Slow Horses
The Slough House series, Book 1
Mike Herron
Soho Crime
Fiction, Mystery/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The agents of MI5 are among the world's best, protecting England from enemies foreign and domestic... but anyone can stumble, fumble, or run afoul of office politics. The ones who aren't bad enough to fire (or are too politically sensitive to let go) end up at Slough House, home of the department's misfits and screw-ups. It's officially said that Slough House offers a chance at reform, but in practice it's the last stop before resignation - and if they don't quit on their own, the "slow horses" are saddled with openly pointless and tedious assignments until they get the hint and leave. The only ones who hang around more than a few months are the ones too oblivious to realize the snub, or the ones too broken to care about anything anymore, even themselves.
River Cartwright was a bright up-and-comer in the agency until a fouled training exercise resulted in real-world problems. Only the fact that his grandfather was a legend in MI5 saved him from being sacked outright, but being reassigned to Slough House under the doughy, washed-up veteran Jackson Lamb isn't much better than a firing, and he knows it. Surrounded by fellow outcasts, River clings grimly to the thin chance of redemption, not willing to let himself believe that his career is over before it properly began. When a London teenager is abducted by an extremist right-wing group and threatened with an online beheading, he and the other Slough House misfits can only seethe at their ineffectiveness... but a series of managerial missteps instead lands the agents right in the middle of a massive departmental mess centered around the kidnapping - and if they can't unravel the tangled threads and figure out what's really going on, they'll be the ones thrown under the bus by a ruthless and desperate deputy-director.
REVIEW: Not subscribing to Apple+, I have not seen the streaming series inspired by this book, but I was intrigued by the concept. It turns out to be a decent spy thriller, if one that sometimes overplays its tension by drawing out reveals and twists (and has a few elements that subtly set my teeth on edge).
Opening with River and the botched training exercise that derails his career (ironically in the London Underground), it introduces Slough House almost as a character itself, a run-down edifice where the hopelessness and misery are baked into the peeling Formica and yellowed paint, full of agents who seem to be going through the motions of existing more out of habit than out of any remaining aspirations about their lives, let alone their dead-ended careers. River struggles to cling to his sense of purpose, even as some part of him recognizes the truth: he's only still drawing a paycheck because his retired grandfather's reputation still carries some weight at the MI5 headquarters in Regent's Park, and he is expected to be a good little agent and resign so none of the top brass have to ruffle feathers by firing an agent of his pedigree. He perseveres in no small part because he knows in his bones that he didn't mess things up on his own; his partner and best friend (or so he thought) fed him bad intel, seemingly sacrificing River to further his own career. Still, he has no idea how he'll clear his name from Slough House, when the head agent Lamb pretty much tells him point-blank that the gruntwork he's doing - sorting through the garbage of a disgraced investigative reporter - is not actually intended to accomplish anything but make him stink, in a literal and metaphoric sense. This being a thriller and not a depressing literary examination of broken lives, however, it goes without saying that the pointless case of shadowing said reporter turns out to be not so pointless after all. And when the teenager Hassan, a British-Pakistani boy, is snatched off the streets and featured in a livestream by the previously-obscure extremists group Sons of Albion, things heat up across the city and especially in Regent's Park. Can River and his fellow "slow horses" sit on the sidelines as they watch the clock tick down to the promised online beheading of an innocent kid? Even the most cynical denizen of Slough House was and still is an MI5 agent, whether they admit it or not, so it goes without saying that they dip their toes into the investigation... and even if they managed to abstain as they're technically supposed to, they find themselves drug in by the schemes of Deputy-Director Diana Taverner, an ambitious woman who wants to make a name for herself and is more than willing to throw a few of her own people - especially ones already tagged as departmental disgraces - to the wolves to do it. Thus begins a complex game of cat and mouse in a story with multiple cats and mice, some characters being both hunter and hunted at once (though they may not always realize which, if either, they are at the time).
For all that things mostly moved well (after a bit of a slow start), there were a few parts that rubbed a bit wrong, such as the way it was presented as inevitable that a woman in power would mess up a major operation, and how another was basically fridged after River found her attractive. Some of the characters of Slough House felt extraneous by the end, and I'm not sure why Herron bothered cluttering the cast with them. A few of the side stories stretched out overlong, becoming padding at more than one point. For all that, it does wrap up reasonably well, though I don't feel invested enough to continue the series (or pony up the cost of yet another streaming service to watch the show).
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Emperor's Edge (Lindsay Buroker) - My Review
The Athena Protocol (Shamim Sarif) - My Review
Phoenix Rising (Cynthia Vespia) - My Review
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Sunday, December 8, 2024
The Age of Wood (Roland Ennos)
The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization
Roland Ennos
Scribner
Nonfiction, Anthropology/History/Nature
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Computer Age... looking back, one might think that our history began when we started shaping rocks to tame the world, and our future lies in silicon chips and electricity. But long before the first axes and arrowheads, long before Homo sapiens itself came to be, our ancestors were relying on another natural material with amazingly useful properties, one that continues to underpin our modern world, one so ubiquitous it's often overlooked: wood. Author Roland Ennos explores how trees and wood helped transform us from arboreal apes to space-age humans, and how rediscovering the versatility of timber products might help create a sustainable future.
REVIEW: Due to its generally poor preservation compared to stone artifacts, the importance of wood in our own species's prehistory and the development of civilization has often been glossed over. It's only relatively recently that anthropologists have paid more attention to wooden tool making, a process whose roots can be seen in other great apes today (shaping branches to access food sources like insects or honey, even weaving nests for protection from the elements). When one realizes that wood was essential for mastering fire, an immensely pivotal development, it seems a glaring oversight, but Ennos demonstrates how wood has always been such a common part of our world that we almost don't even see it... and, he argues, we haven't paid enough attention as it has disappeared from more and more of our environment, both artificial and natural. Without mastering wood, our species never would've developed pretty much anything we take for granted now. Even the materials many of us think of as replacing wood - iron, concrete, and the like - depended on wood in some form or another, even just as the charcoal and coke to smelt it. Have we outgrown the need for natural materials like wood, in our age of plastics and synthetics? Not at all; there are still many places where wood and wood products are as good as, even potentially superior to, the often-polluting materials we've created to replace it, not to mention the planetary benefits of growing more (and more diverse, not just monoculture plantations) woodlands and the psychological benefits of reconnecting with forests.
For the most part, this book makes for an interesting tour of wood's uses (and limitations) through prehistory and history, generally centered around "Western" cultures but also looking into other places around the world, such as China and the Americas. There are a few parts where I felt Ennos could've dug a bit deeper - his European roots and perspective seem very much evident throughout, and he also waits until near the very end to even mention issues with biodiversity loss that come with overexploitation of woodlands even before modern machinery made logging so much more devastating to the environment - but overall I found it intriguing.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Ancient One (T. A. Barron) - My Review
Unbound (Richard L. Currier) - My Review
The Hidden Life of Trees (Peter Wohlleben) - My Review
Roland Ennos
Scribner
Nonfiction, Anthropology/History/Nature
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Computer Age... looking back, one might think that our history began when we started shaping rocks to tame the world, and our future lies in silicon chips and electricity. But long before the first axes and arrowheads, long before Homo sapiens itself came to be, our ancestors were relying on another natural material with amazingly useful properties, one that continues to underpin our modern world, one so ubiquitous it's often overlooked: wood. Author Roland Ennos explores how trees and wood helped transform us from arboreal apes to space-age humans, and how rediscovering the versatility of timber products might help create a sustainable future.
REVIEW: Due to its generally poor preservation compared to stone artifacts, the importance of wood in our own species's prehistory and the development of civilization has often been glossed over. It's only relatively recently that anthropologists have paid more attention to wooden tool making, a process whose roots can be seen in other great apes today (shaping branches to access food sources like insects or honey, even weaving nests for protection from the elements). When one realizes that wood was essential for mastering fire, an immensely pivotal development, it seems a glaring oversight, but Ennos demonstrates how wood has always been such a common part of our world that we almost don't even see it... and, he argues, we haven't paid enough attention as it has disappeared from more and more of our environment, both artificial and natural. Without mastering wood, our species never would've developed pretty much anything we take for granted now. Even the materials many of us think of as replacing wood - iron, concrete, and the like - depended on wood in some form or another, even just as the charcoal and coke to smelt it. Have we outgrown the need for natural materials like wood, in our age of plastics and synthetics? Not at all; there are still many places where wood and wood products are as good as, even potentially superior to, the often-polluting materials we've created to replace it, not to mention the planetary benefits of growing more (and more diverse, not just monoculture plantations) woodlands and the psychological benefits of reconnecting with forests.
For the most part, this book makes for an interesting tour of wood's uses (and limitations) through prehistory and history, generally centered around "Western" cultures but also looking into other places around the world, such as China and the Americas. There are a few parts where I felt Ennos could've dug a bit deeper - his European roots and perspective seem very much evident throughout, and he also waits until near the very end to even mention issues with biodiversity loss that come with overexploitation of woodlands even before modern machinery made logging so much more devastating to the environment - but overall I found it intriguing.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Ancient One (T. A. Barron) - My Review
Unbound (Richard L. Currier) - My Review
The Hidden Life of Trees (Peter Wohlleben) - My Review
Friday, December 6, 2024
Pony Confidential (Christina Lynch)
Pony Confidential
Christina Lynch
Berkley
Fiction, Humor/Mystery
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Few things are as magical as the bond between a little girl and her perfect pony. The thrill of learning to ride, the bliss of lazy afternoons on the trail, the pride of a ribbon at the big show... but little girls become bigger girls and grown women, and somewhere along the way the perfect pony gets left behind. But it never forgets that little girl - and some ponies never forgive.
Pony had a girl once, a girl named Penny who read him poetry and fed him carrots and promised they'd be together forever and always. Only she vanished without even saying goodbye, leaving him to a succession of owners, each worse than the last as he crisscrosses the country. It's been over two decades now, and only his determination to find her again and make her pay for her betrayal keeps him going. (Well, that, and the chance to inflict misery on the humans who pass him around like a bad coin.)
Penny, meanwhile, has grown up, married, and raised a child... but her life is anything but happy, with a possible divorce on the horizon and a teen daughter struggling with mental illness. In fact, she hasn't really been happy since she was a child in New York and took riding lessons at a local stable, where she talked her parents into buying a stubborn, cranky, wonderful pony the color of the sun - a pony she had to leave behind suddenly when a tragedy occurred. She thought that was all behind her, until the local sheriff turns up at her door with a warrant for her arrest.
By the time Pony catches up with Penny, the angry little animal may be her only chance at avoiding a lifetime in prison for a murder she did not commit. But what is one old pony supposed to do about it?
REVIEW: Though it was my sister who was the big horse nut in our household, I grew up with the requisite stable of Breyer figures and My Little Pony toys, not to mention innumerable playings of an off-brand audio story "The Little Brown Pony" (which was basically a watered-down knock-off of Black Beauty, but darned if the theme song doesn't still get randomly stuck in my head). So when I saw this title in an article on Best Books of 2024, it seemed like it could be fun. The cover bills Pony Confidential as a hard-boiled pony sleuth saving his grown-up girl by solving a mystery, down to the cover image (a Holmesian deerstalker cap hanging on a horseshoe), but the actual story isn't quite that at all. It's more The Incredible Journey than Sherlock Holmes, crossed with shades of an updated Black Beauty as it explores how humans use and abuse animals in general and horses in particular.
Splitting the narrative between Penny and Pony (weighted toward the latter), the book tells the inadvertently intertwined tales of woman and equine. As Penny, experiencing firsthand the crooked scales of justice, reflects on her unhappy life and the long-ago incident that culminated in her incarceration, Pony sets out on a quest to track down the girl who broke his heart while he still has enough stamina to do it; ponies only live thirty or forty years, and a good two-thirds of that span has already passed by. The journey is not a smooth one, especially when Pony's lingering resentment and tendency to act (usually in anger or sheer pony spite) first and think second trip him up at least as often as his nearly uncontrollable craving for carrots, and along the way he learns some lessons about life, love, and friendship. Some of his various encounters are humorous, while some are sobering, and the book mostly avoids venturing into preachy life lessons. For all the anger he's carried around for so long, an anger that's quite justified given how some of the people he meets treat him and others, deep down he's still nursing a broken heart and is surprised to learn that perhaps he hasn't entirely given up on humans (or at least one or two humans) after all. Penny, too, has to do some re-evaluating of her situation and choices, particularly how she's kept people at arm's length (which doesn't help when it comes time to find character witnesses for her defense), even as she realizes that she can't count on the law to save her and must try, with dim memories and limited resources, to figure out who the real culprit is from her jail cell.
There are some plot-convenient moments (and equally convenient plot delays), and some deliberate muddling of the concurrent timelines struck me as slightly manipulative (particularly how Lynch played coy about some events, stringing out reveals). Also, as implied, there were a few moments that felt a little like Chicken Soup for the Equine Soul sermons, but only a few. For the most part, though, it's the story of the timeless, magical bond between one girl and one very special, if very stubborn and cranky, pony.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Imaginary Corpse (Tyler Hayes) - My Review
Felidae (Akif Pirinçci) - My Review
Remarkably Bright Creatures (Shelby Van Pelt) - My Review
Christina Lynch
Berkley
Fiction, Humor/Mystery
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Few things are as magical as the bond between a little girl and her perfect pony. The thrill of learning to ride, the bliss of lazy afternoons on the trail, the pride of a ribbon at the big show... but little girls become bigger girls and grown women, and somewhere along the way the perfect pony gets left behind. But it never forgets that little girl - and some ponies never forgive.
Pony had a girl once, a girl named Penny who read him poetry and fed him carrots and promised they'd be together forever and always. Only she vanished without even saying goodbye, leaving him to a succession of owners, each worse than the last as he crisscrosses the country. It's been over two decades now, and only his determination to find her again and make her pay for her betrayal keeps him going. (Well, that, and the chance to inflict misery on the humans who pass him around like a bad coin.)
Penny, meanwhile, has grown up, married, and raised a child... but her life is anything but happy, with a possible divorce on the horizon and a teen daughter struggling with mental illness. In fact, she hasn't really been happy since she was a child in New York and took riding lessons at a local stable, where she talked her parents into buying a stubborn, cranky, wonderful pony the color of the sun - a pony she had to leave behind suddenly when a tragedy occurred. She thought that was all behind her, until the local sheriff turns up at her door with a warrant for her arrest.
By the time Pony catches up with Penny, the angry little animal may be her only chance at avoiding a lifetime in prison for a murder she did not commit. But what is one old pony supposed to do about it?
REVIEW: Though it was my sister who was the big horse nut in our household, I grew up with the requisite stable of Breyer figures and My Little Pony toys, not to mention innumerable playings of an off-brand audio story "The Little Brown Pony" (which was basically a watered-down knock-off of Black Beauty, but darned if the theme song doesn't still get randomly stuck in my head). So when I saw this title in an article on Best Books of 2024, it seemed like it could be fun. The cover bills Pony Confidential as a hard-boiled pony sleuth saving his grown-up girl by solving a mystery, down to the cover image (a Holmesian deerstalker cap hanging on a horseshoe), but the actual story isn't quite that at all. It's more The Incredible Journey than Sherlock Holmes, crossed with shades of an updated Black Beauty as it explores how humans use and abuse animals in general and horses in particular.
Splitting the narrative between Penny and Pony (weighted toward the latter), the book tells the inadvertently intertwined tales of woman and equine. As Penny, experiencing firsthand the crooked scales of justice, reflects on her unhappy life and the long-ago incident that culminated in her incarceration, Pony sets out on a quest to track down the girl who broke his heart while he still has enough stamina to do it; ponies only live thirty or forty years, and a good two-thirds of that span has already passed by. The journey is not a smooth one, especially when Pony's lingering resentment and tendency to act (usually in anger or sheer pony spite) first and think second trip him up at least as often as his nearly uncontrollable craving for carrots, and along the way he learns some lessons about life, love, and friendship. Some of his various encounters are humorous, while some are sobering, and the book mostly avoids venturing into preachy life lessons. For all the anger he's carried around for so long, an anger that's quite justified given how some of the people he meets treat him and others, deep down he's still nursing a broken heart and is surprised to learn that perhaps he hasn't entirely given up on humans (or at least one or two humans) after all. Penny, too, has to do some re-evaluating of her situation and choices, particularly how she's kept people at arm's length (which doesn't help when it comes time to find character witnesses for her defense), even as she realizes that she can't count on the law to save her and must try, with dim memories and limited resources, to figure out who the real culprit is from her jail cell.
There are some plot-convenient moments (and equally convenient plot delays), and some deliberate muddling of the concurrent timelines struck me as slightly manipulative (particularly how Lynch played coy about some events, stringing out reveals). Also, as implied, there were a few moments that felt a little like Chicken Soup for the Equine Soul sermons, but only a few. For the most part, though, it's the story of the timeless, magical bond between one girl and one very special, if very stubborn and cranky, pony.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Imaginary Corpse (Tyler Hayes) - My Review
Felidae (Akif Pirinçci) - My Review
Remarkably Bright Creatures (Shelby Van Pelt) - My Review
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
Ravenwood (Nathan Lowell)
Ravenwood: A Tanyth Fairport Adventure
The Tanyth Fairport Adventures series, Book 1
Nathan Lowell
CreateSpace
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since escaping an abusive marriage, Tanyth has spent twenty years traveling the land, learning the ways of healers, until just one master remains: the elusive hermit of Lammas Wood, on an island across the sea. She hopes to get there before winter sets in, but plans change when the inhabitants of a small, nameless hamlet need her help. Their old healing woman passed away before training an apprentice, and with cold weather coming they could use some assistance. Despite herself, Tanyth finds herself drawn into village life... just when strange changes waken new powers within her, and bandits threaten the settlement.
REVIEW: Rather than a bold, brash epic adventure, Ravenwood presents a smaller, slower story, what might be called "cozy fantasy" now (though I'm not sure the term was much used in 2011, when this was originally published). This turns out to be both an asset and a detriment, leaving me with mixed feelings.
It opens on a decent note, with an aging Tanyth - in her early 50s - feeling the wear and tear of a long life of traveling as she heads toward what she thinks will be a small stop on her way to her greater goal of spending a season with the half-legendary Lammas Wood hermit, possibly the last healer left with secrets for her to learn. The hamlet she finds when she needs a rest along the way is so new it doesn't even have a name, populated with a handful of misfits and young families hoping to forge a new, brighter fortune away from city life, but lacking certain practical, hard-won knowledge of how to live at the edge of wilderness; she is called back to the people after her brief stopover when one of their number falls ill with a fairly common ailment, not even knowing enough basic herb-lore to brew a willow bark tea to ease a fever. After so many years as the pupil and apprentice, Tanyth finds herself seen as an elder and a master, and isn't entirely sure how she feels with this change in status... and that's before she starts having peculiar visions and visitations from an oddly cunning raven, signs of yet another change as (not really a spoiler) she begins manifesting what may be magical powers, which may be linked to early signs of menopause. Here is where I started feeling some odd vibes around the story; it's a man writing about a deeply feminine matter and layering it with mystical meaning, while also ensuring that the lives of all women revolve almost exclusively around males and children. I get that this is a pseudo-medieval world with limited options for women, but something about the way it came across, as though (from the author's male perspective) there was absolutely no question that the only things a woman could possibly ever care about are finding a mate, mothering children, and healing (presented as mothering in another context), struck a sour note. Even in medieval times, there were women who had other goals or ambitions, even if their social status didn't always permit them to pursue such things.
Beyond that, Tanyth's tale unwinds slowly. Very, very slowly, with more than a little repetition. Her age and greater worldly experience make her an important local fixture almost overnight, even as she initially resists settling down and delaying her pilgrimage to the hermit; her almost offhand suggestion that they might build an inn to diversify income sources and create a heart to the budding community is enthusiastically taken up by the town founders, and her promise (only sporadically followed up on) to instruct the local women in herbal medicine brings her a devoted following from the start - not just among the helpless little women but among the children (particularly one precocious boy - whose enthusiasm to become a healer, seen as unusual in a male, is never followed through on, almost like the author forgot about the promise he made in presenting that aspect of his character... by far not the only detail that was set up to be a plot point but turned out to be a red herring, such as the frequent ride-bys of King's Own soldiers, but I digress). Conflict comes not just from Tanyth struggling to come to grips with her newly-emerging abilities (with page-count-padding denials and backslides) but from a troublesome pack of bad guys looking to fleece the little hamlet via a protection racket, and taking the town's rejection of their scheme to almost ridiculous extremes. Much of the book is more about the townsfolk working to turn their little venture into a successful, self-sufficient community, and Tanyth visiting neighbors, drinking tea, and contemplating the potential uses of various local plants without actually using them, as well as having sporadic raven dreams that added nothing at all to the plot as often as not.
There's some interest to be found in all this, and the overall story and characters could be intriguing and even charming at times, but by the end it felt like it took far too long to get where it was going, and lost parts of itself somewhere along the way.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Shannon Chakraborty) - My Review
Witches of Lychford (Paul Cornell) - My Review
The Once and Future Witches (Alix E. Harrow) - My Review
The Tanyth Fairport Adventures series, Book 1
Nathan Lowell
CreateSpace
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since escaping an abusive marriage, Tanyth has spent twenty years traveling the land, learning the ways of healers, until just one master remains: the elusive hermit of Lammas Wood, on an island across the sea. She hopes to get there before winter sets in, but plans change when the inhabitants of a small, nameless hamlet need her help. Their old healing woman passed away before training an apprentice, and with cold weather coming they could use some assistance. Despite herself, Tanyth finds herself drawn into village life... just when strange changes waken new powers within her, and bandits threaten the settlement.
REVIEW: Rather than a bold, brash epic adventure, Ravenwood presents a smaller, slower story, what might be called "cozy fantasy" now (though I'm not sure the term was much used in 2011, when this was originally published). This turns out to be both an asset and a detriment, leaving me with mixed feelings.
It opens on a decent note, with an aging Tanyth - in her early 50s - feeling the wear and tear of a long life of traveling as she heads toward what she thinks will be a small stop on her way to her greater goal of spending a season with the half-legendary Lammas Wood hermit, possibly the last healer left with secrets for her to learn. The hamlet she finds when she needs a rest along the way is so new it doesn't even have a name, populated with a handful of misfits and young families hoping to forge a new, brighter fortune away from city life, but lacking certain practical, hard-won knowledge of how to live at the edge of wilderness; she is called back to the people after her brief stopover when one of their number falls ill with a fairly common ailment, not even knowing enough basic herb-lore to brew a willow bark tea to ease a fever. After so many years as the pupil and apprentice, Tanyth finds herself seen as an elder and a master, and isn't entirely sure how she feels with this change in status... and that's before she starts having peculiar visions and visitations from an oddly cunning raven, signs of yet another change as (not really a spoiler) she begins manifesting what may be magical powers, which may be linked to early signs of menopause. Here is where I started feeling some odd vibes around the story; it's a man writing about a deeply feminine matter and layering it with mystical meaning, while also ensuring that the lives of all women revolve almost exclusively around males and children. I get that this is a pseudo-medieval world with limited options for women, but something about the way it came across, as though (from the author's male perspective) there was absolutely no question that the only things a woman could possibly ever care about are finding a mate, mothering children, and healing (presented as mothering in another context), struck a sour note. Even in medieval times, there were women who had other goals or ambitions, even if their social status didn't always permit them to pursue such things.
Beyond that, Tanyth's tale unwinds slowly. Very, very slowly, with more than a little repetition. Her age and greater worldly experience make her an important local fixture almost overnight, even as she initially resists settling down and delaying her pilgrimage to the hermit; her almost offhand suggestion that they might build an inn to diversify income sources and create a heart to the budding community is enthusiastically taken up by the town founders, and her promise (only sporadically followed up on) to instruct the local women in herbal medicine brings her a devoted following from the start - not just among the helpless little women but among the children (particularly one precocious boy - whose enthusiasm to become a healer, seen as unusual in a male, is never followed through on, almost like the author forgot about the promise he made in presenting that aspect of his character... by far not the only detail that was set up to be a plot point but turned out to be a red herring, such as the frequent ride-bys of King's Own soldiers, but I digress). Conflict comes not just from Tanyth struggling to come to grips with her newly-emerging abilities (with page-count-padding denials and backslides) but from a troublesome pack of bad guys looking to fleece the little hamlet via a protection racket, and taking the town's rejection of their scheme to almost ridiculous extremes. Much of the book is more about the townsfolk working to turn their little venture into a successful, self-sufficient community, and Tanyth visiting neighbors, drinking tea, and contemplating the potential uses of various local plants without actually using them, as well as having sporadic raven dreams that added nothing at all to the plot as often as not.
There's some interest to be found in all this, and the overall story and characters could be intriguing and even charming at times, but by the end it felt like it took far too long to get where it was going, and lost parts of itself somewhere along the way.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Shannon Chakraborty) - My Review
Witches of Lychford (Paul Cornell) - My Review
The Once and Future Witches (Alix E. Harrow) - My Review
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