Manticores, vampyrs, and spies challenge a magical city
Premee Mohamed’s Wickhills is a John le Carré-style spy story that manages to both critique surveillance states and the narratives we tell about the past while also distracting us with fantastic beasts and a fast-paced plot. We follow Ferec, an agent for Seaborne, a secretive government agency that he believes protects the people of Wickhills. Ferec’s boss has asked him to do an off-book mission to retrieve a mysterious package which turns out to be a defector from a nearby city. The problem is: no one travels between the two cities; it’s just not done (perhaps because of magic?). And the defector has something that cannot fall into the wrong hands, including those of the government that Ferec works for. Shenanigans ensue.
Wickhills is one of six regional cities, but people never travel between the cities. Ferec grew up with stories of how Wickhills was different and better than the other cities in the region. But, this mission forces Ferec to confront his view of his city, its government, and its past, coming to realize that our stories of identity are almost always crafted to make us feel like the ‘good guys’, even when we’re not (or it’s just more complicated than that).
On a micro level, Wickhills tells the story of Ferec. He’s a fairly broken man; orphaned as a child, he was forced and sometimes chose to do terrible things to survive. As a member of Seaborne, he’s had to kill to protect the city and he often wonders if he feels bad enough about those deaths. He sees himself as an imperfect defender of the city but this mission forces him to ask if he’s been the bad guy all along and if Seaborne is secretly the Gestapo.
Over the course of the book, Ferec acquires a small team that he tries to learn to trust. It includes a member of the city watch, Velasco, who gets pulled in deeper to their secret mission than he would have preferred and, my favourite character of the book, Agent Heopsachett, an extremely competent fat lady who comes from Seaborne’s archives and provides a counterpoint to some of Ferec’s more destructive impulses.
On the macro level, Wickhills tells a story of the long tail of generational trauma left by war. Most people do not remember the wars that made Wickhills and the agreements with the other five cities of the region, so the governments of those cities can tell the story of the war however they like. Ferec sees his city as the hero of those stories. But, of course, that’s the story that the state would want you to absorb, no?
Bringing a defector through the city forces Ferec to see Wickhills through they eyes of an outsider. Unsurprisingly, he does not see things the same way. Further, during this mission, Ferec learns more about the history of the city from some allies who actually lived through the past that is now covered up by the state. Ferec’s boss, Bardanes, is a manticore, an extraordinarily long-lived creature from Persian mythology that has the face of a human, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion. He’s lived in Wickhills for more than 250 years, so he saw some of its history made. Bardanes reveals part of the history of Wickhills that has been buried and forbidden to help Ferec understand the significance of his mission. Later in the story, Ferec works with a vampyr named Cazenave whose people have been in the city as long as there has been a city. Cazenave also exposes more of Wickhills’ past and how it has been shaped by the people in power.
As with all of Mohamed’s work, the writing will sometimes make you just stop on the page to admire a line of description or the way she builds characterization into an idle gesture. For example, when we meet Agent Heopsachett, Mohamed tells us “her coat and dress had been tailored to fit her fat, powerful body, not to camouflage it.” This line shows us so much about Heopsachett and her personality, trusting the reader to get it without spelling things out didactically.
Mohamed also drops in incredible details that never get further explained, in a way that makes the depth of the world she’s built seem bottomless. For example, from just the first chapter we get this description: "The Market Street Wyrm slackened its sable coils around the dome of the old mall, somnolescent but not quite asleep, its great pre-hibernation yawns occasionally flooding the neighbourhood with amber light. At street level lay the dragon’s shrine, begging it to rest, to dream, the wooden box crowded with cheap tin amulets and wizened crabapples.” We learn no more about the Market Street Wyrm. It’s part of the scenery of Wickhills, but one that tells us of the incredible depths of this city, this world that Mohamed built.
I have been a longtime fan of Mohamed’s work, but Wickhills is really a standout for me. The characters, setting, and writing are all fantastically done. Go and read this book. It’s great.
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The Math:
Highlights:
- Compelling John LeCarre-style spy story
- Deeper questions about narrative and history
- Outstanding writing and worldbuilding
Nerd Coefficient: 9/10, "very high quality/standout in its category"
Reference: Mohamed, Premee. Wickhills [Tor Books, 2026].
POSTED BY: Christine D. Baker, historian and lover of SFF and mysteries. You can find her also writing reviews at Ancillary Review of Books or podcasting about classic scifi/fantasy at Hugo History. Come chat books with her on Bluesky @klaxoncomms.com.