but you oh-so-definitely do.

Oh, and they're full of bugs. SO MANY BUGS.

One online source says this book is suitable for people who aren't familiar with this series so I gave it a try. I had no idea what was going on and I quit reading.

I received a review copy of "Apocalypse Nyx" by Kameron Hurley (Tachyon) through NetGalley.com.

"It's selfish to make somebody's life or death about you. It was her life. Let her live it as she chose."

Apocalypse Nyx is a series of short stories about the protagonist of Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha series. Each of the first few stories describes the way Nyx met a member of her team. (There are some discrepancies in the timeline, but Nyx isn't the most reliable source.) I think the ideal reading order would be to pick this collection up after the first book: Nyx and her team are still very young, in these stories. Though none of them exactly grow wise, their relationships shift over the course of the trilogy in a way that these introductions don't reflect. On the other hand, if you miss Nyx's first team, before compromise and explosions and politics tore things up, this collection is a chance to spend time with them again.

The most unexpected story is the last one, in which we meet parrot shifters who have chosen not to be human circling around a tower, and learn that although Nyx is a terrible shot, she's genuinely good at disarming mines. Nyx is also good at staying alive, and slightly better at keeping a team alive along with her than she would like to admit. I hesitate to call her honest, but she has a weird compelling straight-line stubbornness that I keep coming back to.

Interesting world building along with characters that fit. This is a good post-apocalypse story with a interesting plot and great edge of your seat action.

It was enjoyable for the most part but it was also very repetitive. The story basically of Nyx who is a rebuilt human? cyborg? enhanced human?, it's never very clear. She's a mercenary on a planet that is Muslim mostly and seems to be drunk most of the time.. She surrounds herself by misfit's and refugee's as they take on various job where things never go as planned but they always come out more or less ok.
The stories are fun, enjoyable violent mayhem with some great humor. But when they are back to back like this you get a been there done that quality. These would have worked better if I had read them piecemeal over a longer period. This is also not a good jumping on point where few things are explained.

This collection of short stories is set in the Bel Dame Apocrypha World. There is an entire series that I haven’t read. I don’t want to spoil to much of the main books for myself, but from what I could gather these are set in between the events of the main books. Even though I went in knowing nothing of the world or the previous stories, Hurley doesn’t throw you into the deep end, you quickly get a feel for the world. After all the very first line of the first story gives you a real sense of the type of world our girl Nyx is inhabiting.

I loved getting to know Nyx and her team. She is unapologetically herself. She is highly trained, willing to sacrifice her team and when the girl wants to get laid, we all know its going to happen. She has experienced a lot in her short (but long by the world’s standard) life. She has been to war, she has been broken, she has been put back together, trained as an assassin, spent a year in prison and built herself a reputation as someone you don’t want to fuck with.

These stories have betrayal, magic, romance, violence, weird creepy bugs, whisky and a whole heap of sass. If you are unsure if Kameron Hurley is for you, try this collection. There are five stories of varying length and detail, all of them are well written, bringing this war ravaged land to life.

The Body Project and The Heart Is Eaten Last are both great stories, whilst the other three were just okay. There is nobody quite like Nyxnissa so Dasheem so it’s always enjoyable to spend more time with her.

This is a collection of five short pieces and can be read as an intro to the world of Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha world, which began with God's War. I confess I have only read the first two stories, slightly over half the book. I've seen Nyx described as 'painfully hard to like' and I'd go with that description. Her answer to everything is to smash heads (or maybe hack them off), and by the time I'd read the first two stories I needed a rest. Nyx is a former Bel Dame, a government assassin turned bounty hunter. She's seen a lot of gore, and contributed greatly to the body count, but she's damaged, and like her surroundings, she's angry, grim, and bloody. She has a team, but she's not sure she can count on them and, what's worse, she's not sure if they can count on her. I will go back and read the other three stories in thius collection, but I need to decompress first.

Nyx is a bounty hunter in Nasheen, which is stuck in a never-ending religious war with neighboring Chenja. The world building is a fascinating mix of magic and technology, mostly based on insects – a character breaks apart a fire beetle to start a fire, for instance, and bug bits and secretions are used to do everything from power cars to make bullets. Nasheen society is matriarchal, and also draws heavily on the Muslim religion, with mosques on every corner and the calls to prayer dividing up the day. Nyx’s team is a mishmash of the dregs of society, and it consists of Taite, a young com tech; Anneke, a hired gun who likes carrying around guns almost as big as herself; Rhys, a Chenjan bug magician, able to control swarms of bugs; and Khos, a bulky shape shifter. An ex-soldier and ex-assasin, Nyx’s existence consists mostly of bounty hunting and then drinking away her past, and the others on her team go along for various similar reasons. She’s deeply flawed, prickly, morally grey, and kind of a bitch, so of course I loved her. This anthology doesn’t have much of an overarching theme – it’s more of a series of heists that outline Nyx’s character and her relation to her team. While the first two stories are novella-length, the last three are short stories, and all of these were previously published on the author’s Patreon.

“Plotting?” he asked.
“You know me well enough to know I don’t think any of this shit through beforehand.”


“The Body Project” – ★★★★ – While out on a bounty hunt, Nyx and her team find a dead body – and a head floating in the window of the building several stories up. She quickly realizes it’s one of her former military team members, and someone who should already have been dead. Nyx, out of obligation to her old team member or some other whim, decides to investigate, and is drawn into a mystery that will endanger her current team.

“Anyway,” she said, “I’m in the market for a shifter anyway. You know anyone?”
The man raised his brows. “You’ve brought a dead shapeshifter here, which you admit was killed in your own basement, and want me, a shifter, to recommend a good shifter to you?”
“Yeah,” Nyx said.”


“The Heart Is Eaten Last” – ★★★★★ – This was my favorite of the bunch. Another job, another pretty woman lying to Nyx, another chance to get her whole team blown up. Nice and twisty, with some seriously messed up moments!

“We are discussing the plan we need to come up with to finish the job that we contracted for.”
“We should have just stolen her leg,” Taite said.
“Fuck you and the fucking leg,” Nyx said.”


“Soulbound” – ★★★★ – An easy job to round up some on-the-run magicians turns into an excursion into the disputed territory between Nasheen and Chenja. Surprisingly hilarious and action-packed.

“This is the hell you made yourself. I’d ask what you have to punish yourself for, but I’ve already seen enough in my time with you to justify every bit of this.”


“Crossroads at Jannah” – ★★★★ – A bit more background on some of the bug technology, another confrontation between Rhys and Nyx.

“You did me a favor in prison,” Nyx said. “I clear my debts.”
“I saved your life.”
“Sounds like a favor, doesn’t it?”


“Paint It Red” – ★★★ – Nyx, minus her team. An old prison friend calls in a favor, and Nyx joins her crew for a heist. A good story to end the anthology with, as it reaffirms the family that Nyx has drawn around herself, and that she’s not as morally bad as she’d have you think.

As a first introduction to Nyx, I think it works pretty well, and it definitely made me interested in picking up the rest of the books in the series to see more of Nyx and her team. Recommended for fans of kickass flawed heroines and grimdark SF&F!

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.