Expanding on the same logic that posits that any technology sufficiently advanced will be undistinguishable from magic, any magic sufficiently advanced can be deemed black magic. And punished accordingly.
Aha. And you thought it was just another witches story. I requested this book immediately upon finding it on Netgalley, because I really liked Cooke’s The Nesting. It was an excellent suspense thriller that flirted with the supernatural. With this book the flirtation is over. Cooke decided she liked it and put a ring on it. Funny thing, though, because I was kind of expecting the same thing and because I’ve been reading so many thrillers, my brain was desperately to sort out the plot with pure logic of the real world…something the book contravened at every turn. There are some things you can rationalize, some things you can explain and that there’s finding your baby sister that’s been missing for 22 years and have her still be the same age as she was when she disappeared. Which is exactly how the novel begins, with the 31 year old Luna receiving the most welcome and yet strangest of news. Luna is just one of the three hippieishly named babies of Liv and once upon a time liv took all her babies to a small Scottish island under the guise of an art commission, but really as more of a desperate getaway from life. The island as it turns out has had a long storied past with witches and wildlings. The kind of past that has echoed throughout the years and well into the present. And Liv steps right in the middle of it. Madness ensues. The novel jumps timelines and narrators quite freely, but not too dizzyingly, to weave a fascinating sum total tapestry of superstition, magic and…one more thing that’s a surprise and won’t be revealed in this review. Suffice it to say there are plenty of books about witches and there are plenty of books about wildlings/changelings. I’ve read a bunch of them. None of them have the twist this book does. And for someone to produce something so wildly fresh and original in a fairly clichéd done to death genre is no small feat. So many kudos to the author. And it is precisely that originality that makes it easy to overlook some logistical snafus, like most things adult Luna does. From her inexplicable aversion to marrying her beloved baby daddy to her perfect acceptance of her unchanged baby sister. But then again, this is speculative fiction, so a certain suspense of disbelief is definitionally required. I just really loved the fact that it was impossible to figure out until it was explained, for the truth of this story is much, much stranger than fiction…as it were. Plus the writing’s excellent. Great characters and once again, much like in The Nesting, there’s a very potent place presence. There’s an unusual building (this time the old lighthouse) and there’s the unusual place, a Neolithic Scottish village that marches to the beat of its own weird drum and both are so well rendered, they in fact become characters themselves. All good, very good. Made for a very exciting, engaging read. The difficult to put down kind. A must read for fans of dark supernatural thrillers. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
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