Blogtour review - The Stones of Landane by Catherine Cavendish

The Stones of Landane
Catherine Cavendish
Flame Tree Press, 14 January 2025
Available as: PB, 240pp, HB, 240pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781787588912

I'm grateful to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for sending me a copy of The Stones of Landane to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Firmly in the folk horror genre, The Stones of Landane sees a young couple, Jonathan and Nadia, arrive to spend a few days at a comfortable pub in the eponymous English village eating good food and drinking nice things while exploring the local stone circle - to which Nadia feels an inexplicable bond. 

What can possibly go wrong?

Well, quite a lot, as you'll have anticipated - but in this eerie, mysterious novel Cavendish adeptly keeps us guessing as to exactly what. 

This particular sort of prehistoric-focussed supernatural fiction must I think actually be quite tricky for an author to get right. A great deal has been written about the origin and properties of prehistoric monuments (The Stones of Landane takes in not only a henge-like circle, but also a long barrow, and an artificial hill modelled on Silbury). You can read anything from the driest of scientific archaeology to the enjoyable speculations of modern day antiquarians to frankly disturbing, Occult-tinged material. So almost anything could be going on here, and I'm impressed at how Cavendish stays grounded, as it were, and serves up a novel like this which is coherent in terms of plot, distinctive enough to merit a new story, and which lives up to the wealth of history and speculation that already exists.

I'd say in fact that she succeeds with rather a degree of aplomb in a tale that uses different timelines to suggest what may be going on without ever spelling things out. That also allows for rather interesting episodes set in the late Victorian period and the high (pun deliberate) flower power era, both of which show varying attitudes to women's role in society - rather a theme of the story, I'd say.

That, and a growing sense of peril and tension, accompany the gradual unfolding of a complex and at times, almost heartbreaking, narrative pitting individuals, who mostly just wanna have fun, against a millennia-spanning conflict where there may be a good and and evil but there's certainly precious little solace. Even victory here would have a bitter taste, I think, and my abiding feeling was wishing I tell the protagonists to jest get away while they can.

In all I found this a deeply engaging and fun story which at times put me in mind of Robert Aickman at his best - especially the opening section with the unsuspecting couple arriving at the rural inn. 

For more information about The Stones of Landane, see the publisher's website here.

You can buy The Stones of Landane from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.