Review - Strange New World by Vivian Shaw

Strange New World

Vivian Shaw
Orbit, 20 May 2025

Available as: PB, 371pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356521077

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of Strange New World  to consider for review.

I thought that the series of books about Greta Helsing, doctor to the monsters of London, was done, so I was VERY excited to see the e-book only novella Bitter Waters last year. Gloriously it was followed up by Strange New World.  Strange New World does though think mark a definite end.

It was wonderful to meet Greta again.  I have a weakness for characters who, like her, may be tossed around by events and even baffled by what's going, but nevertheless remain level-headed, focussed and competent throughout - rather than becoming so just in time for the third act. 

Of course, it helps a protagonist when their husband is a wealthy vampire, their best friend is a senior functionary in Hell and their circle of acquaintances included the Voivode, Count Dracula himself. Greta has all of those advantages and is nowhere near as hard-pressed as she was in the earlier books. Still,  even it does look as though previous events - the hunting down of harmless monsters by religious fanatics - are being repeated. Greta suffered enough trauma from that to give her pause (I also have a weakness for stories that respect and recognise trauma rather than just ignoring it). Even so, the dangers (to herself, her friends and indeed, the fabric of reality itself) that she has weathered have also left her conscious of just how vulnerable mortals (and monsters) can be and of the need to face them. In Strange New World, those dangers come from a new direction, and the means to overcome must as well.

Without being too spoilery, I'd like to say how much I enjoyed the resolution to this book. It would have been possible to make it a magnificently bloody piece of combat, with the Universe balanced on a knife edge - and indeed there are some nail biting set piece conflicts in here - but the book is concerned  rather with empathy and morality. The solution, if there is one, is therefore going to require compassion, flexibility - and friendship.

That leads us to a much richer, and necessarily messier, conclusion than if it all turned on a knock-down battle, but also to a much better one I think. Indeed, as the book ended I found myself thinking of a perhaps surprising precedent - CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters. Setting aside the question of whether those "letters from a senior to a junior demon" (a kind of infernal Yes, Minister) establish Lewis, the great Christian apologist, as a founder of urban fantasy (I would love that but perhaps... not quite)  I think there is a comparison to be drawn. I think one of Lewis's insights was to explore issues of personality, confusion and despair in the subjects that his industrious demons were trying to mislead, rather than brimstone and temptation. 

Shaw's demons (and her angels) inhabit a different moral universe, not the Christian one, and nobody is actively trying to save or damn anyone. Here, Heaven and Hell are more like rival idealogical systems, and of course, as she makes clear, other mythologies are also available. But, at the root of things I think there are the same issues that Lewis explored - the fatal flaws in human, demon or, indeed, angel, that can lead to dreadful consequences. We are all monsters. We can all be better. We all need love, acceptance and hope. And friendship. Which made the ending of this book, and the moral actions that lead to the resolution and point to a future of hope, so powerful for me.

Which is, perhaps, a good place to end a series. While I will miss Greta, I feel that in these five books have completed something significant, say something significant. 

I will be keen to see what Shaw writes next!

For more information about Strange New World, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Library of the Unwritten by AJ Hackwith

The Library of the Unwritten: A Novel from Hell's Library
A J Hackwith
Titan Books, 11 February 2020
PB, 448pp

I'm grateful to Titan Books for an advance copy of The Library of the Unwritten to consider for review.

The Unwritten Wing, presided over by its Head Librarian, Claire, is where all the unfinished - and completely unwritten - books are stored.

It's also situated in a corner of Hell...

The Library of the Unwritten features an entertaining - and slightly scary - band of characters: Claire herself (who as a Librarian is of course pretty formidable), her apprentice, Brevity (an ex-Muse), the angel Ramiel ("The Thunder of God"), novice demon Leto and Hero, who has absconded from his book. (We soon learn that Claire is as much jailer as Librarian, responsible for preventing Characters from escaping their books and wandering the world). While in some ways an odd bunch, they're also reassuringly normal - Brevity suffers panic attacks, Hero is a bit of a poser, Claire has a dazzling sense of duty but is driven by something that I can't say any more about because spoilers, Leto is a vulnerable teenager on the cusp between humanity and demonhood, and Ramiel has spent earns repenting a mistake and trying, with little success, to earn forgiveness. Together they squabble, battle and and hunt their way through a succession of the Realms of the afterlife, hunting for a dangerous - and forbidden - book.

This gives Hackwith the opportunity to set up some intriguing - and exciting - encounters. What happens, for example, when an angel or a demon wanders out of its own context and ends up in Valhalla, or an an Ancient Greek underworld? You'd think it could be something off a mishmash - but in fact Hackwith deploys a forensic logic throughout, which, coupled with the strong characterisation here, makes even the most unlikely scenarios plausible.

As the hunt for that most threatening of books proceeds, Claire and her team are forced to confront parts of themselves they would rather not, or which they have managed to forget, and to reflect where their true loyalties and loves lie. Even Hero, who sprang fully formed form his book, proved to have regrets and unfinished business and also something to prove out in the real world. There are some shocking revelations. Our heroes (and Hero) are also pushed to their wits' end to protect the Library, which is also, it seems, in danger.

There has been a mini wave recently of fantasy featuring resourceful librarians and the importance of books, which is not surprising I think as librarians are important people as are books (yes, I do mean people, books, here, ARE people). It also reflects the delightfully fluid, ambiguous nature of books and reading as both reflecting and creating reality. The Library of the Unwritten is a worthy addition to these, bringing to the genre its own distinct strand of ethical and theological commentary which underlies everything the team here get up and means their actions have visible and serious consequences.

It's all great fun and I look forward to seeing how this series evolves in future books.

For more about The Library of the Unwritten, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Grave Importance by Vivian Shaw

Cover by Will Staehle and Lisa Marie Pompilio

Grave Importance (Dr Greta Helsing, 3)
Vivian Shaw
Orbit, 24 September 2019
PB, e, 395pp

I'm grateful to Orbit for a free advance copy of Grave Importance to consider for review.

And there was war in heaven...

This is the third and final (though I hope "final" doesn't mean "forever") outing for Dr Greta Helsing, physician to the monsters of London, following her previous adventures in Strange Practice and Dreadful Company. In a satisfying twist on urban fantasy, Shaw has her hero treat all manner of supernatural beings, from vampires to mummies to ghouls, at her practice in Harley Street. And in the course of this she is often required to save the world - as you are - whether this involves negotiating with demons or hunting through abandoned tunnels in Paris or London.

Throughout everything, Helsing remains outwardly cool, professional and level-headed, even if she's screaming inside. Her medical training may help, or the fact that she's found love with Sir Francis Varney, a notorious Vampyre (note the spelling) in his day who together with his vampire (note the spelling) friend (Lord) Edmund Ruthven and the demon, Fastitocalon, constitute a kind of ragged family for the orphaned Greta.

It certainly helps that in Grave Importance, Greta's been invited to stand in as Medical Director at Oasis Natrun, a luxury spa and clinic for mummies located on the French Riviera. Here the thousands of year old creatures can have their bandages rewound. Perished and powdered bones, tendons and muscles are replaced. There are even cures for ancient diseases that plague their preserved organs. The facilities are impressive (the place its own helicopter!), the accommodation even more so, and Greta can really enjoy herself applying cutting-edge procedures. All seems to be going well... until Ruthven suffers a mysterious illness, and Greta's mummy patients begin collapsing.

What can be wrong this time?

In an elegantly paced and absorbing adventure, Shaw reveals a new threat to the stability of the universe, one considerably more menacing than anything Greta and the gang have come up against yet. It is an utterly cosmic, appalling danger, a mine quietly laid decades before and which, it seems, it is beyond the capacity of mere humans - or vampires - to defuse. Which raises the question, what do you do at the end of all things, Sam? As readers of the previous books will know, Shaw is mischievously inventive with her quotes and references:

'"This is Hell?" Nadezhda asked, her eyes still too wide.
"Nor are we out of it," said another voice, and they turned to see a stocky man in a surgical gown... The woodcuts didn't really do him justice. "Johannes Faust. You're Helsing?"'

Indeed, there's a sense in which all the main characters here are references, to name only a few, you'll recognise the name Helsing of course and both Varney and Ruthven were chronicled - mischronicled, they'd say stiffly if asked - in classic Victorian horror literature.

Ranging from London to New York to the South of France to the very towers of Hell - and the Nacreous Gate of Heaven - this book is certainly conceived on a grand scale, allowing Greta and her allies full rein to be the characters they have grown to be over these books. That's especially true for  Greta, as she helps out in a very different sort of hospital than the one she's used to, but Varney faces up to his wicked past and both Cranswell and Grisaille play a roguish part. There's a touch of the caper about the book, a dash of romance and a real moral heart behind the wisetalking: at one level Grave Importance is showcasing the everyday virtue of just getting on with it, doing what you can, not giving up, at another it takes that message and transcends it completely, making the whole point one of never giving in to despair, never believing oneself irredeemable, never losing heart.

Oh, and - as mentioned above - Dr Faust is here too. Haven't you always wanted to meet him?

Overall, a fun and fitting end to this trilogy. It has a simpler, more pared down plot that the preceding books, focussing a bit more on character, which I rather enjoyed but best of all there's lots of Greta but at the same time the story is still told on an epic scale. Shaw crams a lot into this book, paradoxically though that still left me wanting more - for example I could have done with more plot around Van Dorne, perhaps: a fascinating character with a fascinating history who plays a significant role here but doesn't really get much airtime.

And finally: like the previous books this has a simply gorgeous cover, the woodcut style giving a very authentic feel of classic horror slightly subverted by the detail of the illustrations. I think Will Staehle and Lisa Marie Pompilio have worked wonders here).

For more about the book, including links to buy, see the publisher's website here.