Twenty-four minutes. That's it. I sat down to "just check" this Schwab short before getting back to my thesis code, and before my procedural terrain generator even finished compiling, the whole thing was over. And I was just... sitting there, staring at my monitor, thinking about a dead man's power he can't control and a marriage that didn't survive the resurrection.
Let me back up.
297 Days Dead and Still Not Okay
V.E. Schwab's Warm Up is a prequel to her Vicious series — basically the origin story appetizer before the full entrée. David died in an avalanche, came back, and now he's got some kind of power that terrifies him enough to become a hermit. His wife left. Took his kid. And after nearly 300 days of hiding in his house, David tries to go outside again.
That's your premise. For 24 minutes.
And here's the thing — Schwab does something clever that I didn't fully appreciate until after it was done. The whole story is framed as David worrying about his own power, keeping it contained, white-knuckling through basic human interaction. But the gut-punch twist is that his power isn't the threat. Someone else's is. It reframes everything you just listened to. The paranoia was pointed in the wrong direction the entire time, and that structural misdirection in such a tiny package? That's efficient storytelling. That same dark inversion of who-holds-the-real-power kept nagging at me when I was reading Dark Magic — different scale, same genre DNA. My D&D group would love this as a one-shot premise — the PC who thinks they're the monster, only to realize the real danger was sitting across the table.
Jeremy Arthur and the Art of Not Overdoing It
Jeremy Arthur narrates this thing with exactly the right restraint. In a 24-minute short, you can't afford a narrator who grandstands. Arthur keeps it tight — slightly different voices for each character without turning into a one-man theater troupe. His accent work for June stood out to me; it's this subtle shift that immediately signals "different person, different world" without pulling you out of the intimate headspace of David's anxiety. One reviewer said they didn't even notice the time passing, and yeah, that tracks. Arthur matches the story's claustrophobic tension beat for beat. He's not Steven Pacey (nobody is, let's be honest), but for this kind of short, contained fiction, he's a perfect fit.
No audio issues. No weird production artifacts. Clean and focused.
The "Is 24 Minutes Even Worth It?" Question
Look, I need to be honest here. This is a short story. Shorter than most D&D sessions I've ever run. If you're coming in expecting Schwab's signature world-building depth — the kind of layered magic system stuff she does in Shades of Magic — you're going to feel shortchanged. This isn't that. The "power" David has is kept deliberately vague, which works for the mystery but might frustrate anyone who (like me) wants the full magic system breakdown. There's no info-dump, and for once, I actually wanted one.
The pacing is interesting — it's slow for something so short, which sounds like a contradiction but isn't. Schwab spends most of the runtime inside David's head, marinating in his dread. Some people will call that shallow. I'd call it atmospheric, but I can see the complaint. If you need constant momentum, this isn't going to give you that. It's more of a slow exhale that ends with a sharp inhale.
And if Schwab's style doesn't click for you generally, this won't convert you. I saw one reviewer basically say Vicious was a fluke and everything else from Schwab falls flat for them. Fair enough. But if you already vibe with her dark, power-corrupts sensibility, this is a nice little hit of that.
Who Gets the Invite to This Table (And Who Should Skip)
Pick this up if you're already into the Vicious/Villains series and want more context. Pick it up if you've got a dead 20 minutes between longer listens and want something that'll actually stick with you. Skip it if you need your fantasy to come with maps, appendices, and a glossary — this is a character sketch, not an epic. Also skip if you bounce off slow-burn internal dread; there's no action set piece here to bail you out.
The progression is satisfying for what it is. It's not going to change your life. But it nailed that specific feeling of dread-turning-to-revelation in under half an hour, and that's worth something. Queen of Cursed Things left me with a similar low-grade haunting — the kind where you close the app and just stare at the ceiling for a minute.
Roll for Initiative (It's a Short Rest, Not a Long One)
I listened to this instead of writing my thesis. And then I sat there for another ten minutes thinking about it, which means those 24 minutes punched above their weight class. It's a Schwab short doing exactly what Schwab shorts should do: make you slightly uncomfortable, flip your expectations, and leave you wanting the full novel. Which, conveniently, already exists.
Back to my thesis. (Back to my thesis in like... 20 more minutes.)
