Wolfsbane: Book One of the Mortlake Series, by David Longhorn. Scare Street, 2021

The first in the Mortlake series (of which I read the 3^rd one first…doh), this book, while interesting and suitably creepy, has some of the faults that all ‘origin issues’ do. The characters are new, undeveloped, and their abilities have to be explained, we’re being introduced to how the magic of this world works, and it’s shorter than the following books. But I felt Mortlake was well done, as was Tara- we get an extremely intense introduction to her.

We meet Tara as she is on a hike with her boyfriend. Lost, hungry, and wet with rain, when they come to a fence they decide to climb it as they feel it’ll be a shortcut. They are attacked, though, by creatures that Tara cannot recognize. Her boyfriend falls to the creatures, but Tara gets away, with no memory of how. In the ado surrounding her hospital stay and police questioning, someone slips her a business card with “Mortlake” on it. An internet search shows he’s a professor of myth and legend at Cambridge, with a side line in investigation of paranormal evenets. As an astrophysicist, Tara doesn’t put much faith in the paranormal. But between some things that happened when she was a teen, and the fact that the ‘wolves’ that killed her boyfriend didn’t look like normal wolves, she gives Mortlake a call.

Mortlake accepts her plea for help willingly- he’s already been looking into it. He swiftly pulls his helpers together and I’ll not give anymore or the whole thing will be spoiled. Suffice it to say that their skills, paranormal and physical, mesh into a unit that can face most things. I like that no one person- not even Mortlake- knows or does everything. It takes a village, I guess, to fight the paranormal.

Pretty good for number one in a series; I’ll give it four stars.

The Silvered, by Tanya Huff. DAW Books, 2012

In ‘The Silvered’, the world is similar to ours during the Victorian era. Except there are werewolves, mages who can control different elements, and magical artifacts from the past. There are also guns and airships. It’s vaguely steampunk in feel, even though there is no actual steam technology.

Mirian Maylin, 19 years old, has some mage blood. She has tested as having powers in several elements, but has not progressed beyond first level in any of them. She has been invited to *not* come back to the university next semester because she performs so poorly. Her mother’s biggest worry is that Marian might not attract the attention of someone of the Pack, and marry into it. Marian does not care if she ever gets married.

We start the book with a war beginning; the Empire is attacking the country of Aydori and has declared Pack members to be abominations. A rather garbled warning from a Soothsayer has Emperor Leopald kidnap the top five members of the Mage pack. Mirian finds herself in the position to follow the Mage pack to the Empire’s capital city and try and rescue them. She also finds herself in the company of Tomas Hagen, younger brother to the Pack leader, and, with Captain Reiter of the Empire forces following her because they think she’s the missing sixth member of the Mage pack.

I really liked the characters; Mirian is strong, smart, and stubborn (and, according to Hunt Pack members, smells amazing- a sign of mage powers) and she and Tomas have to grow up a lot in just a few days. While they find themselves partners by chance, they work very well together. Likewise the kidnapped Mage pack leader, Danika, has to face great personal loss along with physical and psychological abuse but stands up to it. I should warn you there is a lot of brutality in this book; it’s set during a war and it doesn’t bring out the best in a lot of the soldiers. It also shows the peril of dehumanizing others; it makes it far too easy for people to discount the worth of their lives.

The book ties up all the loose ends- even though as I got near the end of the book I couldn’t figure out how the author would manage that in such a short number of pages. But I’d forgotten how good a writer and world builder Tanya Huff is; parts of the ending are very unexpected, it’s neatly done, and, while this is a standalone novel, there are a few things that could lead into another volume set in this world if she wanted. I’m hoping she’ll do so!

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