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The fourth Fallow sisters book sees Bee, Stella, Serena and Luna heading for Cornwall for the summer after the birth of Luna’s baby and a very strange conclusion to an open-air Shakespeare performance. The extended family includes Sam, Luna’s partner, and Ver, Sam’s gran, plus Serena’s actor boyfriend, Ward, Stella’s friends Ace and Davy, Somerset hunt-master Nick Wratchell-Haynes and Bee’s lovely boyfriend, Dark, an Elizabethan sailor-ghost. As usual the sisters’ mum is up to something, but no one knows what, and the Wild Hunt (land) and the Morlader (sea) are fratching for territory. Expect shapechanging, ghosts, phantom ships, kidnapping and a guest appearance by Elizabeth I, and Francis Drake. I love the Fallow Sisters’ books. This might be the end of the series, but there could be more. I live in hope.
The third Fallow sisters novel is split between London and rural Somerset. It’s spring and the four sisters are recovering from the events at Christmas, but they’ve come to the notice of the supernatural world. DJ Stella and fashion designer Serena (and her film actor boyfriend, Ward) are in the city where Diana the huntress sets Stella a task, and Serena keeps being dragged into the past. Bee is in Somerset, holding the family home together, content to be with her ghostly lover, Dark. Luna, the youngest sister (with her partner, Sam) is temporarily at home while her pregnancy progresses. Floating about, doing her own mysterious thing is Alys, the girls’ mother, enigmatic as usual, and not entirely trustworthy. This book weaves folklore into everyday occurrences, and all the sisters cope with magic of one kind or another. The characters (the main ones and the secondary ones) are wonderful. This is a family saga with added magic which is well worth reading, but start at the beginning with Comet Weather and Blackthorn Winter. There’s a fourth book in the pipeline.
This is Liz Williams' follow up to the excellent Comet Weather, picking up just a short while after the events in the first book. As before the main characters are the four fallow sisters and their partners. Bee is looking after the family home in Somerset with her boyfriend, Dark, who is a ghost. Luna, the youngest sister is temporarily at home, growing a baby but actually intends to go back on the road as soon as the baby is old enough, with her boyfriend, Sam, in a horse-drawn wagon. Serena, a dress designer, and Stella, are both in London at Serena's place, together with Serena's daughter Belle, and her actor boyfriend, Ward. It seems as though the supernatural world hasn't finished with the sisters yet. One by one they get drawn across the divide into other worlds (and dumped back again). Serena's previous live in lover (who happens to be Ward's cousin) has unaccountably gone missing. On top of that her new fashion collection has been ripped to shreds and there's a demon sitting on the mantelpiece. Enter a couple of new character, a green-skinned girl found (by Bee) in the local church yard, andAce, who is fascinating – a down-at-heel wizard. This is a deeply engrossing book written by someone who really knows her magic and folklore. The action moves from Somerset to London and back again, with side trips into occult worlds, including Britain's Roman past. Highly recommended.
The Fallow half-sisters, all very different, have ties to their Somerset home, an old house steeped in family lore, imbued with ghosts, and subject to supernatural happenings. Bee, the oldest sister is the current caretaker of the house during the unexplained disappearance of the sisters' mother, Alys, who has been missing for a year. Bee's boyfriend, Dark, is somewhat unusual. Serena is a fashion designer, living in London with her teen daughter, and currently having unreliable boyfriend problems. Stella is a DJ, estranged from Bee at the beginning of the book, but on her way home from gigs in Ibiza to make amends. Luna has gone on the road in a horse drawn van with her traveller boyfriend, and is currently following a route she thinks her mother might have taken. They are all worried about their mother, while carrying on their own independent lives. We follow them, individually and together, as they experience strange happenings and encounter good and bad manifestations and put together clues that might lead them to find Alys.A comet is about to appear in the sky and when it does, things will change.
It's a female oriented book which is refreshing. I love the characters in this, the main and the supporting ones, especially the ghostly Dark, who is utterly intriguing, and the grandfather who is nothing but a (talking) blue flame hovering over his own grave. It starts out with a measured pace, but the supernatural elements are bang upfront as Bee gets a message from one of the trees in the orchard. This doesn't suffer from anyone keeping back information. Whatever the sisters learn, they share. The story unfolds through their individual and collective experiences. Marvellously magical. Highly Recommended.
A novella set largely on Liz Williams' cold, bleak Mars of her novel Banner of Souls. There are two separate stories that eventually unite. Canteley, on Mars, is in Winterstrike with her family, but bombs are falling. She is taken to safety by Aunt Sulie. She keeps having dreams, strangely non-human-like dreams.
Across the galaxy Kesh, a hunter, is dead, along with her people. She alone has been reanimated for a purpose. Perhaps to protect her developing brood. All she has for company is her spear, Thousand Voice, as she journeys in space in an intelligent ship, searching for new hunting grounds.
