Review - The Edge by Tim Lebbon

Cover by Julia Lloyd

The Edge (Relics, 3)
Tim Lebbon
Titan Books, 25 June 2019
PB, 333pp

I'm grateful to Titan Books for a free advance copy of The Edge. This is the third and final part of Lebbon's Relics trilogy. In the first book, Relics, he introduced us to an urban fantasy world where shady dealers trade in the remnants - relics - of long-dead mythological creatures. Unicorn horn is the least of it. Think pixie tongues, dwarf hearts, fairy eyes... But what if they weren't long dead?

What if some were recently alive?

What if some were still alive?

Introducing chancer Vince and his heedless wife Angela, who also appear in sequel The Folded Land, Lebbon showed how the beauty and terror of the creatures known as The Kin lurks behind our own bland world - and how Angela's and Vince's lives are changed forever once they discover this.

Both Relics and The Folded Land are complex, intricate stories following different factions among the Kin, and the humans who would exploit them. Some of the Kin want to hunker down and stay safe, others to rise up. Humans variously want to profit from Kin relics, wonder ate their beauty - or eat them. Often it's hard to tell who wants what, who is on whose side, with plenty of double dealing and guilt.

In The Edge, Lebbon tells a simpler story, rounding everything off. It's a more pared down book than either of its forerunners, bringing us back to the experiences and struggles of a few central characters. There is Mallian the Nephilim, a powerful being who wants the Kin to struggle for power - "Ascent" - and tread down impudent humans. There is Grace, the fairy Malliam sought to control but who turned on him. And there is Angela, Vince and Angela's niece Sammi, who was affected by an attack by Grace which has left her with developing abilities.

Much of the ambiguity of the previous books is gone, and we know where we stand, which gives Lebbon more bandwidth (so to speak) to tell the story these books were, perhaps, always about - the love between Angela and Vince, what they have lost, and what they still have. We saw in Relics, especially, what Vince meant to Angela. Now she has lost him twice - Folded land saw him stranded in Grace's pocket universe, ironically alongside Mallian, whose  dreams he helped destroy. Can she find him again? And if she does, can she keep him, at a time when great sacrifices may be required to face down the threat of Mallian? Living as a fugitive, Angela has also lost the ordinary life she had and, following Grace's attack, her sister. And teenage Sammi feels herself changing, which is also a loss of sorts.

There is a real sense here, as the endgame commences, of unfinished business. Lebbon gives us a new character, Bone, who as a boy was driven from his home town of Longford when the army gassed and flooded it. Bone has secrets, and has spent his life hunting the Kin. Mallian, obviously, has his own plans. Grace finds herself distracted from the Folded Land that she created. And out there is a government agency which has the Kin in its sights.

As I said, this is a simpler story, with less of a feeling of "what's going on?" but that is amply compensated for by a narrative drive, a feeling of coming disaster, of ending and a really fast pace. The story drives onwards, blurring the boundaries between fantasy and thriller as the Kin seem about to come out into the open and challenge the humans - who have taken over their world - to respond.

All through these books I've been struck by Lebbon's ability to depict the horror both of what are often, literally, cruel monsters, horrors from our darkest dreams and the chaos and devastation wrought by humanity on the natural world. That's symbolised here by the town of Longford and its fate, as it was in The Folded Land by the destruction of a forest where a tree-spirit sheltered. Conflict between the two seems wired into the nature of reality, but what will be the result if the Kin fight back seriously?

A satisfying ending to the series overall, an exciting book - and do I see Lebbon leaving himself a way out, perhaps, to further stories?

Strongly recommended.

Excerpt and Review - The Folded Land by Tim Lebbon

Cover by Julia Lloyd

The Folded Land (Relics 2)
Tim Lebbon
Titan Books, 20 March 2018
PB, 334pp

I'm grateful to Lydia at Titan for an advance copy of The Folded Land and for inviting me to take part in the tour.

I have an exclusive excerpt from The Folded Land. I've reviewed the book below, but first, just take a look at this!

The excerpt

“You okay, honey?” her dad asked.

“Yeah, Dad, I’m good. Kind of tired.”

“Still hungry?”

She nodded. It felt strange. Like coming home to a place so safe and familiar, and returning somewhere after a long time away. The familiarity held a deep nostalgia that someone her age should hardly recognize. “You’ve got an old head on your shoulders,” her mom used to say, and Sammi sometimes imagined herself with gray hair and strange, knowing eyes.

“I’m just going out on the dock for a little bit,” she said. “It’s a nice day, and some sun will make me feel better.”

“You’re sure?” That look of uncertainty. He asked her questions like that a lot nowadays. You’re sure? Do you really think so? Are you certain you want to do that? It had something to do with grief and the uncertainties he felt about her mother dying. In some ways he was being overprotective, making sure that every action Sammi took was a safe one. It was as if he couldn’t bear to have her to grieve on her own. They often spent time together, walking or sitting on the sofa and talking about Mom, looking through photos or old videos, crying and laughing and struggling to move on in their own individual ways.

But sometimes it became cloying.

Sometimes, Sammi just wanted to be on her own.

“I’m sure,” she said, smiling. “It’s one of those moments.” They both had moments that they talked about. Unremarkable memories of her mother, his wife, sitting somewhere and telling a joke, planting a rose bush, pointing at a flock of birds sheeting back and forth across the estuary. They might be years old, random recollections of lost times that meant so much. Every one of them was special.

“Right,” he said, smiling, nodding. “They’re important. Every moment is important.” He paused, and then added, “I’ll put the food in the oven to keep it warm.”

“I won’t be that long, Dad,” she said. “Ten minutes.”

“Okay. Still want to go kayaking this afternoon?”

“Absolutely! I’ll race you.”

“You’ll lose.” He always said that, and until lately he’d been right. Last summer, though, Sammi started beating him in their races. She remembered her mother laughing as they’d both splashed and sweated their way past the spot where she sat in a boat, Sammi edging ahead by half a length and lifting her paddle skyward in triumph. She’d been so pleased that she hadn’t stopped mentioning it for the rest of the day. That long-ago, hot and perfect day.

While her father carried their early take-out to the house, Sammi crossed the lawn toward the dock. Though the sky was a searing blue and the midday sun beat down, the lawn was still damp from the previous day’s surprise downpour. Water soaked through her shoes and into her socks. It was a nice feeling, cool and calming. She stepped onto the dock and kicked off her shoes, pulled off the socks, and enjoyed the feeling of warm wood on the soles of her feet.

She walked to the end of the dock and felt as if she should continue onward. As if there was somewhere else to go. As if there was more to see. This was her favorite place in the whole wide world, but something inside seemed to be urging her elsewhere. Across the wide inlet she could see a dozen houses sitting close to the water, boats docked beside some, flags flying from poles, a few people just visible in gardens, heat haze making ghosts out of them. Several boats chugged up and down the river. A group of kayakers paddled past. She felt an unaccountable need to keep walking, because this wasn’t where she needed to be.

Sammi’s heart hammered in her chest, and as she turned to go back to the house a splinter slid into her skin just beneath her big toe.

Ow!

Silly sausage! a voice said just over her shoulder, and she spun around. Her mother’s pet name for her, spoken in a voice so like her mother’s and yet with a weird lilt, like the distorted echo of someone impersonating her almost perfectly.

“Mom?” Sammi asked.

A shadow passed across the sun and she looked up. Clouds were forming, wispy, darkening. Her skin prickled all across her body. The hairs on her arm stood on end. She looked back toward the house. Her father stood outside the open patio door, smiling and waving her over so that they could share lunch. He and the house were a million miles away.

A sharp, loud crack split the world.

The review

The Folded Land is the sequel to Lebbon's 2018 horror fantasy Relics, (my review here) in which Angela discovered that her boyfriend Vince was involved in a gruesome trade in "relics" - body parts of the Kin: monsters or mythical creatures from the ancient past, long before humanity ruled, whose heydey, the Time, is lost in the fog of myth.

Worse, she discovered that not all relics originated with the long dead...

Now, Angela is on the run, blamed by the police for the massacre that concluded Relics - and by the surviving relic hunters, for the loss of their friends and family. She has left London and is back in the US, trying to lie low, but the past - and the Kin - have other ideas.

This is an excellent follow-up to Relics, possibly actually better than the earlier book. There is a notable shift in tone, as Angela has to engage with what the existence of the Kin means for humanity. The Kin are bewitching, delightful, so rare and special that even meeting one is a privilege - but they are also inhuman, savage and powerful.

Many hark back to older times when they strode the land without fear.

Some aim for Ascent, revealing their power and taking back their usurped place in the world.

And in the space between those two ideas of the Kin - the rare and the precious, hunted almost to destruction by humans, and the powerful and deadly - sits this story. It's a tale sketched in shades of grey, with no moral absolutes. The Kin have suffered, we see them suffering, but they are also - or some of them are - ruthless and savage.  Lebbon is good at sketching the sheer otherness of his monsters, their non-humanity - even the most sympathetic. These aren't run of the mill urban fantasy creatures settling down to cosy, albeit weird, lives that echo those of humans. There's a real sense of rawness, of peril here, never more than when the story turns to the enigmatic fairy Grace, whom Angela rescued in Relics.

At the same time, and despite the many brutal deaths littering the book, Lebbon doesn't portray humans, either, as victims. The "kin-Killer", Gregor, strides through this book like the very worst of monsters, his goal obscure, his blade sharp and his tread ominous. He will cross paths with Angela, and the life of her niece, Sammi, will hang between them.

It's an excellent horror story, a superior fantasy, soaked in blood and haunted almost to the end by mystery. And best of all the story clearly isn't over, with The Edge still to come.

This series could have settled down into a bland life-among-the-monsters fantasy but in Lebbon's hands we're given something more, something older, deeper and much, much darker.

Strongly recommended.

For more information about this book see the Titan website here.

Review - Relics by Tim Lebbon

Relics
Tim Lebbon
Titan Books, 21 March 2017
PB, 384pp

I'm grateful to Titan Books for an advance copy of this.

Beneath the surface of our world, mythological creatures and their artifacts still exist—corrupt people pay fortunes for a sliver of dragon bone, a basilisk's scale, or an angel's wing. Angela Gough is an American criminology student in London whose fiancé Vince disappears, and her investigation leads her into a black market specializing in arcane relics. She meets Mary Rock, a criminal of mythic status who also wants to find Vince… to kill him. Angela and a growing team of adventurers must stop this horrific trade, yet they face a growing menace as the hunted creatures begin to fight back.

I found this a refreshingly different take on urban fantasy. Yes, we're in the heart of the city, and, yes, there are mythological creatures around, but there's no magic - that died years ago - and it's largely, the "monsters" who are the victims here, subjects of a merciless trade in body parts... and worse. So the book's suffused, almost, with a conservationist sensibility: the nymphs, angels, pixies and so on are the last of their kind, hunted almost to extinction and clinging on in dark corners and secret hideaways. That gives the whole book a distinct focus and a shape, as well as reversing the usual assumptions that something nasty's out there, waiting to eat us.

It's an intriguing premise, and Angela is an intriguing - an appealing - hero, drawn into a strange world with rules she can't understand when her boyfriend doesn't come home one night. Looking beyond the obvious explanation, Angela sets out to find him, rapidly getting into a world she never knew existed - a world of little known underground tunnels, of shadows in alleyways, of crime dens in Soho backstreets, strange, shrivelled creatures packaged up for delivery and most of all, of supremely creepy villains. Angela's resourceful and she puts her knowledge of crime to good use, but will it be enough to bring success in her search - or even allow survival in the world of Fat Frederick (NEVER shorten his name!) let alone that of Mary Rock?

Lebbon tells a violent, tension-filled story, the action pretty much continuous - but he also finds time to bring in some nice portrayals of London - the summer London that's almost like an outdoor room, crowds moving comfortably through the parks and streets, oblivious to the seedy yards, abandoned buildings and shadowy watchers... It's all very real and also very readable. And that relaxed, comfortable London is only a mask, a mask that slips in the most gore spattered finale that I've read in ages.

Of course there is a little more to the book than cruel humans hunting down Kin, and I sensed that Lebbon was setting up some tensions among the latter for future books - which I devoutly hope will follow soon - but on the whole it's straightforward, though a couple of characters play an ambiguous role - and even Vince turns out to be less innocent than you'd think.

A good, gripping read. I'd strongly recommend you get in on this series at the beginning.