Review - The Butterfly House by Teresa Solana

The Butterfly House (Barcelona Nights, 2)

Teresa Solana (trans Peter Bush)
Corylus Books, 12 September 2026
Available as: e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN: 9781917586283

I'm grateful to Ewa for sending me an advance copy of The Butterfly House to consider for review and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

The Butterfly House is a detective novel, focussing on DI Norma Forester of the Barcelona police, following from Black Storms, the first in this series. Norma is not your traditional rundown, haunted detective marinading in drink, rather she's a happily married middle aged woman. Well, mostly happily married. As readers of the first book will now she has an occasional lover, David. It would be overstating things to say that in The Butterfly House she's feeling guilty, but she doesn't want Octavi, her husband, hurt. This subplot somewhat distracts both Norma and David in The Butterfly House, alongside the unease arising from it being their daughter, Violetta, and her lover Gerard who discover a dead body outside the Butterfly House itself...

I loved Norma and her family. This group, which forms the backdrop to much of the story, is diverse and raucous, we see grandmothers, aunts and stepchildren, many of them occupying the same capacious apartments (Norma is from a comfortably off family) and bickering genially throughout the book. There are darker currents, in particular the rebellious behaviour of Violetta and suspicion about Gerard  but nothing so dark as the gruesome murder.

I should mention that Octavi is the local chief medical examiner - and he's also got his hands full with So husband and wife and both busy in this book, their personal and professional lives and criss-crossing with guilt, pressure to solve the murder and sheer exhaustion building as the story climaxes. A theme the book shares with its predecessor is the importance of the police seeming to be effective in the eyes of politicians and press - rich that with Gerard and his fellow squatters firmly in the frame for the murder, any delay by Norma in arresting and charging him looks like favouritism.

Solana uses this book to highlight the underbelly of a bustling and well-known tourist city - the book is set during the downturn of the early 2000s, with many of the characters here hard-up, and others on the take or bending the rules just to get by. How far you can justify that is a recurring theme, one that Norma debates with her colleagues (just as she's rather defensive with her daughter, who despises the "Mossos", the police, who in turn make no bones about their disdain for the squatters and students who occupy some of Barcelona' crumbling mansions). We see desperate people, as well as those who have done well for themselves. It's not clear how Raquel, the murdered woman, fits in here.

I felt that Solana was really enjoying herself with this book as she threads back and to between the crime with its forensic evidence, red herrings and unexpected twists and the complex relationships in Norma's family, against a theme of compromise, deception and necessity. And I really enjoyed myself reading it. Norma is a strong central character - though possibly at times her instincts as a mother don't serve her well in navigating this maze - and someone I want to hear more about, so I hope that more book in the series follow in English. 

Peter Bush's translation serves the story well, giving it in perfectly clear English while maintaining the author's voice and the slight sense of "otherness' that comes from the story being set in a foreign country.

A book I'd recommend.

For more information about The Butterfly House, see the tour poster below, or the publisher's website here. 

You can buy The Butterfly House from Amazon.

Review - Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil by VE Schwab

Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil 

VE Schwab
Pan Macmillan, 10 June 2025
Available as: HB, pp, PB, 544pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781035064649

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil to consider for review.

I don't think I can review Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil without dropping one potential spoiler - although it is a point I see mentioned in some of the author blurbs, so I think it's justified, if you want to go into this story in delightful ignorance of the central idea, stop reading now?

Still with me?

Well...

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is very much a vampire book. Across three timelines - one starting in 16th century Spain, the second in 19th century England and the third, present day Boston, MA, we see the workings of these ancient, corrupt creatures. It's actually often on familiar ground in its exploration of the idea, showing up the consequences for these long-lasting, but not immortal, monsters. The solitude. The loss of any possible human connection as mortals age and die. The need for secrecy. The ethical dilemma, when one's existence depends on taking human lives, and often. 

Where VE Schwab adds something of her own to the conceit is in her chosen monsters - or perhaps I should say victims. 

María is a peasant girl in medieval Spain. Blessed - or cursed - with good looks she seizes an opportunity to get out of grinding poverty and toil, but finds herself in an unfamiliar world without allies or friends. The life of a noblewoman is even more circumscribed than that of a poor girl. Can María repeat her trick and turn the table son the stuffy aristo who she's married?

Charlotte is a wealthy young woman in 19th century England. Like María, her only future seems to be a loveless marriage - until she meets a dazzling foreign contessa who awakes forbidden desire...

Finally, Alice, a young Scottish woman who's arrived to study at Harvard, has already made her move for escape, and has no wish to go any further, but she has little say in matters following a student party...

Each of these three stories is substantial and receives generous space in Schwab's novel, the book cutting back and forward. I don't always enjoy this device, the writer has to really know what they're doing but Schwab brings it off handsomely - with one "but...". This is the inevitable risk that any reader will enjoy one of the timelines more, or less, and resent some of the switches. For me, I found time spent with Alice a little frustrating. She wasn't a character I warmed to very quickly, and it didn't help that while the other two women's stories are more or less chronological, with Alice we get both her "now, in Boston" story and also callbacks to her previous life in her rural Scottish town and her difficult sister. The latter often interrupt the "now" timeline very abruptly and sometimes, very annoyingly. In particular I found Alice's sister, Catty, who these segments often dwell on, difficult.

Alice's dilemma in this book is - spoiler coming - that having been "turned" and (unlike the other two women) "turned" pretty much non consensually, she wants to work out what has happened to her and, if possible, get revenge. Alice is a new vampire, and that's a fairly simple motivation, unlike those of María and Charlotte, both of whom have spent long decades or even centuries becoming who they are. Alice's family history (fifteen years before, her mum died, her dad remarried, Alice is friendly with the new wife, Catty hates her and behaves in an increasingly bratty way) doesn't really affect that or bear on her current situation so these parts of the novel while I think insightful in terms of family dynamics, read as a distraction from the main story.

Which is a shame, because the main story is terrific! We see lots of gore. We see jealously. We see the tedium of a centuries-long existence. The loss of family and friends. The different vampires here cope with, or endure, this situation variously but with a consensus that there is a hollowing out process going on, robbing all, in the end, of their remaining humanity. (How to deal with that?)

Schwab also deftly portrays a rather vampire-specific, but immediately recognisable, strain of abuse and coercive control which, once you stop and think about it, absolutely fits with the situation. (Do bear this element of there story in mind if that's something that you might struggle with).

Above all this novel is superbly plotted, with the dance of her vampires across the centuries well choreographed to bring them together and ignite a final conflict with a few twists I absolutely hadn't anticipated. At the level of the writing itself, Schwab is always excellent of course and Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil is very, very readable.

So overall, I enjoyed Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil, and would recommend it, with the one caveat above.

For more information about Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Bird King by G Willow Wilson

The Bird King
G Willow Wilson
Grove Press, 4 July 2019
HB, 416pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of this book via NetGalley.

I loved G Willow Wilson's last novel, Alif the Unseen so was pleased to see The Bird King forthcoming. Set in the Muslim Empire of El Andalusia shortly before is was finally defeated by the Catholic forces of Ferdinand and Isabella, The Bird King follows Fatima, a concubine of the Sultan in the last days of the Empire. Forced to make a terrible choice in order to protect her friend, Fatima has to leave the palace where she has lived her whole life and navigate numerous dangers - from the invading Catholics, the supernatural, and her own lack of experience.

Fatima and her friend Hassan are wonderful characters - complex and spiky with their own faults and their own problems fitting into the new world that is coming. Fatima's concubinage marks her out as a sinner in that new world, not that she had any choice in the matter. Wilson's writing is at its best in conveying the nuances of Fatima's feelings here - there is no romanticising of the vanishing order. Fatima has been compelled, her mother was trafficked as a slave, yet the palace and the harem are all she knows and have in some respects protected her. Leaving all that behind is I think a process of growing up, of choosing what she wants and it is at times a painful one. Offers are made to her, but if she accepts them, will they bring the freedom she now releases she needs?

Hassan is gay - or would be so described in modern terms, I don't know if the term should be used for a man in the 15th/ 9th centuries - something that has been tolerated, or at least ignored, in his life so far. He also has a rare, magical talent that is at the heart of this book. Wilson uses that ability cleverly to flag early on that there will be an element of the fantastical here, but she only introduces that slowly with the central part of the story being one of pursuit, endurance and evasion which also explores the consequences of two cultures - Islamic and Christian - in contention here. Towards the beginning, Hassan comments that, following surrender by the Sultan, things will go on much the same, won't they? It's just that the key to the city will be held by someone else? A Christian envoy, Luz, replies sadly that, no, they won't and the tragic details of what is to come work out from there.

Luz is another magnificent creation in this book. I don't think I can say much about her because the exact role she will play only emerges some way in. Just keep an eye on her, that's all. Complex, contradictory and in a sense, free, she is a counterpoint to Fatima and the two seem to have an attraction for one another.

This book is, in the end, a glorious story, one where I found the pages zooming by on my Kindle and I was left at the end wanting to know much more. It is very sad in places but also shot through with hope. Definitely recommended and I'll be looking out for a paper copy to get on my shelves as soon as I can - that cover looks glorious!

For more information about The Bird King see the publisher's website here.

Review - Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi

Cover design by Sue Michniewicz

Summerland
Hannu Rajaniemi
Gollancz, 28 June 2018
PB, 322pp
Source: Advance copy from the publisher (thank you!)

'The windmill you are tilting at is very high and ancient and English: Privilege...'

Well. (or should I say, Wells...?)

This is a strange one. It's a mashup of classic espionage (1930s, British Empire vs Soviet Union, a molehunt and traitors among the gilded products of elite English education) with horror (through some higher dimensional maths, the afterlife has been discovered so Spooks can literally be... spooks), overtones of steampunk (Queen Victoria rules from beyond the grave in her Summer Court) there are spirit crowns and the "coppery weave of spirit armour" and a dash of paradoxical mathematics (how can one rely on a system that must, logically, contain contradictions?)

It must, I think, take a good dose of self-belief to make such a thing work, as this does, combined with the ability to spin a great story. This account of Rachel White's thankless service for a thankless Service - she's an outsider, as a mere woman, also suspect as a married woman, shouldn't she have given up her job? - is certainly a great story. (I think all the best spy books need an outsider, someone who's prepared to judge, make a stir, in the secret world).

And Rajaniemi is assured in the way he makes the fantasy stuff - the ghosts, Summerland itself, the crowns and mediums and so on - a key part of the story, not just something tacked on. This is an alternate world. There is "Oxford Court" Tube line. Ectotanks win wars. Lenin has become "The Presence" - a steely hive mind. There may still be a Civil War in Spain, but its stakes are different, higher than in our universe. The science is different too, with a forgotten dead-end of 19th century science raised to the status of truth*. One of the fun things about the book is how much reality Rajaniemi allows to bleed in, whether it's the Prime Minister, modelled on HG Wells (see if you can spot the references to his books), the (real and alleged) spies and traitors who surround Rachel or indeed the mathematics and logic.

That makes the story seem more of a game than it is, this is a genuinely compelling narrative, focussing as it does on the frustrated life of Rachel White, the obscure, flailing motivations of Peter Bloom and on the wider, corrosive effect of the Empire's control of the spirit world. Bluntly, there is no more death, those assured of a "Ticket" can find their way to Summerland, where a little society has been build up (from bricks made of dead souls...) there to live out their deaths for eternity, even able to contact the living by "etheric telephone". It's to Rajaniemi's credit that he makes this whole edifice seem not only plausible but inevitable - as are the downsides. With no more life and death, what matters anymore? Only the most desperate loss is real now, such as a pregnancy that ended early or a soul literally consumed by one of those aetheric tanks. And with death, at large.defeated, what grief, what guilt, might be loaded on those affected by those rare true deaths?

So - whether as a story of tradecraft, spooks (of both kinds), mysterious files and of treachery, as one of horror and meddling with things We Were Not Meant To Know or as a sad and moving human tale dwelling on the aftereffects of loss, this would be a great book. As a blend of all three, it's unputdownable. The writing is sharp ("The raindrops tasted like fear") with the whole concept allowing for the emotional core of the story to be made literal ("the soul-fragments he carried from the War spilled out and made cold spots in the bedroom...", "the best of what the British Empire had to offer, spun from aether and made solid by collective belief." ) and Rajaniemi isn't above sly references to the classics of spy fiction (so, to a character shivering in the yard: 'Why don't you come in from the cold and tell us all about it?'  Altogether a triumph, and I'd strongly recommend it.

For more about the book see the publisher's website here.

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*Aether atoms. The idea is that space is filled with an invisible fluid, the aether, which is the stuff that supports light waves (as the air supports sounds waves). The idea of aether fell out of favour, not so much disproved as shown by Einstein to be unnecessary. In this world things took a different turn, and an idea that was seriously considered before Einstein - that atoms can then be imagined as more or less complicated, endlessly spinning aether vortices - essentially knots - plays an important part in its physics.