The first book in a wildly entertaining new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where a married couple team up to solve magical, and often quite odd, mysteries.
The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case.
But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake--going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven--the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a …
The first book in a wildly entertaining new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where a married couple team up to solve magical, and often quite odd, mysteries.
The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case.
But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake--going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven--the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent antiroyalist gang, avaricious ghouls, alchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimension, and a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people.
Armed with a love toughened by adversity and a stick of chalk that can conjure light from the darkness, hope from the hopeless, Iz and Warren Wilby are ready for whatever springs from the alleys, graves, and shadows next.
In this book, the Hexologists are on the trail of a mystery. But each time they draw close, the answer seems to shift out of their grasp.
I'm a huge fan of Josiah Bancroft in general, so more of his writing just makes me happy. I think objectively the plot of this one may be weaker, but it's hard for me to give an unbiased review since I enjoyed myself too much. Not to mention, I do really love time travel stories. We also get an advancement of the meta plot of Isolde's father!
One sentence: loving couple does mystery investigation during a magic-driven industrial age
Things I enjoyed about the book:
established caring relationship between two very different people, who understand each other's quirks and needs (reminds me some of MRK's Glamourist Histories)
investigators who aren't cops (and are also anti-royalist)
setup for future books, but not in a way that detracted from this one
interesting magic system that also has social implications
an industrial age powered by fuel from portals to a hell dimension (and requiring people to fight back monsters trying to come back through said portals)
I know "romp" is overused as a fiction description, but this is a romp if ever I've seen one. It's grippy action scenes and compelling characters, but more than that a romp for me is fiction that calvinballs its way to undiscussed locations or adding new worldbuilding details with very little foreshadowing. I …
One sentence: loving couple does mystery investigation during a magic-driven industrial age
Things I enjoyed about the book:
established caring relationship between two very different people, who understand each other's quirks and needs (reminds me some of MRK's Glamourist Histories)
investigators who aren't cops (and are also anti-royalist)
setup for future books, but not in a way that detracted from this one
interesting magic system that also has social implications
an industrial age powered by fuel from portals to a hell dimension (and requiring people to fight back monsters trying to come back through said portals)
I know "romp" is overused as a fiction description, but this is a romp if ever I've seen one. It's grippy action scenes and compelling characters, but more than that a romp for me is fiction that calvinballs its way to undiscussed locations or adding new worldbuilding details with very little foreshadowing. I think this can be done poorly in a way that feels shallow or disconnecting, but here I was entertained and compelled.
