The first book in a wildly entertaining new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where a married couple team up to solve magical, and often quite odd, mysteries.
The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case.
But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake--going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven--the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a …
The first book in a wildly entertaining new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where a married couple team up to solve magical, and often quite odd, mysteries.
The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case.
But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake--going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven--the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent antiroyalist gang, avaricious ghouls, alchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimension, and a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people.
Armed with a love toughened by adversity and a stick of chalk that can conjure light from the darkness, hope from the hopeless, Iz and Warren Wilby are ready for whatever springs from the alleys, graves, and shadows next.
In this book, the Hexologists are on the trail of a mystery. But each time they draw close, the answer seems to shift out of their grasp.
I'm a huge fan of Josiah Bancroft in general, so more of his writing just makes me happy. I think objectively the plot of this one may be weaker, but it's hard for me to give an unbiased review since I enjoyed myself too much. Not to mention, I do really love time travel stories. We also get an advancement of the meta plot of Isolde's father!
