Outside, the rain had passed and it was very still and starlit; Bee looked up and there was Orion, striding high in the southern sky with the blue fire of Sirius at his heels. There was a small, hard moon, bitterly white. [loc. 2314]
I knew I was in good hands when I opened Embertide to find that Part One is entitled 'Our Thumping Hearts Keep the Ravens In', a quotation from Kate Bush's song 'Lionheart'. (Part Two is 'Selling England by the Pound'.) Third in the splendid 'Fallow sisters' tetralogy, following Comet Weather and Blackthorn Winter, Embertide is very much a springtime book, and I wish I'd been able to read it earlier in the year, because Williams' evocation of the season is so vivid.
The four Fallow sisters (Bee, Stella, Serena and Luna) are regaining equilibrium after the events of Blackthorn Winter. At least they remember those events: Ben and his mother Caro seem to think that, instead of tangling with otherworldly forces, they simply fell ill with some virus. (Note that these novels are a Covid-free zone.) But there's an underlying theme of how human perceptions make rational narratives of the irrational spiritual world; even sensible and grounded Bee only perceives an essential truth about a friend in the nick of time.
Spring is stirring, in the lanes and woods of Somerset and in the green corners of London, and the sisters are separately swept about by the tides of time, experiencing various metamorphoses, encountering new friends and foes (the Huntress, Kit Coral, Davy Dearly, Aiken Drum), piecing together the scraps of knowledge and understanding that they've accumulated, and trying to come to terms with their mother's new relationship. Like the previous novels in the series, Embertide is centred on women, human and otherwise. There's little in the way of romance (though I'm vastly intrigued by hints of Master of Foxhounds Nick Wratchell-Haynes' 'romantic interest of unusual origins') but plenty of female friendship and solidarity. (That said, one of the more villainous characters is also a woman). This is a novel that deals with the Wild Hunt, the ravens at the Tower, and White Horse Country: but also with road protests, class privilege, and land ownership: all very English.
I'm fascinated by the 'Knowledge', by Alys' alter ego Feldfar, and by an offhand mention of American cousin Nell (who has inexplicably become 'Nan') and her baby, presumably conceived during Comet Weather: I'm very much looking forward to the fourth and final novel, which should be a summery one.
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