I’m honestly not entirely sure what to think about this book. It almost felt like I was reading two people trying to write the same story, one of whom was a fantastic writer, and then the other person who really didn’t know what they were doing, because I would be getting really invested into the plot, and then a line would come up that would just completely throw me off guard. Not even in a good way. I’m not too sure that “raucous” or “delightfully queer”, both in the synopsis, would be the best ways to describe this book either. The characters are gay (saying gay instead of queer because that is the literal extent of queerness), sure, but I wouldn’t really say that the story itself, or the cast apart from the two main characters is. They also had zero tension, so that may be a major contributor. I liked a lot of the writing, and the plot was really fun at certain points, but I think that that’s about it, and that’s from a lover of heist books, a former Catholic and a queer person. I think at a lot of points the book felt too short to tell what it wanted to tell, and the point of view was always too disconnected to really like the characters.

An absolutely delightful and rollicking adventure of a book!!

I found the balance of medieval and medievalism to be fantastic -- I always struggle with reading medieval historical fiction, because so many authors don't put the work in to actually understand medieval cultures and worldviews. (Blame my background in Medieval Studies.) But Anderson so deftly fleshes out a world that is weird, fantastic, and both different and the same from our own. It's extremely clear how much care and passion was put into building this world and populating it with these characters.

That being said, I think this book is incredibly approachable for those without a medieval background. Anderson's distinctive voice shines through, balancing the medieval and contemporary in a way that seems almost effortless while reading, though is obviously finely crafted.

So, so strongly recommend. I will be pre-ordering my own copy and encouraging my library to do the same!

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, and Vintage for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

The beginning almost lost me- far too many comments about different races, ethnicities, and religions in the context of being "unusual" or out of the norm, all for the sake of "historical accuracy". I could have done without anyone's thoughts or feelings about outsiders to Christianity or specific countries, partially because keeping track of who conquered who and what that means etc was a lot of work, especially if you haven't recently researched this time period in history, and keeping track of the internal biases of characters was largely unnecessary on top of that. If I was reading for pleasure and not to review, I probably would have dropped off before getting to the good stuff.

The plot though... I'm so glad I pushed through. The final half of the book saved it. While I was hoping for a bit more relationship building at sea, overall I grew to really enjoy the cast of characters and their antics. The banter was fun, certain moments and comments felt extremely clever - in particular the days after the battle.

Tyun is perfect and I almost wish the book was from his POV rather than Nicephorus - in some ways the synopsis did set me up to think that would be the case. His pride in his work, his smooth talking skills, the wit and banter. "Dreamer", "Dream boy"... I love him. He carried this book, in my opinion. When I hit roughly 60% of the book and realized Nicephorus and Tyun would be traveling alone, I celebrated.

I learned to enjoy Nicephorus for his naivety and curiosity, and his confusion or wonder (but not angst!) at his own feelings gave us some funny internal moments that I wanted more of. His desperation to stop being a criminal's accomplice was the funniest thread throughout, especially as we reached the conclusion.

I enjoyed myself, but I'm unsure if I could recommend this to my other reader friends due to the issues mentioned above. Sometimes historical inspiration needs to be just that - inspiration, not a blueprint. But overall, I am glad to have picked up and finished Nicked, I gave Nicked 3.5 stars on other sites, rounded up to 4 here.