Published By: Zephyr
Pages: 224
Released On: 06/11/2025
Recommended Reading Age: 12+
60 AD
A blackbird calls a warning. Aine, a slave girl running away from her Roman masters, pauses to listen as she lifts a totemic, druid carving she’s found in the tunnel where she’s hiding. The last thing she sees is a tangle of matted fur, a sheaf of claws, a flash of fangs, as she unleashes a hungry animal presence.
1783 AD
Centuries later, white witch Sarah Gibson wanders the woods in search of refuge. She’s at ease here with the changing seasons, the plants and animals, until one moonlit night, she senses Aine’s terror. The blackbird calls a warning, but Sarah wants to help Aine’s restless spirit.
Present Day
Marie has dropped out of Art College and is staying with her Aunt for a while. But the woods nearby are hiding something. Marie can feel it. She hears the local gossip about tragic happenings there. Hopelessly caught by the ghostly voices of the past that echo uneasily in her present, Marie must pit her wits against powerful old magic.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Zephyr for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
This is the first of Finbar’s books for me, and the cover was beautiful and really caught my attention.
I love books with multiple timelines, so this definitely sounded like my kind of thing.
I am nearly 3x the reading age, and if I’m honest, I think a recommended reading age of 12+ is too young. There’s nothing overly adult about it, but there are some relatively graphic scenes of violence for instance that I’m not sure someone aged 12 should read. But maybe children are more resilient these days. But I would instead market it to mid-late teens.
It is quick to read and I was through it in a couple of hours.
It is very disjointed. It flits between the three women in no real order, which I didn’t mind so much but you do have to have your wits about you. The chapters themselves, the context, it’s also a bit disjointed. It’s full of inner thoughts, memories, and magic the interrupts the main narrative.
I can’t really comment much on the characters. Even though we have our three main female characters who all run their own chapters, I didn’t think we got enough about who they were as people, outside of who they were to the plot. So I’d have liked them to be more developed, even if it made the book longer.
It is wiildly atmospheric. This sense of place and time Finbar has managed to evoke is very special.
It is eerie and spooky and well written. It’s only a short book, but on the strength of this I will definitely look up the other books, because this is quite good fun. I did enjoy it, but at times it was difficult to understand, and the plot was very ambitious and I’m not 100% sure he pulled it off.
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