Review - House of Splinters by Laura Purcell

House of Splinters

Laura Purcell
Raven Books, 9 October 2025
Available as: HB, 349pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781526627230

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of House of Splinters to consider for review.

House of Splinters is a bewitching ghost story, a return to the world of The Silent Companions and a prequel of sorts, its events set at the end of the 18th century and drawing on the same, early 16th century background, as a young couple, Belinda and Wilfrid Bainbridge, attempt to make The Bridge their home.

Ancestral taint is thick here. There is not only the history of witch Anne Bainbridge, but a vivid implication of the present-day Bainbridges benefiting from colonial rapacity. Wilfrid's black sheep brother has been employed by the East India Company. Belinda's father and brother are engaged in the West Indies trade, with all the implications of that. And Wilfrid himself is, with whatever handwringing, about to turn the villagers off the common so that he can enclose it for wheat.

That background of cursed wealth is reflected in a panoply of gothic horror that strikes the family and their servants. Belinda is already predisposed to fear the house, after events five years before when her sone was born there, and she soon recognises that its malice is particularly directed at her and her newborn, Lydia. But what is the cause of that malice, and can it be placated? 

I really enjoyed this book. A good example of the gothic is, in my experience, quite rare. It's not enough to deploy the trappings - the bumps in the night, the isolated location, the sudden scares - you need to build, and continually deny, that growing atmosphere of claustrophobia and suppressed panic. Purcell is one author who can reliably do this with her novels that leverage the position of women in a patriarchal society into a fraught sense of confinement (literal in Belinda's case with the use of that term as she approaches childbirth). House of Splinters is a brilliant example of that, Lydia unable to take the actions she needs due to matters of convention, money and status, not least the patriarchal headship of her husband (however nice a man he may seem to be).

I sensed a little touch here of Wilkie Collins in the way that Belinda's plight isn't only due to the supernatural, but she is also trapped by societal conventions and mysogyny, but also in the strength and resourcefulness she shows in seeking to protect herself and her children. And the novel ends on an eerie, threatening hint of what's to come in the future.

All in all, an exciting, frightening and atmospheric book, perfect for the dark nights.

For more information about House of Splinters, see the author's website here.

Review - The Echo of Crows by Phil Rickman

The Echo of Crows (Merrily Watkins 18)

Phil Rickman
Corvus, 6 November 2025
Available as: HB, 309pp, audio, e   
Source: Bought
ISBN(HB/ PB): 9781786494627

It's generally acknowledged that there are more books out there than one can possibly read in a lifetime. As a reader, this might amount to a bit of a memento mori. My own attitude has evolved through a number of phases. As a very young reader, I wasn't aware that there was a body of books already written, and a cadre of authors writing more. I devoured what I wanted from the shelves, and didn't bother too much about where the supply came from. 

As I grew older (and, perhaps, once I had more money to spend) I became aware that some authors (PG Wodehouse, Charles Dickens) were dead and gone and there was a finite supply of their work (explaining the song and dance around unfinished and rediscovered works - Edwin Drood, or the half-finished Arthur Ransom story Coots in the North). I also became aware that others were still alive and writing and emitting the hardbacks I could now afford, generally at the rate of one per year, creating anticipated events in my reading calendar.

And then, inevitably, one of those authors would die, leading to a sort of reading bereavement, the encounter with the last novel. Another sort of momento mori. Reginald Hill. Terry Pratchett. Graham Joyce. Ursula K LeGuin. Christopher Priest. You'll have your own list. Most recently, for me, it was Phil Rickman. But in Rickman's case - and consonant with his having chronicled the uncanny, the liminal, the not-quite-dead - I became aware a couple of months back that there was another book by him out, and this made me so happy.

The Echo of Crows is, clearly, the last book featuring Merrily Watkins, exorcist to the Church of England diocese of Hereford, dweller on the Welsh/ English border (and on other borders, too). Merrily's drawn into strange events in Longtown, a remote village where, fifteen hundred years ago, a local king was murdered. Huw Owen believes that there's evil abroad in Longtown, and, truly, there has been a modern murder too which Frannie Bliss and his lover Annie are looking into. Jane gets involved too, in a sub-plot involving hangings and their legacy.

It's a satisfyingly convoluted story, as ever, with links picked out between historic evils and current day concerns (the housing shortage, offcomers buying up property, the drugs trade) and framed around the contemporary church's love-hate relationship with the "woo-woo". Huw's on the verge of quitting, Merrily, as ever, is aware of the ambivalence of smooth archdeacon Siân and of the diocesan authorities to her special calling - but also of the appeal, to modern seekers of something, well, a little more rooted, than traditional expressions of belief. 

Convoluted, as ever, and dark, as ever, but perhaps not quite as dark? This superb series has never flinched from darkness, but in this final part, the threat (there is a sense of threat) is perhaps less directly focussed on Merrily, something coming for her, as it is an outcropping, a problem in the field to be dealt with. That's a positive, I think, and a choice, not Rickman running out of steam, and the result is a sort of psychological space here that allows The Echo of Crows to draw together, to a degree, threads that have run through this series: Merrily's spiritual struggles, Lol's career, their ambiguous relationship but also Annie's relationship with her dead father, her and Frannie's future, and Jane and Eirion's on-off whatever-it-is. 

No, Jane hasn't saved Ledwardine from the developers (yet) or solved the mystery of its ancient roots, but some mystery is always necessary, don't you think? And, in the end, The Echo of Crows seems to be saying that there is always more light to be found here, and we should keep searching for that.

May Mr Rickman rest in peace, and rise in glory. Until then, his books are an excellent monument to him.

For more information about The Echo of Crows, see the publisher's website here.