Unwin, 1989, 188 p.

This is apparently the third in Greenland’s Daybreak series but I wasn’t really aware of this when I bought it recently. I read The Hour of the Thin Ox many years ago and reviewed Daybreak on a Different Mountain on the blog in 2009.

Other Voices is a slightly unfocused tale set in the standardised pre- (or never-) industrial fantasy milieu. Greenland doesn’t fall into the clichés of the genre though, he’s too good a writer for that.

At the novel’s start Luscany is on the verge of being conquered by the Eschalan, a people to all intents human, but orange. The book promises to be the story of Serin, daughter of Tarven Guille, a medical experimenter.  It soon spreads out, though, to encompass the life of Luscany’s Princess Nette kept unwillingly in her palace by the victorious Eschalan as a figurehead.

Tarven and his wife Amber’s first two children either didn’t survive birth, or only barely did. Nevertheless, their bodies are kept in the house in a drawer in which Serin is forbidden to look. For Tarven is on the point of discovering how to bring the recently dead back to life.

The fantasy elements don’t overwhelm the story which is mainly one of accommodating to the occupying power and of resisting it.

Not one of Greenland’s major works but eminently readable.

Pedant’s corner:- “seemed to sooth her rage” (to soothe her rage.)

Luna Press, 2025, 176 p including Author’s note on Finding Inspiration in Scottish Folklore. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

This is a collection of one novella and 22 short stories – some very short; the title story is barely three pages long, a couple are only two, with the longest, The Frittening, just twelve – all taking inspiration from Scotland’s folklore, superstitions, or landscape.

The short pieces are loosely bunched under headings for the four seasons with each section’s stories prefaced with a wood- (or lino-)cut engraving of one of the Moon’s principal phases and a scene illustrative of a story within it. A ‘Bonus Section’ at the end outlines those particular tales and legends which sparked Croal’s imagination.

An individual story here can contain relatively familiar apparitions or hauntings – selkies, kelpies, hagstones, seer stones, magpies, omens and shape shifting, Will-o’-the-Wisp, the Otherworld, Changelings – but others like the Sluagh, the Frittening or the Boneless, the Cat-Sith, the Ghillie-Dhugh, Baobhan Sith and the Fiddlers of Tomnahurich Hill, the Cailleach, the Nuckelavee, the Marool, the Ceasg, Bee-telling, the Sea-Mither, Each Uisge, the Wulver, the Bride and Angus, may be less so. Some are set in depopulated post-disaster worlds and border on Science Fiction; others touch on gothic, weird horror, dark fantasy, and solarpunk. Many draw stimulus from nature, climate, and the environment, with feminist and eco themes prominent. Croal’s Author’s Note informs us three of her tales do not have a specific derivation but are original to her.

Hence, among others, we have omens in the sky, tappings on windows, a strange puddle emerging on a doorstep, pebbles appearing in a nest in the night, a will-o’-the-wisp manifesting more strongly each day, a fiddler finding his muse in a painting whose scene gradually changes, the green man as a malevolent influence, the thoughts of the last surviving whale as it roams the deserted seas. Except for a common thread of the sea there is little beyond the Gaelic names of the various phantasms to mark these stories out as specifically Scottish.

The novella, Daughter of Fire and Water, with its intermingling of gods/goddesses and mortals in fact reads more like a Greek, or perhaps Norse, myth – except for the prince in it being named Angus.

Taken individually the stories here are perfectly fine but the cumulative effect of Croal’s general style tends to the dry. She has a fondness for italicized paragraphs, especially in throat-clearing beginnings, and there is the occasional odd choice of verb, which can be jarring. There tends to be a kind of distance between the tale and the reader and the stories are too often told rather than shown while some are not really given enough room to breathe fully. There is not much emotion evoked in these tales but then stories of weird creatures and the whole apparatus of fairy tale have always been admonitory in intent.

This is a collection to be sipped rather than quaffed. (Not really an option available to a reviewer.)

Curiously, a few lines on Content Notes and Warnings come dead last in the book though a signal to them does lie on the publishing information page. Surely if such warnings are needed they ought to be more prominently placed?

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- focussing (focusing,) maw (more than once. A maw is not a mouth,) several USianisms (cookies, snuck, dove [for dive,] inside of, etc,) sunk (several times; sank.) “The only muscle the woman moved was her mouth” (a mouth is not a muscle,) razor—sharp (razor-sharp,) sung (x 2, sang.) “She lay the Seer’s map on the table” (She laid the Seer’s map on the table.) “She was his only companion, his confidant” (she; therefore ‘confidante’,) “Then she said with sharp cruelty, ‘no. Not if you…’” (she said with sharp cruelty, ‘No. Not if you…’,) “Everyone knelt and lay the offerings at her feet” (and laid the offerings,) “all that kept me company were layers of clouds” (all that kept me company was ….) “If I wanted so bad not to be alone” (If I wanted so badly not to be alone,) “and lay it over my chest as a pendant” (and laid it over my chest,) “and lay her in blankets” (and laid her in.) “When the sea witch, turned away and disappeared” (doesn’t need the comma, which in fact detracts from the sense,)  “that I’d wove so carefully” (woven,) “mouth scrunched up into an eclipse” (only makes sense if ‘ellipse’ was meant,) a new paragraph that was not indented, a missing full stop, “span” (spun,) “as if expecting me turn into” (to turn into.) “‘Your association with them isn’t exactly customary’” (sense expects, ‘Your association with them isn’t exactly exemplary’,) sat (seated; or; sitting.) “The fall made the landscape blur, and then a screech” (needs clarification,) “there were no sign of burns or marks” (there was no sign.) “then he swept out the room” (as written this means he cleaned the room with a brush; what was intended was ‘he swept out of the room’,) “the hot water stung into my legs” (the hot water stung my legs,) focussed (focused, annoyingly used two pages earlier.) “They looked between one another” (looked at one another,) galivanted (gallivanted.) “Much of these stories are inspired by” (Many of these stories are.) “I became fascinated in the dark, strange, and rich folklore” (became fascinated by,) “rife with unexplained phenomenon” phenomena makes more sense.) “Hagstones are stones with natural holes bored in centre are thought to be,” (the holes can’t have been bored; plus the sentence needs an ‘and’ before ‘are thought’.)

NewCon Press, 2025, 115 p. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

This was published as a novella but reads more like an assemblage of short stories with characters which cross over from one to the next, though outwith their own tale, usually only in brief appearances. Its background premise – something strange (but unspecified) has happened and people have been advised to remain indoors – may be a literary response to Covid. The setting is a small village in Scotland – locals call it a clachan but incomers have used the description hamlet (which I note is actually a particularly English designation) for so long that it has become more common. The village ‘spinsters,’ however, still frown upon it. Apart from the first, very short, chapter which introduces the strange event, each section is given over to the experiences of different characters, Beth, Polly, Helen, Eve, Robyn and Jeanie, with the novella ending with a sort of epilogue from the point of view someone called the Spaceman.

The stories’ time scales are not always immediately apparent as some chapters start before the strange event or more or less ignore it happening. However, there’s enough oddness going on even without it.

Responding to a voice calling to her, Beth, who has inherited her home from her mother and not improved it in any way, instead letting it run to squalor, manages to move through the pipes in her plumbing, whether by her shrinking or the pipes expanding is moot. Eventually she is drawn down to an underground chamber to chat with the spinsters about the end of the world. The chapters which follow may represent different ways in which that end happens.

Thanks to the green-suited spaceman who appears at her window one night, schoolgirl Polly travels the universe and becomes both a witch and a princess.

Helen begins to produce videos which attract internet followers but increasingly show her lack of control of her life.

To escape the locked down city Eve has come to the cottage she rents out to Matthew (known locally as the Pest.) Not a good choice.

At Helen’s request Robyn builds a doll’s house as an exact replica of Helen’s home but realizes it also needs a doll’s house inside it and then another inside that and so on down.

Jeanie begins to act strangely and eventually locks herself away from everyone. She is however revealed to be a figment, a skin the narrator wore to make her life more amenable. The implication is that all the viewpoint characters are such skins. (But this is the essence of fiction. The reader temporarily becomes – or at least empathises with – a book’s characters.)

The Spaceman is from another world.

The Hamlet has aspects of a fairy tale (but there do not seem to be any happy ever afters, except perhaps for Polly,) has some of the heightened sensibility of magic realism (with a faint echo of John Burnside’s Glister,) moments of horror, and makes a foray into Science Fiction. Whether the disparate elements necessarily cohere into a unified whole is a matter for the individual reader. Corrance can write though.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “The McIvor’s lived in” (the McIvors lived in,) sat (x 2, sitting, or, seated,) “Mums washing machine” (Mum’s,) “paper mâché” (paper mache:  if its ‘mâché’ then it’s papier mâché,) “it sloped passed me” (past me,) airplane (aeroplane,) “the High-lands” (the Highlands,) curb (kerb.) “‘So where did you learn to cook?’ She asked.” (‘So where did you learn to cook?’ she asked,) “when they played drafts” (draughts,) dollhouse (doll’s house,) “most Saturday’s” (most Saturdays,) “and come pick me up” (come to pick me up,) miniscule (minuscule,) “the little girls’ eyes” (it was only one girl; ‘little girl’s eyes’.)

Or at least it ought to be.

The publication date was yesterday.

I’ve not accessed my copy yet but this one should contain my reviews of:-

City of All Seasons by Oliver K Langmead and Aliya Whiteley

The History of the World by Simon Morden

Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston

Those reviews will appear here in due course.

Only twelve works are on my best list this year; eight by women, four by men. Five were in translation – plus two more if you count Elif Shafak.

Troubling Love by Elena Ferrante

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid

Hex by Jenni Fagan

Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness

The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

The Photograph by Penelope Lively

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Shanghai Nights by Juan Marsé

The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

34 Scottish books this year, 17 by men, 17 by women. Five were fantasy or SF, one was non-fiction.

(For my reviews type the book title into my search box.)

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

Greenmantle by John Buchan

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid

Hex by Jenni Fagan

The Wind That Shakes the Barley by James Barke

The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid

Guy Mannering by Walter Scott

Olivia by O Douglas

Poor Angus by Robin Jenkins

Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett

Born Leader by J T McIntosh

Nothing Left to Fear From Hell by Alan Warner

The Hamlet by Joanna Corrance

Poor Tom by Edwin Muir

Rizzio by Denise Mina

Dark Crescent by Lyndsey Croal

The Hayburn Family by Guy McCrone

The Takeover by Muriel Spark

Columba’s Bones by David Greig

The Keelie Hawk by Kathleen Jamie

The Song in the Green Thorn Tree by James Barke

Now She Is Witch by Kirsty Logan

Black Sparta by Naomi Mitchison

Life for a Life by T F Muir

Out of Bounds by Val McDermid

Dead Catch by T F Muir

Some Kind of Grace by Robin Jenkins

The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett

The Green Isle of the Great Deep by Neil M Gunn

To See Ourselves by Alistair Moffat

The Setons by O Douglas

Auld Licht Idylls by J M Barrie

Gliff by Ali Smith

The Wonder of All the Gay World by James Barke  (review still to appear here.)

Orbit, 2024, 386 p. Reviewed for ParSec 13.

A list of some of the elements with which this novel is sprinkled – an ancient clandestine religious sect, a highly secret Government agency whose existence dates back to Tudor times, the Charge of the Light Brigade, ritual sacrifices, a sword imbued with dark powers, cannibalism – might suggest it leans towards the schlockier end of the fictional spectrum but Pullen’s writing style is far from that. Though at times it does lean into excess at others it even smacks of literary quality.

The book has an enleaved structure. As supposedly written down in 1921, the story of John Sackville, only son of the Earl of Dorset, of his male lover Garrett and their encounters with evil powers, top and tail the book in an epistolary narrative titled The White Baron. Within that, Sackville reads the diary of Dr Samuel Abravanel from September 1876 under the rubric The Red Circle, which itself contains letters from mid-Victorian General Ian Stewart to his wife Clara in a section named The Black Hunger. The settings range in location from that Dorset home to early twentieth century India, Tibet, China and Mongolia before taking in mid-nineteenth century Orkney, the Crimean War and a trip into Ukraine – then under Tsarist Russian rule.

In The White Baron, Sackville writes of his more or less idyllic childhood as the heir to Lord Dalwood and of his homosexual relationship with Garret, the son of one of his father’s tenants, a liaison which they managed to keep undiscovered for over ten years probably because “The privileged classes always give each other the benefit of the doubt.” Through these early pages Pullen leads us into his story slowly. Though in his time at Oxford, when he met Russian Count Evgeni Vorontzoff who is to reappear throughout the tale, he had heard of the Dhaumri Karoti, a shadowy organisation which is to prove to be the disruptor of his life, it is the discovery of Sackville’s homosexual relationship while serving in the diplomatic service in Sikkim that sees him blackmailed into doing the bidding of MI7, the King’s Constabulary of Astrology, Alchemy and Necromancy. “We deal in the defence of the realm against witchcraft, sorcery and black magic.” His task is to penetrate deep into Tibet and Mongolia to retrieve the sword which once belonged to General Stewart and fell into the hands of the Dhaumri Korati when he was taken prisoner by the Russians after the Charge of the Light Brigade but which has since become an object of power. Nominally Buddhist, the Dhaumri Korati believe that the only way to defeat suffering is to wipe out existence; to destroy all sentient beings. Their present-day adherents are certain that if they consume human flesh they will be granted great spiritual and physical power but be cursed by the desire for more and more of it, a hunger, the Black Hunger, that can never be satisfied. They try to control it through tantric meditation, thus gaining power over their own bodies, other people and nature itself.

Against them the King’s Constabulary must use golden weapons and golden bullets, or, rather, since gold is a soft metal, bullets made from an alloy of gold and platinum. These derive their holy power from being used in Christian church ceremonies before being seized and melted down in the English Reformation.

The Crimean and Indian episodes echo the so-called Great Game and the othering of Oriental societies and peoples which reads unfortunately these days. A man such as Sackville, despite his homosexuality, would no doubt have subscribed to those prevailing attitudes. (The book itself contains a prefatory list of trigger warnings relating to – in order – homophobia, antisemitism, violence, child physical abuse, class privilege, mental illness, racism and colonialism. Don’t say you weren’t notified.)

The Orkney scenes lack some verisimilitude. Ian Stewart’s brother, Finlay, the Earl, shoots a deer. Deer on Orkney disappeared long before modern times. His residence, Kirkwall Castle, was actually destroyed in 1614 and so would not have been occupied in 1876. Artistic license may excuse those examples but more egregiously Pullen – despite once living in Edinburgh – does not seem to be aware that Scotland has its own judicial and policing system as he has Samuel Abravanel say the Court of Chancery (an England and Wales only entity) would deal with Scottish lunacy cases and London’s Metropolitan Police would be invited to oversee sensitive matters. I wondered also if a similar caveat might be placed against the statement that the once mighty Tibetan Empire renounced its power because of conscience.

The fantasy and horror elements build up as the novel progresses. We learn of Pretas from the spirit realm which roam the countryside always hungry, always craving human flesh. A more supercharged version called a Mahapreta is able to manifest into the physical world and has great power.

Pullen carries all this off well, his characterisation and narrative drive pulling the reader through. What to make of its supernatural components depends on said reader’s capacity to suspend disbelief in them.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “without His Holiness’ seal” (His Holiness’s, another instance of Holiness’ later,) “onto Rawlins’ desk” (Rawlins’s,) “the hoi polloi” (‘hoi’ is Greek for ‘the’ so ‘the hoi polloi’ contains an unnecessary repetition,) a missing comma at the end of a piece of dialogue, a question rendered without a question mark, two sentences in present tense in an otherwise past tense passage, “the Laird of Stenness’ personal estate” (Stenness’s.) “I wracked my brain” (racked, another instance of ‘wracked’ for ‘racked’ later,) “we were flanked on three sides” (strictly flanks are on only the left and right of an army’s position, the enemy to the front is not on a flank,) “than either of those languages possess” (than either … possesses,) “rose to a crescendo” (the crescendo is the rise, not its culmination; there was another ‘rose to a crescendo’ later,) “my Wembley revolver” (Webley, I should think,) “the Ukraine” (true to its time, but the natives prefer just Ukraine,) “she struggled mightily” (twice in ten lines,) “the Crystal Palace exhibition” (the Crystal Palace Exhibition,) “Hermes Trismegistos” (Hermes Trismegistus,) “to bring back not just one, but hundreds of thousands of souls back from the netherworld” (has one ‘back’ too many.) “It was oblong with the end near us forming a perfect rectangle, and the farthest shore curved in a neat circle … it was shaped rather like a keyhole … or… a crude skull” (not oblong, then,) “ears perked up for further sounds” (the usual verb here is ‘pricked up’,) “a candelabra” (a candelabra is a candelabrum.)oliness’s,)

“When we was done, he raised his hands” (When he was done.)

Solaris, 2022, 158 p.

This is a curious concoction. Set in a world and a milieu, Goetia, which has strong resemblances to townships in Hollywood Westerns but an entirely different social order. It seems to be ruled by a group known as The Elect, with an underclass called the Fallen, powerful angel types known as Virtues, with added demon lords.

Celeste (only half Elect therefore one of the Fallen) is a croupier in an analogue of a Western Saloon, very protective of her younger sister Mariel since they were both left orphans. Celeste has a past with Abraxas, a demon lord, whose sexual attraction she can still feel but to whose control she did not completely fall into as she did not want to lose her soul.

The plot kicks off with the gruesome murder of an Elect, Daniel Alameda, in one of the saloon’s rooms. He was castrated and bled to death. It is Mariel who becomes accused of the crime.

The court being made up of the Elect only an examination into the accused’s spiritual fitness will determine guilt or innocence. But Fallen by default are not innocent. Nevertheless Celeste, engaged as advocatus diaboli by the head Virtue, is determined to prove Mariel’s lack of guilt.

Which means turning to Abraxas (who has a very close resemblance to Coyote in the author’s Sixth World books) for help. What he and she uncover and Celeste’s actions thereafter do not reflect well on either of the sisters.

Roanhorse writes well and has a cast of reasonably nuanced characters. Quite how all this sits with the overtones of the supernatural she is so fond of is debatable but I was willing to overlook that and go along for the ride.

Pedant’s corner:- “None of the Orders were fond of” (strictly; ‘None of the Orders was fond of’.) “‘I will abide your rules’” (abide by your rules,) “in the opposite direction of the camp” (the opposite direction to the camp,) “the metal gating” (it was the doors of a lift so ‘gating’ is okay but ‘grating’ is more natural,) “the box filled with the sound of mechanics” (these were not people who fix machines, but the machines themselves; so, ‘with the sound of the mechanism’,) drug (dragged,) “reached a deafening crescendo” (a crescendo is the rise, not its culmination; ‘crescendoed to a deafening climax’.)

Arcadia, 2024, 380 p. Reviewed for ParSec 13.

It is a usually unspoken assumption that it is the duty of a reviewer not to imbue a review with spoilers. Yet what to do if to give some flavour of the contents (something necessary to any review,) makes that all but impossible? Not that in this case any comments would really be much of a spoiler. The manner in which the story is told along with the structure of the book manage to do that without requiring any assistance. The main narrative is told in four Parts but its title (The Queen) is a hefty pointer to the contents, and the title page itself, plus those introducing the Prologue, each Part, the three separate sections of Part IV, plus the Epilogue, are blazoned with pale drawings of wasps. The Queen? Wasps? Some sort of vespine nightmare, pheromone driven, is surely being not merely hinted at, but promised. Moreover, the Prologue pretty much embodies the climactic scene, so anyone reading that already knows what the spoilers are. The rest of the text describes how the scenario got to that point.

The main action unfolds over a period of around twenty-four hours in June 2018 in the town of Saint Catharines, Ontario. Margaret June Carpenter (Cherry) has closeted herself at home since the disappearance of four students from her school, Northfield, several weeks before: three boys, Chad Dearborn, Will Stinson, Allan Teller, who are remembered fondly and worriedly, and Margaret’s best friend Charity Atwater (Plum,) who isn’t.

Margaret’s isolation is ended when a surprise package arrives containing a mobile phone. The texts on it appear to be from Charity as they mention things that only she would know. They insist Margaret follow the instructions she is given. These lead her to the school where in Margaret’s absence a mysterious girl called Serena – about whom the only thing anyone can remember is that she is ‘hot’ – has been instigating confusion. So far so High School story but there follows a very well written scene where a teacher, Mr Foster, is clearly under mental coercion while revealing to a shocked class avidly filming his confession on their phones an act of inappropriate conduct towards Serena. Here, too, Margaret is joined by Harry Cook, her boyfriend of sorts, and there is talk of a gathering remembered as Burning Van from the burnt-out vehicle where its events, the trigger for the plot, centred.

Another strand relates the back story of an Elon Musk-like billionaire called Rudyard Crate, who as a child witnessed his elder sister eaten alive by a swarm of dorylus, or siafu, ants while barely escaping himself, which has naturally haunted him ever since but given him an unhealthy fixation. He has instigated Project Athena, designed to introduce insect phenotypes (mostly of wasps, but also of other genera) into human DNA to produce a hybrid creature. The most successful of these is Subject Six, indistinguishable from a human child until triggered by a “time of dynamic bodily or neurological change like human teenage-hood.” Subject Six: a wasp in the nest of Northfield.

When she meets Crate, Margaret notes his Businessman’s laugh, a phenomenon her father warned her of. “‘It’s as fake as a three-dollar bill, Margaret. Never trust a man who’s perfected his Businessman’s laugh.’”

The June 2018 setting is, perhaps, an authorial mis-step given that in the book the climactic events are well publicised and discussed but of course readers in 2024 have never heard of them. In all, though, The Queen is a well written but curiously unconvincing tale from the area where Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror overlap – at least unconvincing to those like me who normally don’t read horror stories – until we reach Part IV, Ever After, and a section where in an article reprinted from a magazine, Chris Packer, a journalist born and brought up in St Catharines, compares and contrasts the post-happening world-wide reactions to Margaret and Charity and so the novel begins to comment on itself and take on wider concerns.

Packer remembers from a case of abduction and killing years earlier that not all missing girls were treated equally. The one from the better-off families was spoken of with adoration: the one from the wrong side of town dismissed. It was ever thus.

Two more shorter bits of Part IV provide further perspective and reflections on the story’s events – even a touch of hope.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian. Otherwise; “He had no other companions other than” (has one ‘other’ too many,) sunk (x 5, sank, which did appear once,) “hung myself” (hanged myself.)  “Plum and me had been” (Plum and I had been,) “left raw wheals on its ankles and wrists” (raw weals.) “Queens force-feed it to her drones and attendants” (force-feed it to their drones and attendants.) “The larvae hatches” (The larvae hatch – larva was used correctly as the singular a few lines later,) “Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain’” (usually translated as ‘Night on the Bare Mountain’,) sprung (sprang,) “their DNA helixes” (helices?) sanitarium (sanatorium,) staunch (stanch,) “she shrunk in the swing” (shrank.) “The song rose to its glittering crescendo” (the crescendo is the rise, not the end of the rise.) “Outside of” (no ‘of’ please, just ‘outside’.)

Hodderscape, 2024, 374 p. Reviewed for ParSec 12.

In September 1903 Samantha Harker is a librarian at The Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena, an organisation which investigates mysteries and monsters and whose field agents hunt them. Since her grandfather suddenly disappeared, leaving only an enigmatic message in Morse code – a series of numbers, probably a book cipher – Sam has been anxious to find out what happened to him and if he is still alive. A report from Paris of incidents being called the Beast murders excites her because an illustrating photograph shows the same series of dots and dashes as in her grandfather’s note. She petitions the Society’s Mr Wright to be assigned the case only to be told it has already been allotted to Dr Helena Moriarty (daughter of the “infamous” Professor who had “snuffed out” Sherlock Holmes.) Hel is one of the Society’s best agents but her last three assistants were all killed in various ways. Only if she assents can Sam accompany her. Despite misgivings, she does.

Another of the Society’s field agents is Jakob Van Helsing, son of the Professor who helped trace and kill Count Dracula. Sam has known him since childhood as her parents were Mina and Jonathan Harker who had also been enmeshed in Dracula’s activities. Indeed, Sam was apparently conceived while Mina was under Dracula’s influence. Van Helsing is wary of Sam as he believes, rightly, that she can channel, is able to feel the influence of spirits, a fact Sam needs to keep from the world for fear of being put in an asylum.

What we have here, then, is a riff on two of the nineteenth century’s most well-known fictional creations; only set a couple of decades later. As a result of that and its mostly Parisian mise en scène the book has a fin de siècle feel (though – given it’s 1903 – perhaps début du siècle would be a better description.)

Morris does not pastiche Stoker nor Conan Doyle, though. She has her own approach and intentions, with her book also a vehicle for the deployment of a thesaurus of beasties and things that go bump – or worse – in the night. As well as vampires, there are mentions of a glaistig, trolls, duendes, a cockatrice, a grindylow, barghests, kelpies, drudes, wolpertingers, rusalkas, a carcolh, boggarts, a basilisk, púcai and werewolves – though the werewolves have all been exterminated decades ago.

The grisly Beast murders, the victims’ bodies eviscerated, their hearts torn out and likely eaten – and perhaps meant to invoke the real-life Whitechapel killings by Jack the Ripper (but with the sex of the victims changed) – have all been of well-off men who had mistresses. A banner reading The Wages of Sin is Death has been left at each murder scene. Sam’s facility to detect odours leads her to the pre-eminent perfumier in Paris, Arsène Courbet, to see who might have commissioned the scent she identifies the deaths have in common.

Along the way to the denouement we have encounters with an entirely human quasi-revolutionary underground organisation called The Wolves of God whose logo is also displayed beside each victim, an odyssey into the voluminous catacombs which underly Paris, and a night at the opera where Sam tries to prevent another murder.

This is incident packed stuff but still finds plenty of time to explain Hel’s extremely estranged relationships with her father and her brother Ruari, who are both manipulating the circumstances of Hel’s life and of others around her. Through it all Hel and Sam are very engaging company.

That we have two strong female characters at the book’s focus and occasional anachronistic uses of language, like an invocation to “Get it together” and the phrase “I’m in recovery,” signal that this is indeed a modern novel, not an hommage. The murders are of course solved but enough in the scenario is left unresolved to provide scope for a sequel or two. Which readers are likely to welcome.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- written in USian, “not one of which has returned” (the ‘which’ were people so ‘not one of whom has returned’,) imposter (impostor,) “magnum opuses” (fine in English I suppose, but the Latin plural is ‘magna opera’,) professionality (professionalism – used later,) rarified (rarefied,) “none of the victims were religious” (none of the victims was religious,) parliament (Parliament,) craniums (crania?) “an pain aux raisins” (a pain aux raisins,) “the chimes rung out” (rang out.) “To think, Sam had regaled Hel with” (no comma required after think,) “like a black and shipwrecked sea” (can a sea be shipwrecked?) “mortar and pestles” (mortars and pestles,) “row houses” (that would be “terraced houses” – they were in Wales, not the US,) “she seemed like to make” (an odd usage; ‘she seemed likely to make’ is more natural,) “trapping púca in her backyard” (the plural is púcai.)

Plus points for ‘wills’-o’-the-wisp’.