2017/63: Spectred Isle -- KJ Charles

"...when dawn comes, am I going to find myself bare-arsed on Burwell Castle’s remains, and a lady antiquarian belabouring me with her parasol?”
“I can only pray you will. First it would mean we were home, and second, I’d pay to see that.” [loc. 1815]

Disclaimer: I had an advance copy because I'm interviewing KJ at Nine Worlds, and it will be Fun.

First in a new trilogy, The Green Men, which is set in the same 'world' as The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal. (I bounced off that book on first attempt, so didn't get around to reading it until after Spectred Isle.) Unlike many of KJ Charles' other novels, it's set in the twentieth century -- in the 1920s, in fact, in an England which is still recovering from the horrors of a World War -- and where the Green Men have been defending England against occult forces since well before the Archduke's assassination. Though the War made things rather worse ...

Saul Lazenby is a former archaeologist and military man, disgraced and discharged: he used to work with Leonard Woolley, but is now employed by Major Peabody, an enthusiastic amateur (or nut job, depending on point of view) who's keen on 'magical powers, haunted temples and secret societies'. Saul is grateful for the employment, and keeps his reservations to himself.

Then one day he's walking along, minding his own -- well, Major Peabody's -- business, and an oak tree bursts into flames.

This event sparks his first encounter with Randolph Glyde, an irascible aristocrat with a glinting smile. (Lazenby does not take to him). Glyde, it turns out, is a Green Man, a magician charged with the investigation of a recent upsurge of unpleasant occult activity in London. After their encounter against a backdrop of spontaneously-combusting oak, Glyde doesn't expect to see Lazenby again: but Lazenby keeps turning up at occult flashpoints. Can it be coincidence? Or could there be something to Major Peabody's theories?

Both men are profoundly affected by the War: Glyde lost almost all his arcane colleagues, Lazenby his profession and his reputation. Glyde is staggering under the burden of his family's twenty-three generations of service: Lazenby's family has disowned him. ("Disowning, indeed. How bourgeois," remarks Glyde.) More than anything, perhaps, what they need from one another is empathy: they want to be understood, they need kindness.

The secondary characters are well-rounded, in particular Glyde's fellow Green Men, Sam Caldwell, Barney and Isaacs: I am furiously intrigued by the latter two, soldiers who are the sole survivors of a military experiment. And the War Beneath continues, with fen-grendels, a medieval turncoat, and an outclassed British Government who'd really like the Green Men to work for them.

Absolutely gripping, and also very funny, largely because Lazenby and Glyde share a dark and caustic sense of humour: one of my top five KJ Charles novels.