Review - The Someday Garden by Ashley Poston

The Someday Garden

Ashley Poston
HarperCollins HQ, 16 June 2026
Available as: PB, 378pp audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB/ PB): 9780008769284

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

The latest of Ashley Poston's romances-with-a-supernatural-twist takes us to Maine, where Sophie Drear is on loan away from the New York Botanical Gardens to give some TLC to Lilymoor. Lilymore is a renowned garden on the coast, which has become rather neglected since the death of the owner's (Eula's) husband Henry. Projects were left unfinished, parts of the gardens have been closed off - and now Eula is talking about stepping back and passing the place on to her nephews.

Sophie has been feeling frustrated, stuck,  and alone and working at Lilymoor gives her a chance to consider her future direction. The gardens' two hundredth anniversary is approaching, and the place needs some love - as does Sophie. She sets to work to clear the mysterious vines that are choking the hedge maze, the damp which is destroying the wildflowers, and the general decay of it all.

Lilymoor, however, proves to be a strange place, whether it's Damnit, the murderous goose who prowls the grounds, the legend that you can hear the voice of your truest love in the grounds, or the way that the garden resists being quite, well, tamed...

For Sophie, it's the place where she keeps finding a strange blue door that later just, well, isn't there. 

And it's the grumpy man who's in the half-finished garden behind that door.

Dripping with romance, longing and loss, The Someday Garden is the story of Sophie's summer, a summer in which she reflects on her future, her life, her friendship with Harriet ("Harrie") who writes lists of untranslatable words (Poston gives one to each chapter as a heading). 

Poston's books are loosely linked - I saw references here to the family undertakers of The Dead Romantics, the publishing world of The Seven Year Slip (did we meet Juliette there?) and the seaside music happy of Sounds Like Love. But they are not sequels, and I think it's more important that they are linked thematically. Each takes a "what if?" and makes it really - whether the idea of a time slip to allow an opportunity to meet a potential lover, a little town where dreams can come true, or hearing a loved one's voice in one's head. Poston takes these ideas seriously, showing up the potentialities but also the dangers. In The Someday Garden, the idea truly embodies the themes of the novel: being stuck, unable to move on, literally trapped. Sophie is in such a state, but so, in reality, is the garden. She hasn't come to Lilymoor to find love, indeed she's resisting that idea, she sees it as a betrayal, but it may be that finding it will free not only herself, but the garden.

The Someday Garden is a beautiful book, both in its themes and in Poston's down to earth, rooted, yet allusive prose. Horticultural language abounds - "I could barely take root anywhere",  lovers see the world around them "changing and growing and become, again and again, as we shucked off our leaves and burrowed our roots".  About Lilymoor: "There was a surety in the sound of this place. The promise of a sprout, the slowness of a bud unfurling." Rootedness is important, but so is growth. And growth may require painful changes - rooting out those vines, drying that bed, weeding and seeding and waiting.

It's a book that accepts pain and loss, and knows that they will never simply be healed - but at the same times, also knows that to hold onto them stunts growth.  As I said, a beautiful, moving book and one I strongly recommend.

For more information about The Someday Garden, see the publisher's website here.

The Knight Watch by Thomas D Lee

The Knight Watch

Thomas D Lee
Orbit, 23 June 2026
Available as: HB, 562pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356518558

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for sending me a copy of The Knight Watch  to consider for review.

SO grateful! Two years ago I loved, loved, loved Lee’s debut novel Perilous Times, which brought King Arthur and the Knighrs of the Round Table into a near-future, dystopian Britain. The book was a breath of fresh air, exploring the idea of an ancient hero and his war band sleeping, returning to "save" the country and what that might mean in a present where both "save" and "country" are deeply contested, and evolving, notions. It also poked gentle fun at a childhood classic I love, and is written in vivid, fresh language away from the conventions of fantasy (and indeed urban fantasy)

So I was keen to read Lee's next book, not exactly a prequel, but set earlier than Perilous Times, during the Second World War and also featuring the Knights. (As you will know if you have paid attention to the Matter of Britain, Merlin lives life backwards, so in a sense we’re emulating him). 

The short version: The Knight Watch is just as good, perhaps even slightly better, and now I need to go back and reread Perilous Times so thanks Thomas, this is doing my TBR state no good at all.

Like its predecessor, The Knight Watch riffs off the tropes and concerns of the classic legends. For example, there are echoes of the common theme where a questing knight is beguiled by a monster, posing as a fair damsel. While in the original stories this, naturally, posed dangers mainly to our chaste hero’s honour, in The Knight Watch it’s a bit more the threat to their sense of purpose, their desire to keep on keeping on. 

That in itself is a big theme for a book whose heroes (and heroine) have been resurrected countless times. When they die, they return to sleep under their own tree, until called to clamber out of the mud because Britain has need of them. This can become wearying, and each deals with that in their own way. Some drink. Some just abandon the questing life. To varying degrees, they have rumbled the way in which they are being used by their boss, Marlowe (yes, Christopher) to further imperialism or colonialism. All, if pushed, will admit that their whole setup - the original warband gathering tribute for a petty chieftain in sub-Roman Britain - isn’t actually the shining example of virtue that later tales painted. (Evan if Tristan, for one, feels affinity for the high Midde Ages ideal).

So it’s a somewhat disenchanted band who are called together to play their part in the Second World War. Lee has fun here exploring the different roles. Lancelot flyies a Spit, a dead ringer for Biggles  with his fighter-pilot bravado (and also in recalling the Great War, flying Camels and the Red Baron - a pointed comparison since James Bigglesworth was of course another hero continually resurrected and reinvented to take on the nation's enemies. Galehaut is a conscientious objector, driving ambulances, Agravaine something of a spiv. Kay has joined Special Forces. And Isolde - yes, Isolde, do keep up, she's part of this too, do keep up, only don't mention Tristan, her ex, Tristan and Isolde are so over (a fine romance, yes, but as we see things told from her point of view, it soured quickly, a few centuries ago, though unfortunately, he's not moved on and to her annoyance, keeps trying to 'win' her back (that's men for you) - and Isolde is working for the Resistance in France where she may just have found herself a girlfriend.

Now, though, the venerable war band be about to shout their last hurrah. There are ways to kill even the unkillable, magics stronger than Merlin's, and with their constant quest for ancient knowledge to pervert, the Nazis - aided by a sorceror-for-hire whom Marlowe, perhaps unwisely, refused to deal with - plus some old enemies of Caer Moelydd, may be about to turn the war band into a weapon of their own.

Almost everyone’s fallen out. Agravaine is just annoying. Isolde and Tristan aren't speaking (well, she's not). The events which led to the fall of the Round Table aren't given in detail but sketched in against a background of Late Antique Britain, and it's clear that deep scars remain - the Knights haven't for centuries worked as a group, they simply tend to run across each other (though there are some intense relationships). So they seem ill-prepared to meet the Nazi occult threat. (Characteristically, as they prepare to do that, Lee again echoes the medieval stories here, having the Knights gather at a requisitioned manor to feast on bully beef and drink bottled beer before they set out on their quest, being are parachuted (with splitting hangovers) into occupied France). 

There are resources to draw on. Even the dreams used to ensnare our heroes, lulling them into passive fantasies of what is lost, can be a source of strength. May, a Knight who found her true identity in 1920s Berlin, uses them to reach her comrades when they are lost. Perhaps her experience of life helps her to see straight when they don't, to resist beguilement (and, her lost paradise, the permissive world of Weimar Germany, is possibly so antithetical that the enchanters find it hard to sustain). There is magic. There are Sten guns and grenades. And, in an action filled climax channelling so many classic war films, there is a castle filled with Nazis to be raided. Who could resist? (Lee again takes the chance to affectionately parody the classics here - for example as an exasperated German officer notes before he's despatched, the Enlganders didn't need to hijack the cable car, they could more easily have approached up the track used for supplies).

It's an explosive climax that marries the gory realities of a post-Roman warband with the WWII films and books I grew up on, so is a win for me. 

This is a book that does a very clever thing - it leans in to, and embodies, classic stories, myths and simplifications about our history, while being very aware of the realities. Of the War itself: 'You must be glad, to have an enemy like Hitler... he makes you look so much more noble in comparison'. This is a Britain that still doesn't accept gap people, still less trans people, an Empite that is busily looting its subjects. And even the verve with which numerous Nazis are despatched in the finale should be compared with the opening sequence in which Arthur and his Knights sack Caer Lloyw, massacring the citizens. 

The Knight Watch is entertaining to the end (I loved the epilogue, where it seems that one of the band may have gone on to inspire James Bond - another English fictional archetype who has lived more than once) but also has both heart and bite, it's an intelligent fantasy with an urgent message.

I'd strongly recommend this book.

Review - Mortedant's Peril by RJ Barker

Mortedant's Peril (The Trials of Irody Hasp, 1)

RJ Barker
Tor/ Pan Macmillan, 
Available as: HB, 432pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781035064274

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

Meet Irody Hasp, Mortedant for hire.

In the city of Elbay, Mortedants aren't the power they used to be.

These celebrants - part confessor, part psychopomp - were once greatly respected for their ability to probe the last thoughts of the dead, reconciling lifelong quarrels, bringing peace to the dying... and locating hidden money and valuables. That last, however, has brought them down somewhat, as they're now suspected of profiting from a fraudulent trade. 

Hasp is a marginal figure even among this disdained group, shunned by his peers for his poor birth and questionable past. He scrapes a living. It's sufficient, however, for him to indulge his alchemical hobbies, probing the work of the spurriers, a more favoured trade, who create marvellous living devices. It's illegal for a Mortedant to engage in such work, so Hasp benefits from his obscurity.

Hasp's quiet life changes, though, when he's called out to attend to a city employee who has died suddenly.

Somebody doesn't want a Mortedant at this death, and pretty soon Hasp finds himself accused of murder and scheduled to hang (and worse - believe me, it is worse) - unless he can prove himself innocent in three days. With the city building up to its annual festival, nobody is interested in the troubles of a penniless Mortedant - except for his guard, Whisper, a woman of the sea-people, who he's been forced to accept (to prevent him fleeing injustice) and a young urchin, Mirial, who has her own reasons for sticking close to him.

Across those three days, Hasp must ransack the secrets of Elbay or suffer the consequences. 

Of course, nobody wants those secrets to come to light...

I loved this book. It has great - what's the right word? - verve. Elbay is a teeming, complex society, a city built on rigid social hierarchy but that also seems to be sitting on something older - older magic, older technology, a VERY old but curiously absent governor, the Roundhorn - and to conceal powers, barely held in check, that regularly scorch the ring of ground outside the walls. Hasp's explorations provide an excellent gazetteer. He really knows his way around, and Mirial knows hers even better. Clearly the first of a series, Mortedant's Peril shows us all sorts of locations and possibilities from the very highest point of the Dome to the depths of the citycore which I'm sure we'll learn more about in due course. It also details the convoluted social hierarchy, based both on wealth and on inherited distinctions, that keeps the poor in the lower tiers - and hints at strange, other-worldly powers. No, Elbay isn't your standard fantasy city. Nor is the society that flourishes inside. 

Hasp himself is an intriguing character. I started this book thoroughly disliking him. He is self-obsessed, arrogant, prone to dismiss everyone and everything around him as worthless, especially those outside Elbay (Hasp has never left the city) as barbarians - so Whisper is referred to in the earlier part of the book (by Hasp) as "it" until she gradually, grudgingly earns his trust until, when she's threatened and in danger he's beside himself. Hasp has, as becomes clear, though suffered loss and is perhaps still smarting from that (he'd never admit it) but he can and does change and shows himself brave, resourceful and determined.

It seems, after all, that there is more at stake than the life of one Mortedant, and Hasp's beloved Elbay (see the fuss he makes when he has to go beyond the walls, briefly) may itself be at risk.

More than just a series opener, Mortedant's Peril is a tense, gripping story of a race against time, as the chapters count down to Hasp's flaying and hanging. In his desperate search up and down Elbay's steep slopes there seems very little, really, that he can do to save his neck. Yet he carries on, refusing to give in.

This is, I'd say, a characteristically RJ Barker book, exploring a strange world through the eye of a flawed and marginalised character, taking the limitations of that (Hasp's poverty, his outcastness, his previous bad choices) and making them into real plusses.

Great fun, but more than that, Mortedant's Peril is fantasy with real heart.

For more information about Mortedant's Peril, see the publisher's website here.

Review - A Forest, Darkly by A G Slatter

A Forest, Darkly

AG Slatter
Titan Books, 10 February 2026
Available as: PB, 368pp audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(B): 9781835412565

I'm grateful to Titan for  giving me access to an advance e-copy of A Forest, Darkly to consider for review.

I think we all have authors whose books are a must read - you just need to know they’re coming to have them on pre-order. Angela (AG) Slatter is one of mine, and her “Sourdough” universe books, especially so.

A Forest, Darkly is described as a “standalone” in that universe. I think that means that the book isn’t directly connected to the recent sequence All the Murmuring Bones/ The Path of Thorns/ The Briar Book of the Dead/ The Crimson Road rather than that it is necessarily ensure unto itself - because having finished Forest, I can see so many ways that Slatter might expand on it; by giving us Mehrab, the forest witch’s, earlier life; or her later history; or the story of Rhea, the young girl who seeks her help. So much to explore and I hope to read some of those in future? It was fitting, though, to begin things with the middle-aged Mehrab, a splendid character.

Mehrab herself came to the forest seeking sanctuary. As a woman practicing magic, she’s hunted in this world, women like her persecuted by the Church and its “godhounds”. While some witches, like the Briars of The Briar Book of the Dead, are able to negotiate a precarious truce, most can only expect torture and death if they are captured, so they hide in obscure places like Berhta’s Forge, a town too insignificant to have either a church or a Lord. Mehrab's made a life there, a life disturbed when Rhea arrives, trailing a whiff of danger.

As if that’s not enough, Mehrab has begun to sense a change in the forest, an upset among the ancient spirits and demigods that live there. Something tries to trap her.

Then children begin to disappear in the village - and the villagers to turn against Mehrab…

While I may be biased (see my comments above!) I really did find A Forest, Darkly a meaty and entrancing read. Mehrab is such a rounded character, down to earth and competent at everything she she does: rather different from the stereotype fantasy lead which tends to be a young person out of their depth and trying to understand life as it changes around them. Indeed, as an older person (by no means old!) Mehrab has a perspective, faces challenges, and has to deal with issues, that are all very distinct. And also baggage from her past, both the distant past she fled from to the Forest, and her more recent life in the woods. Baggage such as lovers, natural and supernatural. Baggage such as her place in the village community. Baggage such as guilt for the things she did.

It all makes for an absorbing and well-realised story with plenty of surprises and new takes on older themes, and for Mehrab, something of a reckoning with her past.

A strong addition to the Sourdough books.

For more information about A Forest, Darkly, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Ring the Bells by CK McDonnell

Ring the Bells (Stranger Times, 5)

CK McDonnell
Bantam, 9 October 2025 
Available as: HB, 496pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780857505392

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Ring the Bells  to consider for review. Given the seasonal bent of this book, I should really have reviewed BEFORE not after Christmas, but my reviews have been a car crash recently so perhaps just take this as a hint to buy it for someone NEXT Christmas!

You actually might not think of McDonnell's Stranger Times series as providing potential for a Christmassy story. The titular, Manchester based newspaper, which operates from a decaying, closed-down church, and chronicles the eerie and the unexplained is produced on a shoestring by a cabal of eccentrics and misanthropes. Attempts by the staff to inject a note of goodwill or cheer into proceedings tend to fall flat, even if the team general end up saving the world by the last page.

The books so far have tended to explore the seamier side of supernatural life leaving little time for wonder and cheer. Most of all, the editor, Banecroft (who is surely some sort of cousin to Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses) lives on cynicism and booze and would, one thinks, likely sit up by the fireplace with a shotgun ready to scare Father Christmas right back up the chimney.

So, as the storyline here develops, it's fun to imagine how the coalescing evil - which is clearly going to coalesce into something rather Santa-shaped - will both ring all the Christmas bells and threaten the known universe. That does happen, I didn't anticipate how, and the knowledge of it doesn't in any way lessen the fun and the fear when it does. I will say that there were possibly Prathcettian overtones to the theme here that belief in itself is a power to be reckoned with, but McDonnell also plays subtle games with the usual seasonal redemption arc which should make us question the transformation of an evildoer into the Chrismassiest person ever. Here, even the wrongdoer has his doubts about that trope.

A couple of sub-plots are though perhaps worth as much attention as the main story. Christmas is a time for family, and as far as we know, Manny, the mysterious Rastafarian printer who makes sure that each week's edition of the ST gets to its readers, has no family (other than the strange entity which imbues him). In this story, we find out more about Manny's background. It's a very affecting and sad story, giving him a central place he deserves after four books of being rather at the margins (or perhaps, in the basement).

There are also developments in the world of the Founders, the entitled and wealthy clique who try to control the magical world. Given that places at that table tend to follow the "dead man's shoes" rule, it's perhaps no surprise that competition is ruthless but Ring the Bells sets us up I think for a future battle Royale to fill a pair of those shoes (only given the likely contenders, they'd better be killer heels, not just any old shoes.

An entertaining and fun addition to this series, showing the value of an ensemble cast which keeps things fresh by always providing new corners and angles to explore.

For more information about Ring the Bells, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Secrets of the First School by TL Huchu

Secrets of the First School (Edinburgh Nights, 5)
TL Huchu
Tor/ Pan Macmillan, 16 October 2025 
Available as: HB, 382pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781035055487

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of Secrets of the First School to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

It's the endgame for Edinburgh Nights and for Ropa Moyu - rather literally in her case, as she's dead, banished to the Other Place. This series has gone from relatively low-stakes exorcisms of unwanted spirits, via scuffles over membership of the ridiculously self-satisfied Society of Sceptical Enquireres (the Scottish magicians' guild) and a knife-sharp portrayal every dreadful corporate exhibition you've ever attended, and the collapse of the Society's relations with magic in England, to a sudden bid for power by the ghoul Henry Dundas who wants to make himself King, God and goodness knows what else.

Huchu wove this destination from the beginning, it's clear, and one can only pity Ropa for having such a stern creator. She's faced here with the impossible. Get back from the Beyond. Find her missing sister, abducted by Dundas's cult. Defeat said cult, when the cream of Scottish magic has been destroyed, or bent the knee to a tyrant (depressingly current, that). Do this without upsetting the English Sorcerer Royal, a mercurial figure, or the King, who rules the country with the most extreme application of Divine Right. This is a hardscrabble UK, living on the edge of starvation after a financial catastrophe not unrelated to Ropa's granny, who is also dead - making things even harder for Ropa; just scraping together bare sustenance is too much for many.

Yes, we have seen Ropa do the impossible before, or seemingly, but will she be able to use her understanding of von Clausewitz, her laissez-faire attitude to rules, and her shaky grasp of magic, to repeat that? As Ropa moves from one crisis to the next, it looks less and less likely. Her ability to walk away from allies, to insist on going alone, always a liability, seems positively self-destructive now.

Yet, she persists.

To say much more about what Ropa does would be to risk spoilers, and I won't do that, but I will say that Secrets of the First School challenges her like she's never been challenged before. She will discover that her understanding of life, magic and of herself, her family and her allies, is about to undergo an earthquake. And she will have to draw on strange sources of power to defeat the Establishment in Edinburgh - and forge strange alliances, despite that habit of walking away from people. (Though, given what Ropa discovers here, trusting anyone is going to be hard).

How it all works out is great fun and the outcome turns not only on Ropa and what she does but also on the tainted roots of Scottish magic and the tainted fruit it has produced. Dundas is a magnificent villain, but he isn't a puzzling, lone, megalomaniac criminal in the manner of a James Bond antagonist. I think that Huchu is nudging us with that character, and his origin in Empire, finance and exploitation to see parallels with some equally tainted modern figures who have the arrogance to try and make the world dance to their tune. And who, I'll prophesy, will meet a not dissimilar fate.

It's a magnificent end to what has been a marvellous sequence of stories and, I think, more than that - not just a fitting end but a powerful and moving novel in itself, the best of the five (which is setting a high bar).

For more information about Secrets of the First School, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Secrets of the First School from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith (they'll always be Smith's to me!) or Waterstones.

Blogtour review - The Great Deception by Syd Moore

The Great Deception (Section W)
Syd Moore
Magpie (Oneworld), 4 September 2025
Available as: PB, 328pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780861548PB

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of The Great Deception to consider for review, and to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Sequel to The Grand Illusion, The Great Deception is Moore's continuation of the story of Daphne Devine. As prequels set several decades before her Essex Witches novels, I simply had to read to these book, and they don't disappoint.

The Great Deception finds Daphne assigned on a dangerous mission in Iceland as part of her work for Section W, the branch of Second World War British military intelligence tasked with all things supernatural - or potentially supernatural. Here, the ostensible target is a clairvoyant, Karlsson, who may or may not be able to foretell the future and may or may not be passing secrets to the Germans. Britain has occupied Ireland to prevent it being used as a German base, but the position of the island hangs in the balance, so anything that could tip things one way or another might be very important.

The story intrigues in a number of ways. First, Daphne herself, as Moore draws her, is a fascinating character, a very strong and strong-minded woman in an age which is still deeply, deeply patriarchal. The officers with whom she deals here are clearly not comfortable with an intelligent, assertive woman and even Septimus, who will be important to her future, doesn't treat her well. Yet Daphne persists. Next, this is a genuinely interesting and eye-opening exploration of a little known aspect of WW2. The whole occupation of Iceland, going rather against the grain of the early war, raises intriguing questions of power and collaboration which we normally see from a rather different perspective. The situation of Iceland itself is also interesting, a very poor country at the time and also a remote one but not, of course, subject to the same restrictions (or to attacks) as Britain itself so rather a haven for Daphne.

Finally, there's the whole magic/ supernatural angle. Books about WW2 magic are starting to appear in numbers, I think perhaps Syd Moore set a trend here, but readers of the earlier story and of course the Essex Witch novels will know that this author is then canny about how she uses the idea of magic. You never quite know what to believe - and that goes as much for Daphne as for us!

So when Daphne decides - and she does take the decision, in the end she choose not to trust the chain of command - that urgent action is needed, and forms her own small taskforce to undertake it, much of the focus in the story is on the material factors: the cold, availability of food, the strained relations between Daphne, her local contact Anna, their minder Björn and of course Karlssen. Daphne's forced to pick her way through what is a tense and thriller-y novel, chasing down leads and pursuing the truth - all while surviving threats from Nazi agents and the condescension of her own superiors.

Whether there's a real supernatural threat is another thing entirely, but even here, Daphne has her instincts which, we know, have guided her before. In the land of the Northern Lights, and approaching a a region rumoured to be the home of dark magic and of evil, anything may be possible.

I really enjoyed The Great Deception. It's a story with great drive - you WILL keep turning these pages - and very solidly located in its time and place, as well as having a real element of jeopardy and danger. Daphne's wrestling with guilt at some of the things she's done and at other she may have to: and there is business here that she darkly accepts she will have to deal with later, once the immediate danger is over. The story is also though, in places, very funny! 

For more information about The Great Deception, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

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

Grave Empire by Richard Swan

Grave Empire

Richard Swan

Orbit, 4 February 2025, 
Available as: HB, 509pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356523866

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of Grave Empire to consider for review.

Grave Empire ought not to work. Swan has gone back to the world of his Justice of Kings trilogy for a followup, set several hundred years later and with entirely new characters. The setting is recognisable, but beyond a few callbacks to the earlier books, the action is new (though, as the story develops we see that what I might call the theological character of the world is also the same).

There are pitfalls of writing a continuation to a successful trilogy. You may rehash the original, undoing the earlier resolution and making the reader ask what the point was (hello, Chronicles of Thomas Covenant! Hello, Star Wars episodes VII - IX!) Or you may produce something notionally related but not really, and be accused of simply cashing in on the earlier success. Either want you may miss what appealed the first time round.

Swan, however, avoids both of these traps and indeed rather gloriously transcends them. If the first trilogy had a sort of neo-Roman Empire setting, albeing garnished with Northern, rather than Southern, European tropes, Grave Empire picks things up in a more gunpowdery age. The warfare is a bit Napoleonic, the geopolitics more Age of Empires (complete with colonial excesses) than Ancient World. Yet, behind it all, the menace that Sir Konrad discovered, the cosmic horror that drove events in the earlier books, still festers. Only, the re-established Empire of the Wolf has now made the lore that might have allowed it to resists, even more forbidden. Quite the conundrum.

Against that background, Grave Empire gives us some brilliant new characters. There is Peter, a young man recently recruited to the Sovan Army. Swan is good on the motivation for the this, the mix of personal drift, family situation and peer pressure. He also creates a plausible military for Peter to join, and a plausible disillusionment for him to undergo, amidst the coming apart of Sovan political and diplomatic influence and an increasingly precarious strategic position. Peter's arc will lead him to and beyond the fringes of Sovan power and to him becoming the holder of strange secrets.

There's also Renata, a studious if obscure Sovan diplomat in a little-regarded branch of the bureaucracy, that will soon be brought to the centre of matters as the crisis escalates. I rather like the "obscure functionary unexpectedly thrust into the limelight" trope (as a bureaucrat myself perhaps it plays into my wish fulfilment: if only people would actually listen to ME!) and Renata's an ideal subject for it, a mix of high competence and low confidence. 

This opening volume of the new trilogy takes its time, and gives plenty of space, allowing both Renata and Peter to develop and for us as readers to take their measure. (And also introduces a number of others). Plenty else is happening, with military expeditions, plots and a mysterious master-spy whose motives seem deeply dubious, if still rather obscure. Many of these threads remain separate, though Swan uses the alternate viewpoints they provide to provide more information about the "modern" version of his world.

It's a gripping read, one that fairly rattles along in terms of pace and Swan successfully prevents the reader from pining overmuch at the loss of his earlier roster of characters, as she or he might have if it had been set closer in time. 

Recommended.

For more information about Grave Empire, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Once Was Willem by MR Carey

Once Was Willem

MR Carey

Orbit,  4 March 2025
Available as: HB, 297pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356519449

I'm grateful to Orbit for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Once Was Willem to consider for review.

One of the things I really enjoy about a New Year (yes, I know it's March now, bear with me) is the prospect of new books from favourite authors. Many authors publish a book a year, or every other year, and these are previewed a few months ahead, so it's easy to follow the rhythm of the calendar and accumulate a forward look of what's coming. This is laudable behaviour, what in a business context is called "horizon scanning". It's easy to convince yourself that you are being bold, a veritable explorer, searching the horizon with a telescope and alert to future trends.

The reality of course can be slightly different - a deluge of upcoming books you want to read but will never have time to. Perhaps this will change in coming years when there are no authors left, and AIs, or as George Orwell called them, the "novel-writing machines", churn out reworked slop to keep the readers happy and stop anyone thinking. Then I will throw away my catalogues, settle down in my corner, and spend the rest of my life catching up, as there will be nothing new to miss.

We are not there yet. But happily there is already a better way out of this dilemma because we have MR Carey, and other authors, whose coming books one obviously has to read and there's an end to it. I have been watching this one coming, and eagerly waiting to start it and can now report that it every bit as good as I had wished.

A historical fantasy set in the 12th century English Midlands, Once Was Willem takes us to a world of knights, barons, and kings in a time of civil war. Or actually, it doesn't, quite because most of the KB&Ks are kept offpage while the action focuses on villagers, children, outlaws and fugitive magicians. 

Oh, and monsters. 

I approve of this, on the basis that the KB&Ks get too much attention given they basically have their holdings by theft and murder, and deserve taking down a peg or three. History is much, much more interesting seen from "below" (or, as one may equally say, when seen clearly). So in Once Was Willem, the lawlessness of the times is due to the quarrels of the KB&Ks, but the people who have to deal are... the people. And they have no choice by to deal, and precious few resources to use for that yet they SUCCEED. How to we know they succeed? It's simple. You and me are here today, so our ancestors managed the difficult trick of staying alive and keeping things on the road (In the particular context and setting of this story, that is true for values of "you and me" that mainly includes European descended people because that's where the book is set, but I think the point is absolutely general - our ancestors survived, and kept things going. Perhaps in appalling circumstances, but still they did, or none of us would be here). 

Of course this book is fantasy, and the people in it didn't exist so didn't, literally, survive. And it being fantasy they had resources that don't exist "for real". But I don't think that diminishes the validity of a story that focusses, like this, on ordinary people.

Nor does the fact that, as is true in Once Was Willem, they ordinary people do many appalling things. The Willem of this story is a boy, outcast from his family for reasons I won't spoil, who has to take refuge in the woods alongside monsters. There he finds a more welcoming and accepting family than in his village of Cosham, which habitually chases out the weird kids and burns the witches. Nevertheless, it's those outcasts and weirdos who come to the village's rescue when a local upstart lordling (he was of late an outlaw and robber himself, see my point above) demands Cosham hand over all its children. Shades of "Seven Samurai/ The Magnificent Seven" here when the mysterious creatures from the woods come together to defend the kids (not, really, the village.

The story is cleverly told from Willem's point of view, with an appropriately limited (but gradually expanding) understanding of events and the wider context. That did slightly recall Koli's perspective in Carey's Rampart trilogy, (also excellent). There is a split perspective so that events are narrated both as they happen and in hindsight, Willem having come on pretty extensive knowledge  afterwards so he's able to report action and conversations in the right places without having to be there. While this, obviously, sends an enormous signal about the book (Willem survives!) that's hardly unexpected and Carey is masterful in pulling the rug from under our feet when we think we know how that happens, what it means and what Willem will have to go through to ensure victory. 

Willem, and his friends. All of them are very real characters, hurt in their various ways and needing to develop the ability to trust before they can move forward. None completely understand what is going on or what is at state and they need to find ways to see each other as allies and friends, not as the dangerous creatures they're rumoured to be.

Their opponent, Cair Caradoc, the magician, is as villainous and self-seeking as a storybook wizard should be, magic being something that can easily be accommodated to this slightly liminal, chaotic part of England. His power is great, his deeds vile and his ambition deadly. A magnificent creation.

All in all this is a terrific, absorbing fantasy with a story that simply romps along. Rooted in a recognisable time and place it's able to surprise because it's told from a genuinely distinctive point of view. It isn't, nor does it mean, to be, word for word historically accurate (the early mention of potatoes signals that) but at the same time it is accurate in that it speaks up for and focusses on the fate and actions of the common people, who are, after all, the people who actually did the history (because they had little choice if they, and their children, were to survive).

Strongly recommended.

For more information about Once Was Willem, see the publisher's website here. 

Review - The Crimson Road by Angela Slatter

The Crimson Road

Angela Slatter
Titan Books, 11 February 2025
Available as: PB, 368pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803364568

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

I loved returning to the world of Slatter's Sourdough stories, for a tale that draws together the threads of her recent novels, All The Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns and The Briar Book of the Dead.

Like the young women who are central to of those stories, Violet Zennor is alone in what is ostensibly a very male world. A young heiress surrounded by men in authority - the lawyer, the Bishop - she might balk at the prospect that her story will be all about being married off (and indeed, there is a suitor in the wings). But in a twist the made me smile, Violet is already actually busy balking at the other plans her father laid for her, plans that involved her training relentlessly from childhood for deadly combat - and also involve somewhere mysterious called the "Anchorhold". So relieved is Violet by her father's untimely death, and at not having to live the fate that he laid down for her, that the idea of marriage may almost be welcome to her.

But life never goes smoothly for a protagonist in Slatter's world. Across those earlier books we have seen her explore ideas of inheritance, of coming into adulthood and of women finding a way to survive with integrity and freedom in that male world. These ways are never as simple as "having a lot of wealth" because, really, the sources of wealth are always murky (as Violet's proves). They are though various, though often magical, and I was eager to see how Violet would deal with this predicament. As her arm begins to be twisted to follow the course planned for her, we may wonder if she will ever be able to control her own destiny? 

Of course as we have also seen in those earlier books there are ways around, even if not through. And Violet is aided by a sisterhood of the women we've already met. This could have come across as a bit of a whistlestop tour of the earlier protagonists, but Slatter is better than that. These are all women whose own stories clearly had more to be told, so in visiting them again, she answers the need any reader will have to learn a bit more about what happened next. Their various life lessons, magics and centres of protection act both as supports for Violet in her time of need and as little candles of hope in what has become a very dark world for her, hunted as she is by both dark monsters and the hypocritical church, which is willing to use the women it condemns to protect itself from those same monsters.

It all culminates, of course, in absolute bloody slaughter, not unlike the cause her father steered Violet towards - but with one key difference: that victory, and survival - if she can find them - won't be primarily through those hours and years of martial training but through friendship, love and solidarity.

A fine and gripping book, and one that rounds off this quartet of Sourdough novels (though I hope there will be more to come in future).

For more information about The Crimson Road, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Scholar and the Last Fairy Door by HG Parry

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door

HG Parry
Orbit, 24 October 2024
Available as: PB, 436pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356520322

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door  to consider for review.

I have been enjoying HG Parry's books, particularly how they address inequalities such as those of race, gender and colonialism, aspects of society that some strands of fantasy manage to sidestep (one might even say, some strands of fantasy seem to exist to do that).

In The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, set mainly in post Great War England, that means largely class prejudice, colonialism and patriarchy. 

Clover is a young girl growing up on a farm in Lancashire. When her brother is seriously injured on the Western Front, Clover determines to learn magic in order to discover how to help him. The magic she studies is largely the preserve of the upper classes, taught on a magical campus called "Camford" (it can only be entered from either Oxford or Cambridge). Overcoming considerable barriers merely to earn a place at Camford, Clover comes up against the reality of life as a 'scholarship witch', distinctly second rate among the gilded young things of post war England's magical elite, very few of whom are women and even fewer of whom are poor - or Northern.

Fortunately (or perhaps not as events turn out) Clover is taken up by the circle that follows Alden Lennox-Fontaine. There's a question about why they allow her such access, but Clover pushes that to the back of her mind - until she's forced to confront reality and ask what her fine friends really want.

I absolutely loved The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door. Clover is a redoubtable and likeable personality, wrestling with real life dilemmas: different social circles, the pain of moving on from home to grander (maybe) things, class prejudice and guilt, and friendships. And, as then layers of truth are peeled back from England's magical world, there is the need to reckon with the crimes of the past and to admit that foundations of the glittering world - with which Clover is so enchanted - may conceal crimes and violence. As a metaphor for a colonial society it's compelling and rich.

But The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door isn't just a neat allegory for imperialism, it also features active, buzzing characters, a strong plot and an increasingly taut and thrilling denouement with Clover hunted by malign forces and forced to reckon up what she most values - and fight for it. And to recognise what may be lost.

All in all, an engaging and fun read with thought-provoking themes. I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - The Legacy of Arniston House by T L Huchu

The Legacy of Arniston House (Edinburgh Nights, 4) 
T L Huchu
Tor (Pan Macmillan), 7 November 2024 
Available as: HB, 400pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529097771

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of The Legacy of Arniston House to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

I've been really enjoying Huchu's Edinburgh Nights series, of which The Legacy of Arniston House is book 4. The setting is a chastened Scotland, humbled in the aftermath of a "Catastrophe" and held down by a resurgent England. Its capital has complex politics, criminal networks, magic and, above all, the authentic texture of an alternate Edinburgh.

Huchu's main character, Ropa Moyo, is engaging and spiky, a marginalised figure (literally - she and her gran live squatters' lives in a caravan encampment on the edge of the city) who is trying to make her way in the world of Scottish magic whose leading lights, snooty and entitled as they are, don't want to be bothering with her. At the end of the previous book, The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle, Ropa seemed to have caught a break when she was hired by the English Sorcerer Royal. While I was concerned this might take her away from Edinburgh, I need not have worried: it seems that Lord Samarasinghe has ongoing business in the North. (That can't bode well, can it...?) Ropa is therefore still hanging round her old home town, albeit cut off from magical society, something that pains her more than she expected. She's even able to revive her old gig as a ghost talker, albeit not everything seems to be well in the spirit realms... there could be trouble ahead.

Huchu definitely ramps up the tension in this book. After a deceptively calm opening (if you've read the first few chapters you may say to yourself "David's talking nonsense again" because they don't seem that calm, but JUST YOU WAIT, IT'S ALL RELATIVE) mayhem of all sorts erupts with rioting, mischief and Ropa being hunted by both magicians and Police. She's framed for a heinous crime and  the whole world she was used tseems about to be torn apart. All this leads up to a fast-moving conclusion in which we learn more both about Ropa's past and about recent Scottish history - and are then left, literally, on a cliffhanger. 

Or perhaps, over one.

Compared with the first three books, which were more self-contained, The Legacy of Arniston House represents a clear change of gear and of focus. There is, as in each of the others, a self-contained mystery and an injustice to be solved and righted (you might think, actually, several). But there is also a much more intricate and visible connection to the plot that's been glimpsable in the background, with certain puzzles finally closed from those earlier stories. At the same time, the implications of Ropa's own history and background are made plain for the first time.

A fun return to what is shaping up to be one of the most interesting and readable series of the past few years. I'll wait for the next book with a great deal of anticipation.

For more information about The Legacy of Arniston House, see the publisher's website here. 

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

#Review - The Witches of World War II by Paul Cornell et al

The Witches of World War II

Paul Cornell (words), Valeria Burzo (pencils), Jordie Bellaire (colours)
TKO Studios, 25 July 2023
Available as: PB, 160pp, e
Source: Purchased
ISBN(PB): 9781952203183

The Witches of World War II tugs at one of the many loose threads of that conflict - persistent rumours that alongside the familiar heroism, sacrifice and application of industry and science to winning the war, alongside the more shadowy departments of unorthodox warfare and military deception, the Allies used even stranger means - notably witchcraft.

You don't have to accept the supernatural or the power of magic to see that this is something that could really happen. Deep in the layers of psyops, it would surely have registered that at least some high-ranking Nazis fervently believed this stuff, and that very belief could be used against them. 

That paradox is at the heart of The Witches of World War II. Cornell has assembled here a crack team of practitioners and theorists from the occult world of the first half of the 20th century, and posed a "what if...?" about their potential use in warfare, and beyond that, about the nature of their own beliefs and the power of belief itself. Cornell acknowledges, as does the Afterword by Prof Ronald Hutton, that this group never actually met (unless the records of that meeting have been even more than carefully weeded) but we might imagine similar characters carrying out the actions described here, some of which are based on those persistent rumours...

So the premise is intriguing. That wouldn't though be enough, without Cornell's excellent story and its interpretation by the brilliant comic artists here, to produce the immersive and fun narrative that The Witches of World War II is. I felt it captured the spirit of that dangerous time, all done in muted khaki, green, brown and grey, as it introduces us not just to the would-be witches themselves but also to their world. That world includes the would-be upper class Quislings and fellow-travellers who would have sold their country out at the drop of a hat, if they could. Against these fifth-columnists, our hero, Doreen Valiente, shows steely nerve as she negotiates a maze of mirrors, never sure who is going to back her and who will betray her. 

A sceptic herself, Doreen encounters dangers including a curse that can only affect those who don't believe, and slippery customers like Aleister Crowley, the self-proclaimed Wickedest Man in the World. (Who, exactly, believes that they are themselves wicked? I was reminded of the "are we the baddies" sketch...) The double crosses, hints of things below the surface build tension, with the poignancy of Doreen's lost sweetheart giving the story real bite by reminding us that this isn't all some fantasy, that regardless of the occult and its reality or otherwise, real people suffered and died in those years.

With a complex plot, many twists and turns and layers of deception, it all makes for a rewarding read, with just that hint of mystery as to what really went on...

For more information about The Witches of World War II, see the author's website here.

#Blogtour - Cursed Under London by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Cursed Under London
Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
Farrago Books, 11 July 2024
Available as: HB, 255pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781788425032

I'm grateful to Black Crow for sending me a copy of Cursed Under London to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Cursed Under London is an engaging and entertaining urban fantasy, with a real subcurrent of romance. It's also one of the oddest books - in a good way - that I've read in ages.

In an alternate Tudor London, under Good Queen Bess's rule, a separate realm has been established underground, and more widely, under England, for magical creatures - fae, vampires, werewolves and a host more. There the undead mingle with creatures from myth and legend, following their own laws (human meat definitely ON the menu).

The outcome of a past war, this state of affairs is delicate and it needs continual diplomatic effort to keep it working and prevent fresh conflict. So when a deadly consignment is stolen from the Fae by surface gangs, Her Majesty's guards become involved in the investigation. Frustrating them at every turn, however, are the renegades Fang (a distant traveller from the Ming empire) and Lazare de Quitte-Beuf (a flailing, not to say failing, actor). Both have come under a strange curse which they attribute to Deep London. All roads lead, it seems, down the Tubes...

I loved this book for its verve - the story just keeps rolling on, throwing wonders and moments of terror off in all directions - its characters - Fang and Lazare develop a delightful, will-they, won't-they relationship whose bitterness and joy turns on some real emotional knots and awful experiences in their pasts - and its sly humour (simply too many examples to be able to quote, the story had me giggling on my commute). The busy, detailed view of a different London is always great fun and it's incredible how the author makes some seemingly bizarre ideas work: Christopher Marlowe as a zombie? You'll believe he was! A swan as Elizabeth R's jaded, hard bitten head of guards? Meet Captain Dame Isobel Honkensby! It's all gloriously inventive, rather convincing, and, well, a lot of fun.

Opening, I hope, a series, Cursed Under London draws on knowing references to London and Londoners, genre fiction, romance, crime politics, culture and a myriad other themes to paint its world - the darkness as well as the light. Because, don't be mistaken, there is darkness here - the wonders of Upper and Deep London are wonders, but they can be misused and real harm caused. Behind the fun and games, there's somebody trying to do just that.

I'd strongly recommend this book, and can't wait to see where the story goes next.

For more information about Cursed Under London, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Cursed Under London from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed

The Butcher of the Forest

Premee Mohamed
Titan Books, 27 February 2024
Available as: HB, 144pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781803368726

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of The Butcher of the Forest  to consider for review.

The Butcher of the Forest is a small, but perfectly formed, classically structured fairytale. Veris's world is ruled by a tyrant, a pitiless if mysterious figure who has massacred men, women and children in conquering the valley where she lives. It is hinted that he is only the latest conqueror and, by implication, that his reign will not last - but for now, he commands all.

All, expect for the North Woods, a place of otherworldly danger into which his children have been lured. Veris is the only person known to have visited the North Woods and retrieved lost kids, so she's summoned, threatened, and sent to rescue them. If she doesn't succeed, her family and village will be slaughtered.

The main part of the story is taken up by Veris's quest, with its necessary compromises, with the skill and cunning that a woman must use to survive in a hostile country, and with her moral wrangling against herself. These children are innocent, aren't they? Why shouldn't they have a chance at a life, and a chance to be better than their father? But - won't they inevitably turn into the next Tyrants?

What is Veris to do?

Does she really have a choice?

I loved the way that the story is constructed both as a classic fairytale - into the woods, indeed! - but also has this real moral edge. Abstracted into a dreamland that has its own rules, Veris still knows that there are consequences from what she does, in the waking world. And even in the Woods, there are consequences, bargains to be made, and a price to be borne. Navigating both in parallel, as it were, seems an impossible task.

The writing in Premee Mohamed's story is focused and clear, apparently simple yet with layers of meaning. A quest seems the most basic of structures yet in these hands - as well as being an entertaining tale - it becomes a lyrical commentary on the value and purpose of life, and on the need not to duck hard choices.

A brilliant story, really, and short enough to devour in one sitting, so actually the best kind of story!

For more information about The Butcher of the Forest, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Trials of Empire by Richard Swan

The Trials of Empire (Empire of the Wolf, 3)

Richard Swan

Orbit, 8 February 2024
Available as: HB, 544pp,  audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356516479

I'm grateful to Orbit for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Trials of Empire to consider for review.

Well, here is the end of the Empire of the Wolf trilogy. 

And. It. Has. Been. A. JOURNEY. 

Not only for Helena, Sir Konrad and the rest - though they have both travelled endlessly, and developed across the books - but also for the reader, as Swan, like a magician, has revealed ever deeper layers of story to us. 

To recap, in Justice of Kings we pretty much had straight fantasy - Judge Sir Konrad Vonvault and his small party of retainers travelling the Empire and administering justice. Yes, Vonvault had access to one or two magical powers, used to help establish the truth in his more tricky cases. Yes, there were machinations from the religious order the Templars, who seemed a bit too zealous for everyone's good, leading to outright, if limited, rebellion. But overall - except for a couple of incidents  - this seemed like a military-oriented fantasy. 

Then in The Tyranny of Faith things got weirder, with cosmic horror overtones, and some episodes taking place is a sort of netherworld - but the accent was still very much on the threat to the Empire. (From the framing of the story as the memoirs of Helena Sedanka in her old age, we already knew that it did in fact fall, the issue would be how and when).

Now in The Trials of Empire - WHAT???

Again, here, Swan seems to be pivoting this trilogy, which is now clearly about the danger of those dark magics, an existential peril to the universe from... well, I think it's probably safer not to name that entity, you never know if it might be listening? We still see the coils of politics and religious fanaticism, which are centred on the militant priest Bartholemew Claver. Fortuitously I recently read Three Fires by Denise Mina, an account of the renaissance priest Girolamo Savonarola - a man who really did take over governance of a city (Renaissance Florence) and imposed his own authoritarian rule, designed to usher in a literal City of God. The parallels between this figure and Claver - both starting out as sincere, if austere, churchmen, both denouncing the religious authorities as lax, both playing on popular disquiet with the civil powers and on prejudice, both eventually corrupted by power - are striking and I think show how Swan has really got under the skin of his rather unattractive antihero and the potential route to power of such a person. (The parallels with modern politics also write themselves).

In Florence, however, there was no Vanvault. 

There was no Helena. 

Both play crucial roles here, indeed Helena probably the greater one. There is a concern throughout this book that Vonvault himself will be tried beyond what he can bear and fall victim to the dark magicks which alone, it seems, can provide a means of fighting back against Claver. And indeed we see him make some evil choices and cosy up to some dubious allies. At the same time Helena has to walk her own path, and faces her own darkness. I'd felt throughout this series that she might be capable of a lot, and it's wonderful here to see her come into her own as it were, not as an adjunct to Vonvault but as a player in her own right. And not as an improbable result of a moment's choice, but as the culmination of a process of gruelling challenge has tested and strengthened her, if at some cost (at one moment in this book Helena is chained to an executioner's block, the axe about to fall, and that's rather the least of the dangers she faces in this story).

If we see Helena face danger, we also see her develop as a person, see her juggle her attraction to Vonvault and her concern for ethics and principles - something she learned from him - and grow up in the process. As well as that, she's learned to be a redoubtable fighter. All this may however not be enough when she has to confront that darkness, which she must of course do alone, the more so as Vonvault seems to have gone astray himself.

The later part of the book therefore crystallises some moral dilemmas when, confronted by seemingly inevitable defeat and unstoppable evil, the two need to consider what is and is not justifiable. And what is and is not justice.

Readable from first page to last, exciting, with twists, surprises and betrayals, this final volume of Swan's trilogy finishes the story in grand style.

For more information about The Trials of Empire, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - The Grand Illusion by Syd Moore

The Grand Illusion (Section W, book 1)
Syd Moore
Magpie, 4 April 2024
Available as: HB, 368pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9780861541607

I'm grateful to Syd Moore and to Magpie for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Grand Illusion to consider for review, and to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the book's Random Things blogtour.

The Grand Illusion - set during the Second World War - takes place in the same world as Moore's Essex Witch mysteries (we meet Septimus!) It isn't I think a direct prequel - but this is the first of three, so who knows where things will go...

Daphne Devine is assistant to stage magician Jonty Trevelyan. Adept at being cut in half, tied up, and handling concealed doves, she's about to face a whole new scale of challenge as she and her boss are recruited to a shadowy branch of the UK's Security Service. In the first half of the book we're shown a bewildering number of different activities of Section W, with the two unclear exactly where they fit. I rather enjoyed this tour d'horizon, which creates an authentically wartime sense of barely-controlled chaos, of being sent from pillar to post and back again. Are they engaged in valuable work or is everyone just going round in circles? 

It's a world where the brilliant and war-winning plan may sit on the same table as the bonkers and time-wasting one. Indeed, they may come from the same pen, on the same day. There is a sense of near panic, of a nation and Government which are, behind Churchill's stirring rhetoric, ready to try anything that may bring victory, or avert defeat.

So we see elaborate deceptions, suited to a stage illusionist. These are things it's known took place (although my understanding is that some of the details have never been revealed). We also see more troubling plans - ostensibly directed at a known weakness of the Third Reich, its obsession with occult ritual and pseudohistory. Playing on such a weakness might seem wise, and again, Jonty's and Daphne's talents in illusion and deception might boost the effect of that, but is there more going on here besides? We are in the Essex Witches universe, after all.

Gradually, and teasingly, Moore creates a setting filled with distortions and red herrings, one where it's not clear just who is manipulating who. What matters more, illusion or reality? Is the febrile wartime atmosphere perhaps fertile ground for thinkers who are normally marginalised? Might they use it to their advantage, even if ostensibly what's going on is simply psyops? Just who is falling victim the that "grand illusion"?

Questions, questions - with some answers, but many, teasingly, withheld.

Everything that has happened may have a rational explanation. Or there may be other stuff going on. As tempting as it may be to rush through this book to the conclusion, it bears careful attention though because I think there are some clues... and I'll be looking forward to future novels in this series for some of those answers.

Turning to the characters, I loved Daphne. Trapped by circumstances in a difficult corner - her family connections make her an objection of suspicion to some, and give the Government leverage over her so that in many respects she's not free to say "no" when the Ministry comes knocking - she plays a difficult hand well. Even though those around her frequently underestimate her capabilities (being female, they often don't seem to expect much of her) she continually steps up and sees the way through. Jonty and the others are perhaps a bit less-well defined, but as Daphne is the focus that works fine for me. What does come through, as external circumstances get more desperate, is a rising sense of internal tension in Daphne. She's clearly being swept to some major trial or crisis and she responds to that knowledge, but Moore gives little away and while there is a respite by the end of the book I didn't think that matters had come to a head. In a story with plenty of menace, threats and talk of spies, Fifth-columnists and collaborators it isn't clear whether the threat is of espionage or the supernatural, or both, and I suspect there is more of it to come. 

I'm really looking forward to the next part of this series!

For more information about The Grand Illusion, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

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

#Review - Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands

Heather Fawcett
Orbit, 18 January 2024
Available as: HB, 352pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356519159

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands to consider for review.

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands is a followup which for me was just as good as, or possibly even slightly better than, its predecessor, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries. 

Once again, Wilde and her colleague Bambleby (now Emily's lover, but also the exiled monarch of a Fae kingdom in Ireland) find themselves on a field trip abroad. This time, though, their interest is more than merely academic[1]. Bambleby is under threat, and to meet the challenge, the pair need to identify a door that leads back to his kingdom.

Once again, the pair settle into a remote village (the time in Switzerland), risk antagonising the locals, and begin fieldwork.

Once again, there's bickering over methodology, jealousy over use of the results and a concern with reputation. Now, though, it's not between Emily and Bambleby but involves a third party - Dr Farriss Rose, the Head of Department, who insists on joining the trip. Pretty soon, the fieldwork turns into a search for two long-missing dryadologists who came to this isolated Swiss town and, apparently, vanished into the Otherlands. 

I was afraid that with my favourite two dryadologists[2] now an item, the romantic tension might reduce but I'm happy to say that Fawcett doesn't disappoint on this score, having them navigate a new phase of their relationship, still unsure of where they stand and with Dr Rose trying to throw sand in the machinery of their romance by warning Emily not to become entangled with one of the Folk. (Based on the extant literature, that is of course Very Wise, and Emily does have her doubts - she's quite realistic about Bambleby and avoids placing him on a pedal above other Fae).

We see, I think, in this book an even stronger and more determined Emily than ever (perhaps a reaction on her part to how she was entranced and beguiled in the previous book) and a rather helpless (at times) Bambleby. That allows exploration of a variety of fairytale motifs, Emily alert to the extent to which her life may depend on a narrative. But Fawcett doesn't stint on the horror either, and Emily has plenty of causes for regret in this story - both because of things she does, and things she's unable to prevent.

With all the charm and sideways humour of its predecessor, but perhaps a slightly more direct storyline, one driven by Wilde and Bambleby more than in Encyclopaedia, this book was a delight to read and really takes this series forward - events being left on a total cliffhanger with the opening of the third volume destined to be very exciting, I think!

For more information about Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands, and to order a copy, see the publisher's website here.

Footnotes[3]

[1] I hesitate to use that term - the academic in-jokes here and allusions to professional feuds, lack of tenure and the annoyances of students are as fresh and funny as ever.

[2] Academics who study the various serious subject of the Fae and related entities

[3] There must be footnotes!