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This book grabbed my attention immediately. The protagonist is older. She’s sick — in fact, she’s terminal. Her sister just died, and not just a regular sister; she was her twin, and that holds special meaning in this world. The mood is somber but somehow not depressing. The prose is melancholy, which fits with the plot, which brings everything together for a cohesive experience. The MC is named Ebony, and she’s a woods witch character type. She’s pragmatic, and as such, she’s not overly upset or angsty that she’s dying. It’s more of this sad acceptance. She’s seemingly come to terms with it and has chosen a successor to take over her cottage. She has a “bug” in her lungs that she knows has no cure – sounds maybe like cancer.
Based on the descriptions of Ebony’s house, it felt like this author has either dealt with grief before or has witnessed it up close. Ebony’s sister’s belongings are sitting in a doom-pile in the middle of the floor, but she can’t bring herself to pack away or throw away her sister’s things. There are details like that throughout the book that drive depth into the character and her grief a sense of realness. She’s called Mother Ebony instead of “Granny”, but she has a similar disposition to my namesake, Esme Weatherwax. She thinks of herself as dangerous and useful rather than “respectable”. She’s a cranky elderly hedge witch living in a cottage in the woods. At the start of the book, she’s halfway convinced she’s gone insane because the voice of her dead sister starts to become a constant companion. She wasn’t sure if she was crazy or actually being haunted until her sister’s voice told her about a horse she didn’t know existed, which she found exactly where her sister, Ellie, told her it would be. Ebony can also “feel” her sister’s presence come and go. Ebony starts to call her sister a “not ghost” even though it’s looking more and more likely that she’s being haunted instead of losing her mind.
Her “not ghost” of a sister is begging her to go help this “farm boy”, which Ebony wants nothing to do with, but since her sister will not STFU about it, off she goes, as a dying elderly woman, on one last quest. I was so into this plotline.
Ebony meets many folks along her journey who used to know her sister, and through these characters, we get to explore the backstory of the two women’s lives. The magic of the world also slowly unfurls over time, and as Ebony encounters more and more of the world. From the sounds of it, she was more of a homebody while her sister trekked the known world looking for the people in her visions, and now she’s following in her sister’s footsteps, meeting all her sister’s old companions.
There’s a gargoyle in this book. A talking gargoyle that kind of looks like a bulldog but is bigger than a horse. I absolutely loved Lucious. He’s the traveling companion of the “farm boy” that the sisters are looking for… however, lol he’s not a farm boy, and Ebony is pretty sure he’s just a man who’s lost his mind wandering around the countryside… but Ellie is certain her “calling” brought her to this man and that they need to help him with his batshit mission to become king.
I really loved the dynamic between the two sisters. Although Ellie is dead, she’s also a very present character despite being disembodied. The two sisters are something known as Vigrothi, which is something that becomes more important as we start to explore the worldbuilding. The Vigrothi are associated with magic, and not everyone is welcoming of that, in fact, most are quite scared or mistrustful of the Vigrothi. Apparently, if you stare into their eyes, you can start to see stars and the universe swirling around. Neat.
The world-building was pretty old school, and the magic is what I would say is “hand-wavey” kind of old school magic. There aren’t any rules to the magic, or classes of magic, or structure to it in any strict kind of Sanderson-esque way. This has an old school feel to it, with people getting around via horse, wizard kings, shamans, hedge witches, castles, talking fucking gargoyles, knights with swords, there are mages running around doing mage stuff, and there are realms referred to as “the land of ice and snow”, etc., and almost nothing was delivered via info dump, and I appreciate that so deeply.
The pacing was nice, right away we know what our MC is off to go and do, we get to the ‘farm boy’ fairly quick, and although they set off on a traveling adventure which can sometimes flop for me, I felt engaged the whole time. It’s advertised as 315 pages on Amazon (your mileage may vary depending on your kindle font and size), which is a nice length for me, not so short that I’m left with a lot of questions, but not so long that I feel like it drags and some things should have been cut.
I recommend this book to anyone who wants a nonstandard MCs, there aren’t many terminally ill hedge witch protagonists, an old school feel, and a tone that’s a strange mix of meloncholy and adventure.