Review: Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall

 A compelling, cheeky, charming narrator making magic out of an already great story.

Did I buy it just for the cover art? No... but I wouldn't blame me if I did.
Credit: Radiante Mozzarelle

Some people like their stories with the prose taking a backseat, getting out of the way - streamlined, as Max Gladstone called it - rather than the focus of the story. Some people like the prose to be purposeful, pretty or poetic, far more the point of the endeavour. If such a distinction in views exists for narrators, as well as their narrative, Alex Hall has leaned so far onto the second side of the scale that the whole thing is tipped over off the table and onto the floor, no doubt to the amusement (or at the hands) of Puck, Mortal Follies' charming, cheeky and absolutely centre stage raconteur. Far more than our protagonist, antagonist or love interest, Puck is the main character of the story he's telling here, even if he does his best to make us think otherwise, and he is also, absolutely, the star and highlight - he is a delight.

Much of what Mortal Follies is doing is in the mode of a lot of popular romantasy around nowadays. We've got regency, we've got fairies, we've got polite society shenanigans, fancy dresses, forbidden love and hijinks, all wrapped up in a relatively light tone, even when events take a turn for the sour. But the devil - or hobgoblin - is in the detail, and it is there that Hall has thrived in making his story really stand out.

Firstly, by so aggressively highlighting our external, third person narrator Puck, we're already standing somewhat apart form the norm. He gives us a clear narrative voice while mostly being uninvolved in the actualities of the plot, and that's really rather rare in stories. Which is a shame, because it's a really great tool for influencing the tone of the narrative, and that's where it shines here - Puck is consistently clear about his emotional responses to human behaviour, and his interests and boredom with various events, which gives him a clear licence to direct the narrative lens in specific ways. Some of this is how the tone is maintained as lightly as it is, even in the worst circumstances. Puck, simply, is not overly concerned by mortal suffering, so can rise above it. It is also a particularly neat way to draw a curtain across sex scenes - Puck isn't interested in the physicality of it, as he tells us, but the dynamics, and so it is on sex's effect on the characters more generally that he focusses, pulling away from the nitty gritty without the story ever starting to feeling prudish in its avoidance. More than an unreliable narrator (though he is one, sometimes, and I do love that when done well), he is a partisan and opinionated narrator, and turns the whole story in on itself, reflecting his personality back to the reader.

Luckily, it's a very compelling one.

In part, this is because he's extremely funny. I legitimately found myself giggling while reading, in a way I rarely do, and it's simply because he has a specific sort of dry, deadpan humour that gets me every time. It's understated, it's not the point, but it suffuses every sentence and, alongside the lightness of tone, makes the whole thing intensely readable. If I had to compare it to anything, I'd say it has an element of the Tom Stoppard to it, that witty, light but surprisingly deep sort of acerbity that fizzes across from phrase to phrase with delicate speed.

And this comes through in the character dialogue too - conversations bounce back and forward, simultaneously substanceless and laden with meaning and intent, the tip of an iceberg of characterisation that leaves you in no doubt that these people do all know each other deeply, intimately... and are going to use that knowledge to wind each other up. This is particularly true in the conversations between our protagonist, her best friend and her cousin, all of whom are clearly the closest of friends and thus sometimes think the others are absolute fools (as only good friends can).

In fairness, they sometimes very much are fools, especially when it comes to investigating the mystery which is the core of the early part of the story. There was something utterly delightful about a bunch of total amateurs trying to solve a complex puzzle and turning out - to their honest admission as well as the reader's observation - to be completely hopeless at it. They're regency socialites; what would they know about curses? Nothing. They have no leads, no expertise... and I'm making this sound terrible, as if they spend the first third of the book pootling around achieving nothing, which they do... but it's good. It's novel, which is some of the joy, but it also never feels extraneous to the story either. It feels true, where them being competent wouldn't. And watching them fail and falter is a far better insight to who they (and the narrator) are as people than success ever would be.

Of course, it's also an excuse to introduce, and keep introducing, the dark and mysterious love interest, who might actually know literally anything of use. She's also sarcastic and funny, but in a Byronic way (per the protagonist). Little bit of brooding, as a treat. And then of course completely fraught underneath the surface. Top marks on all counts, 10/10 for her.

The really interesting thing about her - or rather about the romance in general - is that it and the initial part of the plot aren't coterminous. We get overlapping layers of plot and romance and plot and romance, and again this is something that feels like it ought not to work, and yet Hall has pulled it together. What truly sells it, if anything, is the in-world reasoning - our dark and mysterious love interest thinks it might be a mite exploitative to ravish a young innocent while she's riding on the adrenaline high of life-threatening hijinks. And well... now I think about it... she's probably not wrong. And this is a thoughtfulness around tropes, around ideas, that comes through throughout the book, and makes it all the better. Yes it's light and frothy, but there's real substance to back it up.

The same can be said about the worldbuilding, much to my delight. A good chunk of the plot takes place in regency era Bath, but in a world with a thriving classical cultic scene, not to mention actual witches, fairies and spirits around the place. Because we have for our narrator Puck, we get a pleasing but entirely definite insight into much of these - he sees the invisible, knows some of the unknowable, and of course has opinions about everyone involved - but even if we didn't, for the characters, it's a matter of course that magic and old gods are real. They lie alongside Christianity in a way that feels wholly apropos for the neoclassical mania of the period, and Hall has done the most endearing thing for me and got the details right - we get a couple of really neat little niche factoids subtly alluded to in places, as well as the cult of Magna Mater and accompanying societal discomfort that is very Roman in tone and some entirely tidily presented historicity both for classical mythology generally and Bath specifically. It's not a substantial core of the book, and I'd never call it a mythology retelling or anything, but where it draws on it for its backdrop, it does it well and gracefully, and always precisely in keeping with the interests and mores of its setting. I always prefer light touch worldbuilding, and Hall has done it in just the right way to keep me happy - what we have works well, is accurate, alludes to greater depths, but never feels the need to spell any of it out exhaustively because it's simply not the point. The reader can be trusted to infer the salient points, so we can get onto the fun stuff (witty repartee).

All in all, this was an extremely fun read, with some very clever tweaks to normal formulae, as well as a beautifully presented setting and a charming, funny and very present narrative voice. I really hope, given how neatly the concept of Puck telling the story is framed, with hints to a whole set of events outside of this story, that we get more along these lines, but outside of this time and place. Puck as narrator absolutely made this a book worth reading, and I would be delighted to get more from him in the same vein.

--

The Math

Highlights: genuinely witty banter, light touch but accurate regency setting (but make it magic), thoughtful tweaks to well-known forms, top tier narrator, stunning cover art

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

Reference: Mortal Follies, Alexis Hall [Gollancz, 2023]

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroform_tea

Microreview [book]: The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk

Combining magic, romance, intercultural politics and the struggle against patriarchy, The Midnight Bargain is a delight from start to finish

Beatrice Clayborn is a woman with plans. As a woman from a high-class family in the highly patriarchal society of Chasland, she is expected to spend her first "Bargaining Season" attending dances, handing out her card to eligible suitors, entertaining callers and finally settling down with a man who is comfortable trading her talent for sorcery for the financial resources to get her family out of crippling debt. It's a deal that will secure her family's future and ensure that her sister can benefit from the finishing school education she couldn't afford, but there's one problem: for Beatrice to marry, as a woman with magical abilities, means that she will have to give up her magical powers, putting on a warding collar throughout what her husband deems to be her childbearing years in order to prevent her from being attacked by spirits during a pregnancy. Beatrice has far more attachment to her magic than to a future as someone's wife, and if she can only find the text she needs for a specific ritual, she can call a greater spirit into herself and become both powerful and unmarriagable: a combination that will offer her freedom to help her family in her own way.

What Beatrice hasn't reckoned on is the arrival of the Lavan siblings, both attending this Bargaining Season from the more powerful neighbouring country of Llanadras. Ysbeta Lavan quickly establishes herself as a rival to Beatrice's scholarly knowledge, before establishing that she has the same goal: escaping a politically convenient marriage to one of Chasland's most eligible elites. Her brother, Ianthe, establishes himself as an obstacle of a rather different kind, because he's smoking hot and totally amazing and it's not long before the two are rather hopelessly in love. Ianthe offers the chance at marriage in relatively more egalitarian Llanadras, where Beatrice could still practice minor magic but not call a greater spirit and train as a sorceress, and the Lavan's wealth means it would support her family as well. Of course, if that were actually a solution to Beatrice's real problems, we wouldn't be reading a book about it, and thus begins a romance that's as much about the growth of the individuals involved as it is about their growing together.

The Midnight Bargain benefits from an absolutely delightful setting, with a plot that breezes by in a whirl of regency intrigue. Over the course of her season, Beatrice encounters dances, card parties, picnics, chance meetings at bookshops, symbolic greenhouse conversations with prospective parents-in-law, heated debates in carriages and over breakfast, and even a fabulous boat party, with each set piece given exactly the time it needs to unfold and advance the plot while leaving plenty of time to enjoy each one. Of course, the patriarchal nature of Chaslander society is always on display, and every charming, witty conversation or clever use of feminine wiles comes with an edge: this is a society which burns alive women who give birth without shutting themselves off from magic, after all. Beatrice never loses sight of the game she's playing, in which she's expected to balance the number of men she encourages to chase her until she can strike the best possible deal and get smoothly handed off from father to husband. It's a tricky balance even before factoring in the danger of her attempts to escape the system entirely, or the occasional murder attempt by a jilted suitor, or the fulfilment of bargains made to Nadi, the luck spirit Beatrice invokes to help her in her quest. Beatrice's multiple competing dilemmas and the constant novelty of the scene changes kept me thoroughly hooked on The Midnight Bargain, without ever being overwhelmed or weighed down with the amount of drama it threw at me.

It helps, of course, that Beatrice is a very easy protagonist to love. This being, at heart, an m/f romance, the relationship between Beatrice and Ianthe just about edges out everyone else in terms of screentime, and that's no bad thing: Ianthe is perhaps a little too willing to let go of his ingrained cultural biases about the role of women, but I can't dispute that not being an ass about Beatrice's ambition makes him far more enjoyable to spend time with. Much of the worldbuilding of The Midnight Bargain is built on its portrayal of the different cultures of Chasland and Llanandras, with the cultural power very much held by the latter.  Unlike Chasland, where women are expected to have as many children as possible and sorceresses therefore need to wear warding collars from marriage to menopause, Llanandras allows women to plan their families and only ward themselves while pregnant or trying for children. The assumption of cultural superiority underpins the Lavan siblings' interactions with Beatrice, particularly when her feelings for Ianthe begin to conflict with her desire to pursue magic. For Ianthe, learning to respect Beatrice means interrogating his biases about the role of women in his own culture, and to take her ambition and talent seriously, and he rises to the challenge brilliantly, bringing several more juicy plot twists along the way.

Ianthe isn't the only important relationship in Beatrice's life: her growing friendship and trust with Ysbeta is just as important, as the two learn to work towards their mutual goal. Ysbeta's relationship with Beatrice is also shaped by her assumptions about the superiority of her own culture, and also by her judgement of Beatrice's sexuality: it's not outright stated in the text, but it's pretty explicit that Ysbeta is aromantic, and she finds it impossible to believe that Beatrice wouldn't be better off abandoning her magical dreams even as she pursues the same goal. Ysbeta is a wonderful character and her chemistry with Beatrice is just as good as Ianthe's (until the reveal of her sexuality, I was open to this becoming a poly romance, but it was not to be). The only point at which her characterisation falls down is a spoilery late book scene, which hinges on withholding key information and a point of distrust between Ysbeta and her brother at a point when it felt like their character arcs should have moved past that point. It's a key moment to setup the book's climax, but it was the only point where I felt that The Midnight Bargain's character arcs were at odds with what its intricate plot was demanding of them at that moment.

I could go on for days about the other wonderful characters and moments in this book: aside from the main trio, there's also Beatrice's novel-reading, political-game-playing sister Harriet, her quietly supportive mother, the cast of other ingenues and men in the bargaining season who are pursuing various agendas of their own, and of course her difficult, patriarchal father, who fails to take seriously any of Beatrice's attempts to bring him into her plans for her own future. There's also Beatrice's relationship with Nadi, the luck spirit she initially conjures to help her through a dangerously high-stakes card party, and then continues to work with throughout the book, through whom the majority of the book's magical component is conducted. Nadi and Beatrice's relationship both deepens and challenges our understanding of the spirit bonds which form the heart of The Midnight Bargain's magic system, offering a counterpoint to the universally held assumption that sorcerers must control and dominate the spirits they work with for the bond to be effective. It is also, like everything else in this treasure of a book, an absolute delight.

And that's my main takeaway from The Midnight Bargain: this is just a delightful book, from start to finish, in a way that balances intrigue, incisiveness, drama and flights of fancy to create a reading experience that was pure enjoyment for me. If you're looking for any of the above, in a magical period romance setting, you really can't go wrong with this book.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses:  +1 Everything about this book just made my heart very happy. If that's not worth a point, nothing is.

Penalties: Nothing, it is too fun to take things away

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Reference: Polk, C.L. The Midnight Bargain [Erewhon, 2020]

Microreview [Book]: The True Queen by Zen Cho

It's back to magical Regency England - and beyond - for the long anticipated and worthy sequel to Sorcerer to the Crown.

Sorcerer to the Crown was one of my favourite books of 2015, the year when I first started getting deeply into adult SFF fandom and voting for the Hugo awards, so perhaps it isn't surprising that it's so very close to my heart. Returning to this world in The True Queen feels like going to a reunion of smart, politically active, take-no-prisoners friends, where you're taken straight back into the action despite the intervening years. Most of the best characters of Sorcerer to the Crown are back - albeit more in the background - and it's lovely to see them all on top form, in a title which expands and deepens the world of the first novel in smart and satisfying ways. Although it could stand alone, there's significant spoilers for the plot of the first book here, and the thematic progression between the two means that it's best to start from the beginning: we'll wait.

Like its predecessor, Zen Cho's magical regency is one that's inextricably tied to the real history of Empire, and while irrepressible mixed-race magical prodigy Prunella Wythe (née Gentleman) might have taken up the Sorcerer Royal's staff, the undercurrents of white supremacy and misogyny still run deep in this version of the British Empire. Into this world comes Muna, a girl found on the shores of Janda Baik: a still-independent island in the middle of the Malacca straits protected by powerful witches, including returning character Mak Genggang. Muna, and her sister Sakti, have been the victims of some sort of curse which has robbed them of their memories, and while both are taken in by Mak Genggang and Sakti is tutored in witchcraft (Muna has no magic), when she starts literally disappearing it's decided that the pair might have to call on backup to figure out what's going on. That backup is, of course, best found in the form of England's scandalous Sorceress Royal, especially when an initial magic spell proves there might be an English connection to their curse itself. It's decided that this will be done by sending the pair to Prunella's newly formed academy for magiciennes, now founded in opposition to all good taste and propriety in London.

Of course, Sakti and Muna's plan goes sideways very quickly. Sakti disappears during the crossing through Fairyland and Muna is left to take her place despite her lack of magic. This quickly proves the least of her worries, as she's thrown into the ongoing dispute between the mortal world and faerie, all tied up in the loss of the Queen of Fairie's "Virtu" - a magical artifact containing a powerful spirit which was entrusted to the Threlfall family of dragons. Together with Henrietta, Prunella's former schoolmate and now teacher at the academy, Muna ends up at the forefront of the mission to untangle this drama, save her sister, and avoid bringing the wrath of the Fairy Queen down on England.

The characterisation in The True Queen is a big selling point, and there are some truly wonderful new characters to balance out the returning favourites. Muna, in particular, is a great addition: smart and resourceful when given the slightest opportunity to be, but out of her comfort zone and with a habit of deferring to her magical older sister which makes her hesitant to show her talents to her true extent. Muna's growth over the course of the novel is lovely to watch and makes the book's climactic scenes all the more tense. Sakti, her sister, is significantly less compelling, but she's absent for much of the book and it soon becomes clear that her callousness and the lack of behaviour that justifies Muna's desperation to be reunited are all part of the plan here. The growing relationship between Muna and Henrietta (yes, this book has substantial representation for same-sex relationships along with its other representation) is also great, and Henrietta's understated but clear progression from being Prunella's less talented and under-trained schoolfriend to being confident and assertive about her abilities is very nicely done. Because Henrietta and Muna are a little less outrageous than Prunella, and the latter is more in the background in this outing, I did occasionally miss her inimitable presence, but overall I felt that the balance between new and returning characters was handled very well, and I hope poor Zacharias Wythe enjoyed his break from the spotlight this time.

Where this novel really shines, however, is in balancing the humour, absurdity and melodrama of its dense plot with the more serious topics of colonialism, oppression and marginalisation which nearly all of its characters have to grapple with in one way or another. There's some truly majestic comedy in here: notable is the entire section in the Threlfall dragon estate, involving dragon-turned-affable-dandy Rollo and his formidable Aunt Georgiana Without Ruth, though the scenes with Henrietta's family trying to deal with her awful simulacrum are also right up there. These moments of fantasy fun share their tone with less savoury moments, like Muna's discovery of a racist talking portrait of a former Sorcerer Royal, but this balance is handled very carefully: it's always clear that the joke is on the racism and small-mindedness of the reactionaries, and not on the content of what they are saying. Of course, the representation of Janda Baik's culture is taken completely seriously, and occasional moments of humour from cultural misunderstandings, like Muna's assumption that Henrietta could become Zacharias' second wife to resolve her marital woes, are handled in a way that avoids portraying Muna's understanding as limited or "uncivilised". Zen Cho herself is a Malaysian living in the UK, and obviously knows what she's doing with this thread; overall, it's a masterclass in subverting the colonial assumptions that still drive our narratives of the "real" history of this period.

More so than Sorcerer to the Crown, The True Queen is interesting in that the conservative aspects of society are not represented by characters with any power to speak of: Prunella and her friends are running the show, now, whether the old boys like it or not (spoiler: they do not) and the brief moments of specific threat from reactionaries are very quickly dealt with or pushed to one side. Cho doesn't understate the effect of having a talking portrait of a racist dead man shouting at your visitors, but nor does she allow George Midsomer (it's always those pesky Midsomers!) to score any points over the characters who, after all, have things to be getting on with that aren't proving themselves to him. This balance of power stands in contrast to the portrayal of Faerie, which is powerful and threatening and alien, and which contains a large number of denizens who are quite enthusiastic about the prospect of eating humans for their magical strength.

In short, if you liked Sorcerer to the Crown - and I'm not sure why you've read this far if you didn't - then you'll almost certainly like Zen Cho's second outing in this world. The True Queen is smart, funny and sweet, regularly all at the same time, and I continue to be in awe of the author for creating such a compelling world that combines the best of cutting Regency drama with a ruthless subversion of some of the period's most unsavoury aspects (especially those which are still going strong today). I already suspect this book is going to be one of my strongest of 2019, and I'm excited for the prospect of more.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 My pretend literary best friends from 2015 are all back; +1 scathing Regency-style wit deployed against colonialism, white supremacy and difficult grandmothers alike.

Penalties: -1 My pretend best friends from 2015 could have had a couple more scenes...

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10


POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke.

Reference: Cho, Zen. The True Queen [Ace (US); Macmillan (UK), 2019].

Series Review: The Harwood Spellbook by Stephanie Burgis

A trio of magical, historical romances offering the most engaging, well-realised type of comfort reading.

Art by Leesha Hannigan

As winter continues its reign of terror over this part of the northern hemisphere, I've been doing my best to introduce a steady diet of comfort reading into what can become a pretty dark and dense TBR. That's why I've been so glad to finally make time for Stephanie Burgis, and particularly her Hardwood Spellbook series, an alternate historical romance set in a magical regency era reminiscent of Zen Cho, or Kate Elliott's Spiritwalker trilogy. The series currently consists of two "main" novellas - Snowspelled and the forthcoming Thornbound, as well as a shorter prequel novella, Spellswept, set fifteen years or so before the events of the main chronology, and from a different point of view, but with many of the same characters.

The focus of the series is Cassandra Harwood, a young woman born to an elite Anglish family. For 1700 years, elite men and women have maintained a balance of power by which only women can go into politics, but only men are allowed to study magic, and for families like the Harwoods, male and female children are expected to follow that most elite career path exactly. That seems limiting in a number of ways, and Cassandra's path has put her in collision with the most obvious taboo: she's a talented magician and is desperate to study magic, taking the place of her older brother, Jonathan, who is more than happy to step aside and follow his non-magical passion for history. To complicate matters further, members of the Boudiccate, the council that governs the country, must be married to a mage - which means that, despite general acceptance of same-sex relationships and the understanding that not all men can do magic, politically ambitious women must marry from a very limited group of men.

Cover by Ravven

What's fascinating about the main series - and while Spellswept is a delightful story and adds a lot to our overall understanding of Cassandra and her future sister-in-law Amy, it's worth reading after the initial introduction to the characters that Snowspelled provides - is that by the time we meet Cassandra, she's not the driven mage struggling against discrimination in her chosen path. Instead, in her own words, Cassandra is no longer "functional". Having pushed herself too hard in pursuit of securing the respect of her peers, she's burned out her own magic and is now unable to cast any spells at all. Luckily for us, this doesn't signal the end of any of her adventures, and Snowspelled and Thornbound deliver a tense pair of magically-driven mysteries: the first, set in a snowed-in house party, and the second in the Harwood's own estate next to a menacing forest. In both cases, unknown human meddling has upset the balance with their near neighbours, the elves and the fae, and it's up to Cassandra to untangle the mixture of human and fantastical motivations behind the mystery and save the day, all without a magical spell in sight.

As a reader, it's hard it is not to fixate on Cassandra's lack of magic, and how happy she - and we - would be if it returned, and to unconsciously expect that as an ending. What Burgis does so well is not to dismiss or deny that disappointment, but to make it very clear that the happy endings Cassandra and her family (including magic-school-rival-turned-fiance-turned-ex-fiance-turned-husband Wrexham) achieve are valid and satisfying even if they don't lead to undoing her past mistakes. Cassandra's response to the overwhelming hostility she has faced in achieving her ambitions has been to close herself off and attempt to achieve things on her own - even though Spellswept makes it clear that she has always had allies among her family - and each entry in the series explores that in a different way. Along the way, the story makes it abundantly clear that despite not being able to single-handedly achieve the reform she wanted by pushing through with blunt force, Cassandra there are perhaps even better ways to achieve her goal while also working with the family and allies around her. All three of these books are capital R Romance, so Cassandra's reconciliation with Wrexham and Amy's relationship with Jonathan are big elements of the "happily ever afters", but I very much enjoyed the fact that these relationships don't take total precedence over other family ties or personal goals, even if they sometimes provide more narrative fuel. Of course, the satisfaction of these endings relies on the strength of the main characters, and all three novellas benefit from a main cast who shine even when the limited space available means others are less fleshed out. Llewellyn, in Spellswept, has a particularly unfortunate time of it, though astute readers will note that it's because he's actually the worst.

Art by Leesha Hannigan

The worldbuilding of these novellas is quite focused, and there's a satisfying symmetry and an interesting power dynamic to the "women are politicians, men are mages" thing even if it might not stand up to super close scrutiny as a system of power distribution. Thornbound does add an interesting wrinkle when a character points out how many countries have a traditional patriarchal structure, which might also overturn the Boudiccate any moment if women were to give up or amend the political structure in any way. Certainly, Cassandra's struggles to be accepted as a magician feel more like someone of a marginalised gender hitting a glass ceiling than the disbelief and in-group policing (and/or appropriation) which might follow a privileged person taking on a marginalised person's social role. That's not to say that the conflict the book recounts isn't already compelling, but I do wonder if the complexities of Angland's gender politics might be fleshed out in later volumes. I'd also love to see the apparent precariousness of this political system explored, especially as it holds an interesting mirror to the storylines with the elves (in Snowspelled) and fae (in Thornbound), in which treaties must be upheld because of the unknowable but almost-certainly-dire consequences for humanity if they aren't, as doled out by non-human intelligences who aren't at all interested in nice human answers. There's a lot to explore here, and while I can see this series leaning in to the "Lady Trent" tactic of glossing over anything Cassandra doesn't find interesting in her own story, its nice to have the perspective from Amy (and other points of view in future) to hopefully expand on some of these questions and themes.

Ultimately, this series is one which takes a generous interpretation of human nature and applies it to the concept of sacrifice - of what we give up, when, and how, of what it does or doesn't help us achieve, and about how to cut one's losses and accept the best circumstances available. While there are a couple of genuinely unpleasant characters, most of the interpersonal conflict in Cassandra's world stems from those who have given something up in order to protect what they see as the good of society: whether that be upholding a status quo and forcing themselves into a particular mould to do so, or pushing for reforms at the expense of their own wellbeing. The result is a trio of well plotted, tense, emotionally satisfying novellas which punch well above their length in terms of thematic weight. Comfort reading this series may be, but it's comfort at its most engaging, balancing trauma and intrigue with a great cast of characters and some very satisfying - romantic and otherwise - outcomes.

The Math:

Snowspelled: 8/10 Great introduction to the series, start here. Not-so-cosy winter themes perfect for cold nights under a blanket.

Spellswept: 7/10 A lovely diversion into the past. Slighter, but Amy remains a force to be reckoned with.

Thornbound: 8/10 A return to Cassandra and a great continuation of the overall themes, introducing new characters and settings and a fascinating central mystery.

Overall: 8/10

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke.

Reference: Burgis, Stephanie. Snowspelled [Five Fathoms Press, 2017]

"Spellswept, " first published in The Underwater Ballroom Society [Five Fathoms Press, 2018]

Thornbound [Five Fathoms Press, 2019]