2026/016: Nowhere Burning — Catriona Ward

"We're here because we want to understand them, right?"
"Right."
"Not because we are them. Not because it wants us here... You know what they say. Nowhere draws lost kids to it. Are we lost kids too?" [loc. 2044]

Riley and her little brother Oliver live with Cousin. Their mother committed suicide a couple of years before the novel opens: Riley never knew her father, while Oliver's father is dead. Now Riley is biding her time until she can graduate from high school and escape Cousin's brutal regime. 

One night a girl in green appears at her second-floor window, and gives Riley directions to Nowhere, an abandoned and ruined mansion that used to belong to famous film star Leaf Winham. Now, years after Winham's death and the fire that destroyed the house, Nowhere has become a sanctuary for runaway children, the lost and unwanted and abused.

Oliver is only seven, and he's starting to believe the things that Cousin says: that there's a demon inside both of them, that they need to starve it out. Riley knows she's run out of time: so she takes Oliver and flees into the Rocky Mountain National Park. Turns out Nowhere is indeed a sanctuary, with a broken ferris wheel in the grounds of the house, with teenagers hunting and fishing and planting while the younger children play. It's an idyllic life and Riley finally starts to relax.

It's not only Riley's story. She is one of three protagonists, and probably (at least to start with) the most compelling. There are also chapters focussing on Adam, an architect employed by and drawn to Leaf Winham, and Marc, a documentary maker who's fascinated by the stories of Nowhere. How, and why, all those stories tie together is only clear in the final few chapters, though there are plenty of subtle hints at connections.

Beside the obvious elements of Peter Pan -- lost boys and girls, a crocodile named Tinkerbell, the fear of growing up -- there are aspects of the story that bring to mind Michael Jackson, and The Lord of the Flies, and the darker aspects of fairytales. Ward's writing continues to impress me immensely, as does her ability to describe emotional states and responses without ever approaching them directly. There are some dark -- though never gratuituous, never too explicit -- scenes in this novel, but I feel that it's ultimately hopeful: that even the broken and damaged can help one another, that forgiveness can be granted as well as earnt, that kindness matters.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 19 FEB 2026.

2026/015: Katabasis — R F Kuang

The first rule every graduate student learned was that at the base of every paradox there existed the truth. That you should never fully believe your own lie, for then you lost power over the pentagram. That magick was an act of tricking the world but not yourself. You had to hold two opposing beliefs in your head at once. [p. 229]

The novel opens with Alice Law, a postgrad in Cambridge's Department of Analytic Magick, drawing a pentagram that will take her to Hell. Her stated mission is to rescue the soul of her advisor, Professor Jacob Grimes, from Hell. Alice blames herself for his death: she didn't check that pentagram correctly. And without Grimes' mentorship and letters of recommendation, she won't be able to fulfil her ambitions.

But just before she closes the pentagram, an unwanted companion shows up. Peter Murdoch had been her closest friend and colleague, until he ghosted her. And it turns out he's also been researching Tartarology (the study of Hell), for much the same reason. Alice is not happy about his presence: but she concedes that he might be useful.

In Katabasis, the basis of magick is the paradox: Alice herself is a paradox, telling herself that everything is fine when actually she's falling apart at the seams, trying to balance the horrors of academia (long hours, poor pay, misogyny, sexism) against her self-image as a genius and a successful academic. (Peter, it turns out, is handling a similar, though less severe, crisis.) Hell, it turns out, is devoid of fire and brimstone but does resemble a university campus. The two sojourners encounter various threats and temptations, and Alice and Peter cooperate to conquer, outwit or flee Hell's manifold perils.

I enjoyed the Hell-building, particularly T S Eliot's 'The Waste Land' as a core text of Tartarology (Lewis Carroll also features) and the paradoxes. I also appreciated the way that Alice's Chinese background informed not only her magic, but her mode of encountering Hell's ruler. But I didn't much like Alice herself, even when it turned out that she hadn't been wholly honest about her motives: and I felt, as with Babel, that the horrors she'd experienced were hammered home too insistently. There's no nuance: we're just told, over and over. The final chapters felt rushed, too, with a deus ex machina flavour and a certain predictability. There is a happy ending but it doesn't feel wholly earned.

This reminded me in some ways of The Atlas Six (perhaps because of the friction between the leads), and in other ways of Ninth House (in which a character goes to Hell to retrieve another's soul). Perhaps those resonances coloured my expectations: I wanted to like it more than I actually did. The vividly-described death of an animal did not help.

I amused myself by trying to work out when this novel was set. Cambridge South station exists, but the NatWest tower is still being built; the music Peter likes is very much late 1980s/early 1990s, a range confirmed by Alice's TV viewing; Grimes' heyday was the 1960s, after brilliant work during WW2. On the other hand the Colossi of Memnon still sing at dawn, and in Britain people drive on the right. This is not our world.

“This is Lord Yama’s design. There’s a million things to keep a soul from writing, all in the service of making you better at it. Remember that, Alice Law. Hell is a writers’ market.” [p. 415

2026/014: Lazarus, Home from the War — E H Lupton

“I can either be your doctor or your boyfriend,” Eli said. “And if I have to choose, I don’t want to be your doctor.” [p. 165]

Lazurus Lenkov first appears in Troth as an angry, unstable war veteran with PTSD, jealous of his older brother Ulysses' relationship with ex-demigod Sam Sterling and plagued by occasional flashes of foresight. Laz, unsurprisingly, is the focus of Lazarus, Home from the War, a novel which not only explores his character in more depth but also gives a different perspective on Ulysses.

Laz experiences a PTSD-related flashback at the local store, and is tended by Eli Sobel, a British neurologist. Things escalate quickly (Laz breaks into Eli's car and fixes the timing belt; Eli tells Laz that there's more to life than being useful, and perhaps Ulysses is being less than reasonable asking Laz to risk himself) but peril, magical and otherwise, threatens their fragile relationship. Though there's a resolution, there are plenty of unanswered questions to be picked up in future novels in the series.

I really warmed to Laz, and indeed to Sam (who tells Eli 'you're family'): Laz never intended to go to war, and the details of his military experiences are minimal, but he met a Buddhist monk in Thailand who seems to have been a powerful influence. (Hopefully we'll find out more about him, too.) Eli was a good foil for Lazarus, but perhaps not as richly characterised. He's clearly got some ideas about how to reach out to the community of magic-users, who typically avoid non-magical healthcare options. And he's good at dealing with Laz's lack of self-confidence, and fascinated by the neurological underpinnings of his foresight.

Looking forward to the next in the series, due later this year!

2026/013: Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe — Gaston Dorran, translated by Alison Edwards

In autonomous Greenland, Danish initially retained more official functions than in the autonomous Faroe Islands. But that has since changed as well: in 2009, Kalaallisut became the one and only official administrative language. With this move, Greenland achieved a unique position: the only country of the Americas (yes, Greenland is part of the Americas), from Canada all the way down to Chile, where the indigenous language doesn’t play second fiddle to that of its colonial master. [p. 56]

Subtitled 'Around Europe in Sixty Languages' in some editions, 'A Language-Spotter’s Guide to Europe' in others, this is an entertaining and readable discussion of linguistic diversity in Europe. Translated by Alison Edwards from the Dutch Taaltoerisme (‘Language Tourism’), the book starts with the prehistoric origins of proto-Indo-European ('PIE'), the root of most European languages. (Maltese, which is Semitic and thus Afro-Asiatic, is one exception.) 

Lingo's sixty chapters are grouped into nine sections, dealing with language families, language histories, languages and politics, written and spoken, vocabulary, grammar, endangered and extinct languages, influential linguists, and 'linguistic portraits' of a few other languages (including various sign languages). Each chapter focuses on one language, and concludes with an English word borrowed from that language (if any), and a word in that language that 'doesn't exist in English, but perhaps should'. I especially liked 'Omenie – a Romanian word for the virtue of being fully human, that is: gentle, decent, respectful, hospitable, honest, polite.' [p. 39].

This is a great book for dipping into, as the chapters are short. As a native English speaker I struggled with the whole notion of cases, but now understand them rather better. I marvelled at the spelling rules for Gaelic, and was fascinated by the instructions on recognising specific languages: the alphabet, obviously (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian...); specific letters (þ indicates Icelandic, ß indicates German, ħ indicates Maltese and does not have a 'name' in HTML); letter-patterns (if q is not typically followed by u then it's Albanian, if tx and tz occur regularly but no words start with r then it's Basque)...

And I learnt a lot of random facts. Artist Alma-Tadema's mother tongue was Frisian! Spaniards utter nearly eight syllables per second, as opposed to Germans who manage just over five! The last native speaker of Dalmatian was killed in a landmine explosion in 1898! The Cyrillic alphabet was legendarily created by St Cyril, a Macedonian: but his name was Constantine rather than Cyril, he wasn't Macedonian, and he didn't design the script!

Well-referenced and nicely illustrated (though some of the references to images 'on the previous page', 'above' etc should have been updated for the Kindle version): a fascinating and erudite read.

2026/012: Troth — E H Lupton

“Don’t be so bourgeois, darling. You’re a powerful magician and your lover is a retired god. Of course things are going to be a bit unusual.”
“It’s terrifying.”
“Eh, bien?” Mariah made a dismissive French noise. “It’s love. It’s supposed to be terrifying.” [p. 191]

Third in the series, and the last (for now) of the novels that focus on Ulysses and Sam. It begins with the two moving into a new apartment together, and meeting the neighbours (Vikram and Sita) who have a ghost problem -- and, it turns out, a connection to Sam's family.

Both Ulysses and Sam are growing up. Ulysses has finally left the family home, has won a prestigious prize, and is a professor: Sam has a real job, and is slowly rebuilding his relationship with his father. The magical bond between the two is intensifying and starting to cause problems, as is the return of Ulysses' brother Lazarus, home from Vietnam / Thailand and not sure how to fit himself back into his former life. And there are government officials literally chasing Sam; mutant spiders; and, in the mundane world, the university being bombed by anti-war protesters.

The building tension in this novel does make for some repetitive scenes, but it's interesting to see Ulysses somewhat less breezily competent than usual, and Sam more comfortable with the fact that he's an ex-god. There's a hint of past homophobia, and an apology for it: and discussions of marriage, and whether it's just a government mechanism for deciding which relationships are important. I found Mariah, Ulysses' mother, delightful and formidable (you may read that with a French accent if you wish) and the finale wholly satisfying. I did feel, though, that the spiders and the tentacles were insufficiently addressed.

This would probably have been a good place to stop, at least for now. But I was intrigued by damaged, prescient Lazarus, and his difficult relationship with his brother...

2026/011: Old Time Religion — E H Lupton

...there was something delightful about being able to feel Ulysses’s emotions, even if it was also sort of terrifying. Ulysses had big, messy, complex feelings that reminded Sam of dahlias, so bright and intricate. [p. 153]

As soon as I'd finished Dionysus in Wisconsin I went on to this sequel, set a few months later. Ulysses has almost finished his dissertation (which is about Sam and 'the problem of demigods') and winter is over. All seems promising until Livia, Ulysses' ex, turns up with a tale of woe about a murdered husband. She flirts outrageously, and meets up with Ulysses and Sam 'wearing a dress that looked like someone had crocheted it, and stopped early because they’d run out of yarn'. 

Cue jealousy from Sam -- though, to be fair, he and Ulysses do discuss this and agree that Sam has no reason to feel threatened -- and self-doubt from Ulysses. To complicate matters, there's a cursed book; further discoveries about Sam's grandfather and his nefarious plots; and compost zombies. And the concern, raised by Dr Lesko -- Ulysses' formidable thesis adviser -- that the magical bond between Sam and Ulysses may have negative effects.

A great deal changes in the course of the novel: Sam is still experiencing the side-effects of being possessed by a god, while Ulysses is forced to reassess his life, his ambition and even his family. (The Lenkovs are delightful, and we get more of their history, including Cambridge and Paris: Sam's family are conspicuous by their absence, which is nice.) There is philosophy, blood magic (not a good thing) and a play about Macbeth and the witches. And the majority of the characters are likeable, imperfect, and interesting. The perfect read for a dull winter's day.

2026/010: Dionysus in Wisconsin — E H Lupton

Kitty narrowed her eyes at him. “A bit pompous, aren’t you? To think you can find a solution to a problem that people have been working on for over a millennium?”
“That’s academia, baby.” Ulysses folded his arms across his chest. “Anything else I can help you with?” [p. 205]

Madison, Wisconsin: 1969. Ulysses Lenkov is a 'human lightning rod', a magician who can attract and talk to spirits, but can't decide a subject for his dissertation). Sam Sterling is a mild-mannered archivist who's moved back to Madison to be near his family, who he doesn't especially like. Warned by a fellow-magic user that something big is coming -- something connected with the god Dionysus -- Ulysses seeks out Sam and discovers that his first name happens to be Dionysus ... and that there's a strong mutual attraction between them.

Together, Sam and Ulysses ... well, they do fight crime demons and magical malfeasance, but that's very much background, alluded to rather than the focus of the story. Ulysses is determined to save Sam from being used as a meat-puppet by a powerful supernatural force: Sam is determined to discover his grandfather's role in imperilling him, and whether the immense good fortune enjoyed by the rest of his family is connected with his imminent doom.

I really enjoyed this. Lupton's 1969 is not quite ours. There's a war in Vietnam, race riots and rock music in America, but there is no obvious homophobia and perhaps less sexism / misogyny: magic works and is an acknowledged and accepted fact of life, but not everyone has ability or interest. Period details such as landlines, microfiche, vehicles and fashions all feel familiar. Ulysses and Sam are delightful characters, with very different backgrounds and families. (I want much more of the Lenkovs, with their Russian origins and various magical specialities. The Sterlings are a less appealing, but very interesting, bunch.) The central romance feels balanced, credible, warm-hearted. And I liked the college setting, and the theatrical productions, and the strong sense of place. 

And it's January, when traditionally I dive into a new series and stay there until the midwinter slump has passed. There are three more novels (so far) in the Wisconsin Gothic series... Onwards!