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No Such Thing as Duty
In the waning days of World War One, William Somerset Maugham—novelist, playwright, and spy—is sent to Romania to serve allied interests in the fight against Austro-Hungary while dying of tuberculosis. His handler sets him to recruit mysterious Carpathian nobleman Walter Roşu to the cause. But Roşu is more interested in William than the war, and William struggles to fulfill his duty in the face of death and desire.
PRAISE
“Gritty and decadent and brittle with gallows humor, No Such Thing as Duty has everything I want in a story: clever writing, characters sharp enough to cut yourself, and an ending that makes me double-take, then pick up the book and start reading from the beginning. Set aside an afternoon to devour this in one sitting, and thank me later.”
—Allison Epstein, author of Fagin the Thief
PRAISE
“Gritty and decadent and brittle with gallows humor, No Such Thing as Duty has everything I want in a story: clever writing, characters sharp enough to cut yourself, and an ending that makes me double-take, then pick up the book and start reading from the beginning. Set aside an afternoon to devour this in one sitting, and thank me later.”
—Allison Epstein, author of Fagin the Thief
Unknown Binding
First published April 8, 2025
3 people are currently reading
143 people want to read
About the author
Lara Elena Donnelly
12 books409 followersLara Elena Donnelly is the author of the Nebula, Lambda, and Locus-nominated trilogy The Amberlough Dossier, as well as short fiction and poetry appearing in venues including Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Nightmare, and Uncanny.
Lara has taught in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, as well as the Catapult Workshop in New York. She is a graduate of the Clarion and Alpha writers’ workshops, and has served as on-site staff at the latter, mentoring amazing teens who will someday take over the world of SFF.
Lara has taught in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, as well as the Catapult Workshop in New York. She is a graduate of the Clarion and Alpha writers’ workshops, and has served as on-site staff at the latter, mentoring amazing teens who will someday take over the world of SFF.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 9, 2025
5 million stars!! Lara has written a blend of spy novel with vampires what more could I ask for. The only note I have is 'MORE PLEASE.'
July 13, 2025
Review originally on JamReads
No Such Thing As Duty is a historical speculative fiction novella written by Lara Elena Donnelly, published by Neon Hemlock. A short but impactful blend between a spy story with a historical background and vampires, one that puts much attention to the detail and the immersion, while also giving us really acute characters that are dealing with the weight of their own mortality.
William, a novelist, playwright, and spy, is sent to Romania in order to serve the allies' interests against the Empire; he's dying out of tuberculosis, resigned to spend his last days there, far from the marriage he was forced to take. His superior tasks him with recruiting the elusive nobleman Walter Roşu to the cause; however, the own Roşu soon will show he's more interested in the own William than joining the fight, and William finds himself in the struggle between persecuting his heart's desire and fulfilling his duty before his time ends.
With William, Donnelly gives us an excellent main character; he feels a strange sense of duty towards his country, but he's also dealing with the perspective of a mortal illness. I would also like to point that Donnelly has nailed the portrait of how tuberculosis can become a source of physical disability, and how the suffering person has to deal with the perspective of losing the ability to do things that we have as granted. He still has guilt for some of the decissions he was forced to take in the past, and has accepted Romania as the place where he will die.
Roşu is a fascinating character; mysterious, an aristocrat with power, and some abilities that make him desired by the allies. Despite being a vampire, we can see how he's also afraid of his own mortality; an intense person with a complicated temperament, but who plays perfectly alongside William.
Donnelly puts a great attention to the detail, making her descriptions to be really vivid, allowing the reader to submerge into the setting; a solid narrative structure that could have benefitted from a few more pages, especially to develop the relationship. The pacing is on the spot, but I would have liked a bit more of pause after scene actions, just to catch the breath.
No Such Thing As Duty is an excellent piece of what speculative fiction can offer to readers, a queer proposal that shows the strength of Donnelly's craft. A novella to devour!
No Such Thing As Duty is a historical speculative fiction novella written by Lara Elena Donnelly, published by Neon Hemlock. A short but impactful blend between a spy story with a historical background and vampires, one that puts much attention to the detail and the immersion, while also giving us really acute characters that are dealing with the weight of their own mortality.
William, a novelist, playwright, and spy, is sent to Romania in order to serve the allies' interests against the Empire; he's dying out of tuberculosis, resigned to spend his last days there, far from the marriage he was forced to take. His superior tasks him with recruiting the elusive nobleman Walter Roşu to the cause; however, the own Roşu soon will show he's more interested in the own William than joining the fight, and William finds himself in the struggle between persecuting his heart's desire and fulfilling his duty before his time ends.
With William, Donnelly gives us an excellent main character; he feels a strange sense of duty towards his country, but he's also dealing with the perspective of a mortal illness. I would also like to point that Donnelly has nailed the portrait of how tuberculosis can become a source of physical disability, and how the suffering person has to deal with the perspective of losing the ability to do things that we have as granted. He still has guilt for some of the decissions he was forced to take in the past, and has accepted Romania as the place where he will die.
Roşu is a fascinating character; mysterious, an aristocrat with power, and some abilities that make him desired by the allies. Despite being a vampire, we can see how he's also afraid of his own mortality; an intense person with a complicated temperament, but who plays perfectly alongside William.
Donnelly puts a great attention to the detail, making her descriptions to be really vivid, allowing the reader to submerge into the setting; a solid narrative structure that could have benefitted from a few more pages, especially to develop the relationship. The pacing is on the spot, but I would have liked a bit more of pause after scene actions, just to catch the breath.
No Such Thing As Duty is an excellent piece of what speculative fiction can offer to readers, a queer proposal that shows the strength of Donnelly's craft. A novella to devour!
August 11, 2025
I have a deep and profound fondness for melancholy men trying to go about their melancholy days only to be unwillingly thrust into something they are Not Sure They’re a Fan Of. And this book services that fondness remarkably well. It also really catered towards my inner historian, so beautifully researched! I never wanted this to end, and eventually read the acknowledgments because of how much I couldn’t bear closing the book
May 6, 2025
3.5 stars rounded down. every day i wish goodreads would let me give those.5 stars bc it's not quite 4 stars but neither is it 3 stars.
i read Amberlough 6 years ago, by chance, by fate, by random happenstance, and i have been chasing that high ever since. in every book, i look for cyril, even hints of what i can relate whatever i'm reading back to him. so whatever lara elena donnelly writes, i read. and since base notes, which fun fact was the first book i read in 2022, i've been patiently waiting for a new book from her. i came across a snippet of the story she was working on back in 2023 and boy was i excited when i came across it in this book like vindication!
about the book. it's 80 pages exactly so i know things have to happen quick and i know it's hard to get a point across in such a short amount of time, but i really think it could do with an extra 20 pages to have the room to breathe it deserves.
world: i won't say worldbuilding bc it's not made up, but i want to say that the descriptions of jassy, romania and all the fine details like the food and clothing and details of a post-WW1 era lifestyle were perfection. it's what my favorite things donnelly did about amberlough, even though it wasn't real. the way she drops in details that seemingly don't matter lends authenticity to the setting and it settles the reader into whatever they're imagining in their head. and i'm not sure how accurate everything was, but she thanks experts in her acknowledgements, so even though it's expected, i'm glad she did do her research beforehand.
prose: i could've died for amberlough's prose. base notes was tougher, because the material was so different. here, i can see her ability shining again. i'm beating a dead horse here when i gush about the same things, but her descriptions are so vivid and capture the feeling of the moment so well. it's like magic.
plot and pacing: it was decent, given the fact it's a novella, and i know we're all crying out for more. i just wish we had more time to sit between events, specifically the fights. i'm reminded of when i watched captain marvel, and the emotional tenor felt rushed and awkward because we never had a moment to really sit with the weight of the emotional response we were supposed to experience. cut straight from tension to resolution, no time to waste here. and yes, i know there really was no time to waste due to the page limit.
as for the plot, i appreciated how death and war was brought up, inasmuch as one can get a message across without being too heavy-handed with it. the mission was simple, but i did think it'd be more relevant, action-wise than it was. like when the action did happen, i was like oh now we're really getting into it yeah i like this, and then it was over as fast as it happened. deus ex machina, except i sound stupid given the nature of one of the characters and the fact we had like 3 pages left to wrap it up.
one more thing:
and then the ending.
william: give me your quiet characters with their stiffness and ability to shove what they really want so far down they forget what it is. it's not even touched that much, but he felt a random sense of duty to england, and i think more characters should have that. granted, i exclusively read high fantasy, so one might say i'm used to the evil empire getting overthrown and would like nuance. he reminded me of cyril in a lot of ways, and in others also differently. i love spies and i hope donnelly keeps writing about them because there's something inherently tragic about the fact that one's mission is distorted with the fact that said mission is a real living person and there's so many complications with the human element. added to the fact that he's dying, it gives him more flavor where one could claim he's bland (not an insult, i love characters who seem bland). my favorite scene in the novella, is when he, half-delirious, takes it upon himself to retrieve maria.
walter: i'm ashamed to say, that i wish his name didn't also begin with a w bc something i was like "wait who's talking right now." and of course he reminded me of aristide in some ways. touching on the regular discourse around vampires, about caring less about those nearest to you because eventually they'll die and you'll be forever. but what was different was that, despite it all, he still feared death. maybe i don't read a lot of vampire books or consume that media, but i'm not familiar with a vampire actually having inhibitions about undertaking some task, because they feared for their life. but i suppose that's what being caught up in a war does to a person, immortal or not.
the relationship: maybe it's here where i could've used more time. i get that william is unusual and that's what makes him fascinating. and i know that they enjoy a lot of culture together. but i wish we could go one layer further and really dig into their relationship. it's supposed to be the culmination of the plot, and i unfortunately didn't feel it like i was meant to. i appreciated it for sure, the kisses, the fun asides, the fights, the dinner parties, the coming to the rescue parts. i just wish there was more oomph which obviously could've been restricted itself by the constraints of a novella.
i'm sure as much as i could read more pages, donnelly could write more pages. i can appreciate that she wrote this during a writer's camp and it was during a stage of burnout and writer's block. i love the way she crafted and built up the setting. i enjoyed, despite the present tense, the tenor of her prose and the rhythm of her descriptions. the characters were interesting enough. i think the reason i can't justify the 4 stars is that i personally felt something missing. whether it was that i wanted more extrapolation of the relationship, or more of the mission, or the fact that things wrapped up pretty quickly and, dare i say, abruptly, i'm can't put a finger on it. none of that was so dire, though, that it ruined my experience, but i did have fun with this book. and i can see the dynamism which made me love amberlough so much. i think none would complain if we got a full length novel from this because it really does have that great potential.
i read Amberlough 6 years ago, by chance, by fate, by random happenstance, and i have been chasing that high ever since. in every book, i look for cyril, even hints of what i can relate whatever i'm reading back to him. so whatever lara elena donnelly writes, i read. and since base notes, which fun fact was the first book i read in 2022, i've been patiently waiting for a new book from her. i came across a snippet of the story she was working on back in 2023 and boy was i excited when i came across it in this book like vindication!
about the book. it's 80 pages exactly so i know things have to happen quick and i know it's hard to get a point across in such a short amount of time, but i really think it could do with an extra 20 pages to have the room to breathe it deserves.
world: i won't say worldbuilding bc it's not made up, but i want to say that the descriptions of jassy, romania and all the fine details like the food and clothing and details of a post-WW1 era lifestyle were perfection. it's what my favorite things donnelly did about amberlough, even though it wasn't real. the way she drops in details that seemingly don't matter lends authenticity to the setting and it settles the reader into whatever they're imagining in their head. and i'm not sure how accurate everything was, but she thanks experts in her acknowledgements, so even though it's expected, i'm glad she did do her research beforehand.
prose: i could've died for amberlough's prose. base notes was tougher, because the material was so different. here, i can see her ability shining again. i'm beating a dead horse here when i gush about the same things, but her descriptions are so vivid and capture the feeling of the moment so well. it's like magic.
plot and pacing: it was decent, given the fact it's a novella, and i know we're all crying out for more. i just wish we had more time to sit between events, specifically the fights. i'm reminded of when i watched captain marvel, and the emotional tenor felt rushed and awkward because we never had a moment to really sit with the weight of the emotional response we were supposed to experience. cut straight from tension to resolution, no time to waste here. and yes, i know there really was no time to waste due to the page limit.
as for the plot, i appreciated how death and war was brought up, inasmuch as one can get a message across without being too heavy-handed with it. the mission was simple, but i did think it'd be more relevant, action-wise than it was. like when the action did happen, i was like oh now we're really getting into it yeah i like this, and then it was over as fast as it happened. deus ex machina, except i sound stupid given the nature of one of the characters and the fact we had like 3 pages left to wrap it up.
one more thing:
and then the ending.
william: give me your quiet characters with their stiffness and ability to shove what they really want so far down they forget what it is. it's not even touched that much, but he felt a random sense of duty to england, and i think more characters should have that. granted, i exclusively read high fantasy, so one might say i'm used to the evil empire getting overthrown and would like nuance. he reminded me of cyril in a lot of ways, and in others also differently. i love spies and i hope donnelly keeps writing about them because there's something inherently tragic about the fact that one's mission is distorted with the fact that said mission is a real living person and there's so many complications with the human element. added to the fact that he's dying, it gives him more flavor where one could claim he's bland (not an insult, i love characters who seem bland). my favorite scene in the novella, is when he, half-delirious, takes it upon himself to retrieve maria.
walter: i'm ashamed to say, that i wish his name didn't also begin with a w bc something i was like "wait who's talking right now." and of course he reminded me of aristide in some ways. touching on the regular discourse around vampires, about caring less about those nearest to you because eventually they'll die and you'll be forever. but what was different was that, despite it all, he still feared death. maybe i don't read a lot of vampire books or consume that media, but i'm not familiar with a vampire actually having inhibitions about undertaking some task, because they feared for their life. but i suppose that's what being caught up in a war does to a person, immortal or not.
the relationship: maybe it's here where i could've used more time. i get that william is unusual and that's what makes him fascinating. and i know that they enjoy a lot of culture together. but i wish we could go one layer further and really dig into their relationship. it's supposed to be the culmination of the plot, and i unfortunately didn't feel it like i was meant to. i appreciated it for sure, the kisses, the fun asides, the fights, the dinner parties, the coming to the rescue parts. i just wish there was more oomph which obviously could've been restricted itself by the constraints of a novella.
i'm sure as much as i could read more pages, donnelly could write more pages. i can appreciate that she wrote this during a writer's camp and it was during a stage of burnout and writer's block. i love the way she crafted and built up the setting. i enjoyed, despite the present tense, the tenor of her prose and the rhythm of her descriptions. the characters were interesting enough. i think the reason i can't justify the 4 stars is that i personally felt something missing. whether it was that i wanted more extrapolation of the relationship, or more of the mission, or the fact that things wrapped up pretty quickly and, dare i say, abruptly, i'm can't put a finger on it. none of that was so dire, though, that it ruined my experience, but i did have fun with this book. and i can see the dynamism which made me love amberlough so much. i think none would complain if we got a full length novel from this because it really does have that great potential.
December 3, 2025
Do I know anything at all about W. Somerset Maugham? I do not! Have I ever read anything he wrote? I have not! Did I still enjoy this fantastical take on a period in his life? Certainly did!
William is in Romania. He is dying of TB, and he has left his unhappy marriage - but also his daughter - in England. His lover Gerald is somewhere on the western front, current fate unknown. On paper he is working for a newspaper; in reality he is… sort of a spy. Ish. It's World War 1, but you'd be forgiven for not realising that - there's only one mention of the Kaiser, and no other leaders. In fact initially I thought it was WW2 from some other hints, but that mention of the Kaiser seals it.
An assignment comes to William: contact a man who can apparently get one of their agents out of Bucharest, which an Englishman would be unable to do. And so he contacts Walter, and they start getting to know each other, and things happen, and Walter is a surprise.
It's a Neon Hemlock, so you know you're going to get a) quality and b) queer content. This novella does not disappoint; it's well written, well paced, and made me go look up Maugham's life to see where Donnelly had shoehorned this story in.
William is in Romania. He is dying of TB, and he has left his unhappy marriage - but also his daughter - in England. His lover Gerald is somewhere on the western front, current fate unknown. On paper he is working for a newspaper; in reality he is… sort of a spy. Ish. It's World War 1, but you'd be forgiven for not realising that - there's only one mention of the Kaiser, and no other leaders. In fact initially I thought it was WW2 from some other hints, but that mention of the Kaiser seals it.
An assignment comes to William: contact a man who can apparently get one of their agents out of Bucharest, which an Englishman would be unable to do. And so he contacts Walter, and they start getting to know each other, and things happen, and Walter is a surprise.
It's a Neon Hemlock, so you know you're going to get a) quality and b) queer content. This novella does not disappoint; it's well written, well paced, and made me go look up Maugham's life to see where Donnelly had shoehorned this story in.
Read
April 14, 2025I'm a big fan of Donnelly's writing, and this combines two elements I've enjoyed in her previous works: The spycraft of Amberlough, and the "historical spec-fic" of Making Us Monsters. I'd recommend going in knowing as little as possible about the plot, if you can, although a quick scan of W. S. Maugham's Wikipedia page is handy if you want to catch all of the references. Like many good novellas it feels self-contained, but I wouldn't say no to a longer work. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
September 24, 2025
Great writing and interesting historical context. Parts of their conversations were a bit vague and there was a lot of conflict between the characters that I felt wasn't offset enough by positive interactions or inherent lovability of either of them to really be impacted when they were fighting. I think they both had some really interesting motivations to explore but that exploration fell just short of making them truly relatable. However, the pacing and length were perfect and the writing immersive.
November 4, 2025
I read this in one sitting and I have to admit I had no idea what was going on until the big reveal that this is vampire fiction. The author has taken a real person and made him the center of a strange spy story in which the main character is a mysterious nobleman of unknown age, who turns out to be a vampire. This is what happens when you wander around the library on a rainy day.
April 8, 2025
Why did Goodreads erase/remove my pre-publication review/blurb. Infuriating. This book is a gem, please read it.
May 4, 2025
Delicious as always. Lara Elena Donnelly has a way of writing that makes both brutality and banality enchanting. “Comfy cosy” prose, as a friend of mine described Amberlough. Just as true here.
Read
August 4, 2025Very “A Dowry of Blood” (minus the domestic abuse). Dreamy and dark.
August 15, 2025
A gripping and dark tale. I loved every moment of it.
I also went down a Romania-during-WWI rabbit hole to make sense of all the historical tidbits that give the story all its depth.
I also went down a Romania-during-WWI rabbit hole to make sense of all the historical tidbits that give the story all its depth.
August 28, 2025
Beautifully written, simply mesmerizing! I plan to read it a second time very soon.
August 24, 2025
4.5 stars, rounded up. Part of my enjoyment of this was my love of Maugham, and my appreciation of his representation here. But it is also just a beautifully written and crafted novella. The supernatural elements are minimal but superb.
July 31, 2025
Not my usual fare but I was completely spellbound. While I did need to find my footing in the beginning, it didn't take long to hook me in. Donnelly's prose is captivating and does an excellent job of conveying William's emotional and physical experience. Gorgeously developed atmosphere and characters. Thanks to Neon Hemlock for the ARC - I'll be coming back to this one.
August 5, 2025
3.5/5 stars
I'll be honest, I wasn't fully expecting vampires but it was decent story
I'll be honest, I wasn't fully expecting vampires but it was decent story
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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