An impressive multiversal picaresque that has maybe a few too many meanders
I’m not typically one to start a review with comps, but I think that might be the best way to situate the very interesting, quite deliberate mashup of influences that is The Lighthouse at the End of the World.
Our main character, Oyster, is a smalltime gang member running cons in London who discovers an undercurrent of magic in London and stumbles into a tangle of alternate worlds, including an alternate London. With that setup, there are very definite nods to the British portal fantasy tradition here; you can see the dialogue to Narnia, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. But those nods, while affectionate, are also critical. Forgive a wretched colonial for perhaps not quite getting the class nuance, but the protagonists of those classics are all, to a greater or lesser extent, posh. Oyster and his associates are very much not that, and neither are essentially any of the people he meets during his adventures. And none of these books really feature cities, indeed, some are visibly hostile to them. Perhaps the layered Londons of V E Schwab’s Shades of Magic series are closer cousins, but even there the vibe is different, the crime more gentleperson thief than street kid tough. The Lighthouse at the End of the World is grimily, borderline threateningly, defiantly urban, and it is also, in an engaging, accessible way, really quite weird.
At heart this is a picaresque novel, with a likeable, flawed rogue (Oyster) falling into scrapes, travelling to strange places, and having adventures which poke obliquely at issues of contemporary relevance (climate change; ecofascism; capitalist excess). But it’s a multiversal, biohacked version thereof. The worlds oyster travels to range from unfamilar to bizarre – a beach packed with the lost detritus of urban development (dead tube trains, bicycles, office chairs) was particularly striking. And the creatures and people he meet are similarly so, from slightly insectoid fairies (?) to semi-biological flying machines to adorable beetle pets which nest against your rib cage (this last being an example of a light but effective thread of body horror throughout).
The nature of this sort of novel is the plot tumbles along and to some extent just happens to the protagonist. There is still enough action, contrasted with points of calm, to keep things interesting, but I could have wished a little bit more focus. I saw when looking up some details online for this review that the book is listed as “Book 1 of the Cities of the Drift,” and its status as Book 1 of a series (not something clearly advertised in the ARC copy I read) might explain the slightly unsatisfying conclusion, and even somewhat excuse it; it is a good setup for more books set in this world. But in my view the book isn’t quite, in its own terms, a wholly satisfactory conclusion to a wholly satisfying plot arc in and of itself.
Suggars’ character work is effective but thinly sketched, with the exception of a compelling, complete central character in Oyster. Fantasy fronted by firmly working class characters is rarer than it should be, and he is an excellent portrayal of such. Flawed, prickly, a bit lost, but with a basic decency at his core. He’s also never patronised by the narrative, again something that is rarer than ideal in this space. The rest of the cast, though, is closer to Dickensian caricature than realist portrait, though I do think this is deliberate, and effective in creating the appropriate atmosphere if not quite the depth I might ideally prefer. On the other hand, I’d give bonus points to Suggars for the lively and well-realised sometimes very odd non-human characters that populate the novel.
One particular narrative choice which grated was the attempts to render dialect and accent in the text. It’s clearly deliberate and part of the project – working class, street-level urban fantasy – but doesn’t quite work for me. Not, as far as I can tell, an inaccurate representation of vocabulary and accent (Suggars is from South London), but it’s just hard to do that in a way that reads well and I don’t think it quite succeeds. And this isn’t only true of Oyster’s South London cant, the (hugely entertaining) Marya Petrovna who doesn’t speak English as her first language also comes across just a little unnaturally. This may not bother others, but for me pulled me – significantly, at times – out of the otherwise really well crafted, slightly hallucinatory fever dream setting of the novel.
Ultimately, The Lighthouse at the End of the World reads very much like a first novel (Suggars already has a number of very good short stories in print), but a good first novel. Not everything entirely lands. There’s the occasional (metaphorical) missed dot on an i or cross on a t. But the creativity and eye for imagery lingers more than the flaws for me. A good read in its own right, and an even better signal for what might come next.
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The Math
Highlights:
- Unapologetically working class, street level fantasy
- A well-developed taste for the bizarre
- Flashes of brilliant prose
Nerd coefficient: 7/10
Reference: Philip A. Suggars, The Lighthouse at the End of the World [Titan, 2025].
POSTED BY: Eddie Clark. Professional nerd by day, amateur nerd by night. @dreddieclark.bsky.social
