Title: Drowned Country
Series: The Greenhollow Duology: Book Two
Author: Emily Tesh
Publisher: Tor Books
Length: 160 Pages
Category: Fantasy, Gaslamp Fantasy
Rating: 5 Stars
At a Glance: Drowned Country is another exceptional outing for Emily Tesh, and a deliciously charming gaslamp fantasy/fairy tale.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Even the Wild Man of Greenhollow can’t ignore a summons from his mother, when that mother is the indomitable Adela Silver, practical folklorist. Henry Silver does not relish what he’ll find in the grimy seaside town of Rothport, where once the ancient wood extended before it was drowned beneath the sea—a missing girl, a monster on the loose, or, worst of all, Tobias Finch, who loves him.
Review: We have all read books that we remember for the way they made us feel as much as we remember them for the story itself—sometimes the feelings even more so than the story. Emily Tesh’s Silver in the Wood is a book I recall fondly for both. From the lush prose to the vivid imagery to the heart-heavy ending of the first installment of this duology, Tesh delivered all the splendor and wonder of legend and fairy tale in the story of Tobias Finch, the Wild Man of Greenhollow, and the curious and inquisitive stranger who would go on to impact Tobias’s long, long life in a short time.
The piquancy of that heartache and the marvel and mysteries of the Wood carry on through this short novel, Drowned Country, through the exchange of Tobias’s and Henry Silver’s roles, through their two-year separation, through Silver holding on to his humanity by the fingertips, and into their tense reunion when Silver’s mother, Adela, calls on her son to help find a missing girl … and the vampire who may have abducted her. Replete with the same sense of awe, and the danger of the ominous and mystifying, Tesh doles out the tension, especially that which now exists between Tobias and Silver, like breadcrumbs to lead readers down unexplored, and potentially unalterable, paths. Their journey from reality and into another world, a land that the author describes with such vivid detail that it imprints on the imagination, while fraught with uncertainty, also opens the door to the future.
A willingness to sacrifice for each other’s sakes reminds Silver and Tobias of the love and the compassion they share, as a primordial benefactor grants them their fondest, unspoken wish and spurs them on to their happily ever after. This is another exceptional outing for Emily Tesh, and a deliciously charming gaslamp fantasy/fairy tale.
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