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!

#Review - The Briar Book of the Dead by A G Slatter

The Briar Book of the Dead
AG Slatter
Titan Books, 13 February 2024 
Available as: PB, 396pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803364544

I'm grateful to Titan Books for sending me a copy of The Briar Book of the Dead to consider for review.

The Briar Book of the Dead is a novel set in Slatter's Sourdough universe, recently explored by her in All the Murmuring Bones and The Path of Thorns. I was very pleased to revisit this intricate and intriguing world, its society centring on the witches who keep everything going and protect everyone else while themselves being persecuted by a venal Church.

This is a world where details matter, where social structures and indeed social infrastructure matter, where people matter. I think The Briar Book of the Dead explores that even more than its predecessors did. The story's set in Silverton, a remote hill town where the Briar family of witches have some prominence, since their powers enable them to fend off the dark Leech Lords. This means they're granted some tolerance by the distant church - so long as they know their place.

But when did Slatter's witches ever know their place? Far from that, the Briars - a matriarchal clan who came to Silverton three hundred years before and rescued the town from decline - actually run the place, dealing with a myriad of administrative, economic and social questions as well as with the magical. Such work isn't easy, however, and we see Silverton at a troubled time when the titular Witch has died suddenly and her role been passed on for the first time in a generation, as has that of the Steward, the family who ensures all those things listed above go smoothly. 

The story is told from the perspective of the new Steward, Ellie Briar, who's a bit of an embarrassment to the family because she has no witchcraft. What Ellie does have, unknown to anyone else, is a talent for speaking to - and for - the restless dead. This will be useful as the power of the Briars is tested to its limits. But it's a secret Ellie's determined to keep because the mere existence of ghosts in the town undermine's her family's mythology.

This was a magnificent story. Ellie is a fantastic mixture of the assured and competent - and the unsure. Being the only non-magical Briar means that while she may be loved, she's endlessly slighted by the others in unthinking ways. Despite recognising all the things that need to be done ahead of anyone else,  grasping how awkward situations can be defused and simply remembering what's next, Ellie has developed a habit of deference. So when only she seems to see what's going wrong, only she takes it seriously and only she knows what needs to be done, a tension inevitably rises between her and the other women of the family.

That is made worse as Ellie fancies the new priest who's been sent to shake up the town - a sign perhaps that the distant Church is finally paying attention to this remote corner? - so she has to juggle personal feelings, family history and romantic inclinations to find a way through. 

A fast-moving, enjoyable and positive (despite the dark things that happen) take on a fantasy world, this is a fun read and it was great to see mentions and hints about other storylines in this world, both those already in print and - dare I hope? - those still to come.

For more information about The Briar Book of the Dead, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - A Power Unbound by Freya Marske

A Power Unbound (Last Binding Trilogy, 3)
Freya Marske
Pan Macmillan, 9 November 2023
Available as: HB, 432pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529080988

I'm grateful to the publisher for providing me with an advance e-copy of A Power Unbound to consider for review.

With A Power Unbound, Marske at last centres a book on Jack Alstom - Lord Hawthorn - one of the more enigmatic of the gallery of magicians and magic-adjacent individuals we've seen in this series, and a character who's always had a whiff of brimstone about him (Violet, you may recall, asked him to ruin her in A Restless Truth). As a reminder, the first book, A Marvellous Light, largely follows Sir Robin Blyth, our non-magician gateway to the world of these books, a Civil Servant and the Home Office's liaison with the enchanted world, and Edwin Courcey, his magician counterpart, as they fall in love while the second book, A Restless Truth is more Sapphic in tone, with Maud Blyth and the aforementioned Violet getting to up all sorts on an ocean liner. Behind the personal entanglements, though, a dastardly plot is evolving, a scheme to take all of the power of the British magicians into one pair of hands. This has proceeded as the conspirators find pieces of the "Last Contract" and as Jack, Edwin, Maud and others seek to prevent that.

A Restless Truth also introduced Alan - journalist, radical, peddler of smut, and thief - as a sort of counterweight to Jack and - given the previous books - that means there is a big element of will-they, won't they in A Power Unbound.  The powerful distaste between the two men, a distaste with its roots perhaps in a contrast between Alan's working class suffering and Hawthorn's hauteur, has not gone away but since the events of A Restless Truth Alan has also been enlisted in the last-ditch effort to save British magic. Marske does a terrific job here at unpeeling layer after layer of Alan's feelings - his resentment of those who, as well as being born with wealth and power, have inherited magic too; his revulsion at what was done to Jack to remove his magic (yes - finally, we're learning more about what has been going on, and it's riveting!) and his desire to protect and nurture his family. 

Plus, of course, his attraction to Jack...

Fantasy novels can often be accused of ignoring real social conditions, as well as being oblivious to the actual politics of a world in which magic is real, but Marske inverts this, making questions of power, agency and privilege central to the narrative. It's perhaps in keeping with this that when things get steamy between Jack and Alan (sorry, minor spoiler, but surely you expected that? It's not just me?) the liaison between titled aristocrat and scrabbling guttersnipe doesn't dodge those same issues of power and consent, with some lovemaking scenes where these things are in fact central to the sexiness, Jack and Alan negotiating their relationship by stages through some saucy role-play.

And yes, if you're a reader of a traditionalist hue who doesn't an appreciate these themes, maybe this book might not be for you - but I would still encourage you to at least try it. There is also plenty of conflict, scheming, magical combat and racing for time, as the clock counts down and the villains finally make their move - enough to keep any reader satisfied even if they don't really get on with the more  tender parts of the story. 

For me, A Power Unbound does several difficult things very well. It rounds off a complex through-plot, which Marske has made us care intensely about. It does justice to the historical background of the Imperialistic, Edwardian setting, without uncritically adopting the prejudices of the time (this is shown most fully in the Queer narrative strand, one of the reasons it would be a mistake to see this as something secondary). It does credit to characters we've come to love. And, even at this late stage in the trilogy, it gives us a great deal of new information to round out, explain and motivate pretty much everyone.

Lastly - and of course not lastly - it tells a rattling good, exciting story in its own right and totally lands the ending.

In short, I'm sad to see this series end, but it goes out firing on all cylinders, the perfect ending to the trilogy.

For more information about A Power Unbound, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Starling House by Alix E Harrow

Starling House

Alix E Harrow

Macmillan, 31 October 2023

Available as: HB, 320pp, e, audio

Source: Advance copy

ISBN(HB): 9781529061123

I'm grateful to the publisher for providing me with an advance e-copy of Starling House via Netgalley to consider for review.

Starling House is the creepy story you were looking for - or that you should have been looking for - this Hallowe'en. But it's much much more than that. In the hardscrabble town of Eden, Kentucky, where bad luck seems more common than in the rest of the country, stands a peeling, decaying mansion surrounded by a garden run wild. Sometimes, a single lit window shows at night. 

In the house lives Arthur Starling, a recluse, cloistered among vines and surrounded by stories...

Also living in Eden - a less apt name it would be hard to find - is young Opal, a woman orphaned by her mother's car accident who has devoted herself to racing her younger bother Jasper. The siblings live in a motel room - Room 12 - which her mum somehow managed to secure for them from testy landlady Bev. Everything about Opal's life seems tenuous, from her place in Eden's society (she's widely held, correctly, to be a thief) to her hold on her job, to her right to be her bother's guardian, even to her romantic relationships (dismissed as 'mutual groping'). Opal's overriding project - the one item on her list - is her quest to get Jasper out of the town, where coal dust and asthma are destroying his lungs to a place at a posh college. Jasper is bright and hardworking has been accepted (though he hasn't informed him that she applied...) but how can Opal possibly afford to pay?

Luckily, she manages to blag a job as caretaker at the Scary Old House (don't go near the scary old house, Opal!) and Arthur seems to have cash to spare. Apparently a haughty, antisocial man who gets up to who knows what in the darkness and whose parents also came to a Bad End, he and Opal seem bound to run each other up the wrong way. As they meet - and clash - we learn the origin story, or stories, (we are told several versions) for Starling House, which concern a 19th century writer, Eleanor Starling, whose husband died on her wedding day and whose dark take on the fantastic is still in print 150 years later. Distrusted in her home town, and always daggers drawn with Gravely, the local mine-owners whose fortune was built on enslavement and exploitation, Eleanor lived a lonely life in the house that she built.

It turns out that Arthur is more than just the latest of the Starlings, but that he is a Warden of sorts, fulfilling Eleanor's design but also keeping her supernatural legacy in check. What's going on under Eden is complicated, a delicate balance established by the Gravelys' cruelty and exploitation, Eleanor's determination to make her own stories, and the subsequent decades of conflict. It's a balance that is now threatened by Opal's trespassing on Starling land, for she, too, has secrets - even if she doesn't know them.

This was a powerful and effecting story. There is a strong romantic subplot, which absolutely feels right here but creates great jeopardy. Opal has poured her life and energy into protecting her brother rather than herself which has left her unknowingly vulnerable. Similarly, Arthur, driven by guilt and notions of duty, has turned inwards, determined to do what it takes to be the last Warden. Almost from the first meeting something smoulders between the two, but Harrow delicately draws out the subsequent ignition, raising questions about whether it could result in a fire that burns the town to the ground.

Something Eden does, perhaps, deserve, for all those averted eyes, that tolerance of injustice, that profiting from misery and injustice. Starling House embodies questions about history and about the ability of powerful men to bend reality, to get their way. Eden's chemical pollution - filthy air, filthy river, tainted groundwater - is accompanied by a kind of supernatural wrongness, leading to that aforementioned bad luck. It's a wrongness that has come to the attention of the power-hungry, who will do whatever they need to to grasp at and use it, even if they break Opal and Arthur in the process - another way in which they are vulnerable.

Consequences. Guilt. Original Sin - this version of Eden embodies all of them. The town is built from  that sort of crooked timber of which nothing straight can be made - and everyone seems to know it's and not know it. Against this, what use can Opal's small efforts achieve?

A totally riveting read from Alix E Harrow, possibly her best book yet, you really need to read this.

For more information about Starling House, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft

The Hexologists (The Hexologists, 1)
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit, 28 September 2023
Available as: PB, 349pp PB, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356519067

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Hexologists to consider for review.

The Hexologists is a story of Iz and Warren Wilby, a married couple, living in the fantasy city of Berbiton, whose business is to solve magical mysteries. There's a bit of the famous Edwardian consulting detective both in the way that the popular press follow their exploits, and in the wider context. Berbiton is the capital of a powerful empire, with resident royalty whose peccadilloes, and political shenanigans, create many opportunities for mischief (magical or not). It is also at the forefront of (magic assisted) technological development - the equivalents of the telephone and wireless are novelties, and that of motor cars is beginning to be a nuisance, with pollution blanketing the city. 

I liked this setting. I also enjoyed the politics. The Wilbys' fierce anti-Monarchism means that when, at the start of this story, they're visited by a Royal flunky asking them to carry out an assignment for the Palace they take a lot of convincing. There are hints of revolution in the book, and also of scandal in the Wilbys' past, and of past dabbling in Forbidden Magicks - always fun. (The theoretical side to the magic here was a little hard to follow. I grasped that Hexology is a particular discipline of magic among several, some of which have fallen out of use while others are suppressed, but the relationship between all of them, despite being the subject of detailed exposition, was still a bit obscure). 

Anyway, once the Wilbys' scruples are satisfied and their investigation of the Royal Family's current difficulties begins, the story fairly rattles along with plenty of jeopardy - both moral and physical - numerous red herrings, double crosses, and no-holds-barred fights. Berbiton certainly has its seamy side, with slums, sweatshops and the magical equivalent of dark Satanic mills in evidence, so there's plenty of grimness here but I'd say nevertheless the story remains in the cosy subset of fantasy with the Wilbys' banter and sheet middleclassness playing a large part in keeping it there. That makes the book fun to read, though at times, it seemed to me that it did seem to lower the stakes rather, however desperately perilous things things are supposed to be.

Another aspect of the story that didn't really work for me was the alleged lustiness of Iz's and Warren's relationship. While the fact of this is stated a number of times, and indeed, given any opportunity, they're at it like there's no tomorrow, the atmosphere between them seems in contrast quite passionless. It's as though this strand has been written in to add spice to the story but doesn't quite touch the characters as they're drawn.

In contrast, the hints of past misbehaviour, especially by Iz who has some dangerous friends, were intriguing and I appreciated this fantasy focussing on a middle-aged couple rather than a young upstart or other chosen one. All in all, an entertaining and engaging story but one which felt like it could have done a bit more.

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