In Marian Womack’s shadowy novel, ingenious women confront turn-of-the-century uncertainties.

In the 1880s, three children disappeared from their estate in the Norfolk Fens. Since then, other children have also disappeared, with some connection to a green light, white fungus, fog, a marsh and the appearance of a man named Samuel Moncrieff. Twenty years later, in the wake of Queen Victoria’s death, detective Helena Walton-Cisneros and her new friend, Eliza Waltraud, search for answers to this mystery.

Strong characters with murky pasts lend urgency to the quest for answers. The book begins in mourning, as Samuel has lost his lover, while England has lost its queen. Despite Samuel’s bleak, directionless mood, the new century promises to be one of light and of new opportunities. Samuel’s storyline is shrouded in mystery, but Helena’s drive for clarity about what happened in the Fens brings a crucial sense of order to the novel. She enlists help from Eliza, who plans to right the wrongs done to an academic writer, Eunice Foote, whose work was credited to her male colleagues. Together, these women’s minds and hearts open to possibilities they never expected. 

Women are the story’s primary actors, finding clever ways—including the occult—to skirt discrimination and advance their cause during a turbulent time. The action swirls in a maelstrom of spiritualism, revived after Victoria’s passing, and the subsequent rational backlash. 

Steeped in a slew of influences, The Golden Key bends genres. It’s part Shirley Jackson’s stories of inner demons, part Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (referenced throughout the book), part Astrid Lindgren’s faith in children’s resilience and part ghost story. A lush, unsettled atmosphere echoes in lugubrious descriptions of the Fens.

Enter a mysterious world in the hands of capable women. Getting drawn into this story is easy; getting out again is trickier.

When Sigourney Rose grows up, she wants to be Queen—not because it is her life’s dream, but because she feels she must take over the islands of Hans Lollik in order to avenge her family’s brutal murders. Born into a society where the indigenous islanders are repressed and suppressed by their colonizers, the Fjerns, Sigourney walks a strange line between the two groups being pitted against each other. She is a kongelig, a member of island royalty, but she is the only one descended from the indigenous islanders. When the childless king, Konge Valdemar, announces that he is seeking a successor to the throne, and Sigourney receives an unexpected invitation to spend the storm season on the royal island of Hans Lollik Helle, she believes it is her fate to participate in the kongelig meetings and convince Konge Valdemar that she is worthy of the throne.

But Sigourney has several strikes against her, the most blatant being the color of her skin and her birth parents. She’s been using an alias, Elskerinde Lunde, her entire adult life to hide the fact that she is the sole survivor of the bloodbath that was her parents’ last night on Hans Lollik—a political murder and hate crime that the other kongelig plotted. She also possesses kraft, psychic powers that the kongelig believe should be only in the hands of the elite themselves, or, in rare cases, sacred slaves they have absolute control over. Any other islander found with kraft is decreed to be killed. The kongelig, including Sigourney due to her role as Elskerinde, take on this duty willingly. Sigourney desires the crown more than anything, but even she isn’t sure who or what she is doing it for—her slaves resent her, the kongelig are disgusted by her and she doesn’t quite belong anywhere or with anyone. When it becomes clear that something is very off about the puppet-like Konge Valdemar, Sigourney must face the truth that everything about her existence has been a lie, and come to terms with what the right and just course of action will be going forward.

Sigourney constantly questions where her loyalties lie, all the while trying to manage her kraft, which allows her to manipulate others’ emotions but often results in transfer of those emotions to her own mind. Callender’s other characters are equally multilayered and full of complexity: A strange newcomer to the Jannik villa during storm season, Løren, possesses both kraft and family secrets that deeply unsettle Sigourney, as well as the other kongelig. The storm season is known to be a period of untimely death, and when the kongelig in line for the throne begin to drop like flies in grisly killings, Sigourney must decide to stay and choose to save the islanders and kongelig from the abnormally evil power that has risen this season, or flee Hans Lollik with her life before it’s too late.

In Queen of the Conquered, Callender deftly handles the subjects of rank and racism, cruelty and privilege, while also providing an exciting whodunit in the fashion of Agatha Christie’s classic And Then There Were None or the more recent Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Readers will experience the same surprising waves of emotions that Sigourney is forced to endure from her foes, victims and potential allies as she navigates the islands that now seem so wrong to her, whose seeming paradise is actually a thinly veiled hell. Callender weaves an unforgettable fantasy plot that reads as fluidly as historical fiction, replete with a vivid, unique setting reminiscent of the Caribbean. Despite the genocide, racism and misogyny that Sigourney has witnessed and ultimately participated in, she faces the conquerors of her people with fortitude and pride in the face of indubitable hatred, and more determination than ever to make them pay for what they did.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Kacen Callender about Queen of the Conquered.

In S. C. Emmett’s entry to a new fantasy epic, The Throne of the Five Winds, a lady-in-waiting to the princess of a vanquished land plays a dangerous game of political intrigue.

When the Empire of Zhaon conquers Khir, Princess Mahara is betrothed to the crown prince of Zhaon. Yala, a lady-in-waiting must leave her home alongside Mahara and journey to the center of the rival country, where all six of the aging ruler’s sons are ruthlessly plotting to claim the throne. Emmett’s book requires incredible attention to every word on the page as both Yala and the reader are thrust into a foreign political battle of assassins, careful messages and strategically offered cups of tea. Conversations between characters stretch across pages; each interaction is spiked with schmoozing, scheming and scowling. Emmett even lingers over his characters’ accents—rather than forgetting them or breezing over them, Emmett describes their differences in syllabic detail. In The Throne of the Five Winds, characters’ reactions and facial tells are artfully crafted, conveying each aspect of social interaction with incredible detail and precision.

The political plot moves slowly, but peeling each layer of conversational detail will keep readers consistently interested. The sheer number of players on the board (two queens, six princes, a Khir princess, our main character Yala, a warlord-king, his primary attendant and a seemingly infinite number of political secondaries) results in a near-endless web of relationships. Each primary character has two or three relevant titles and politically important traits that influence the style of their interactions. (This meant I had a ridiculous amount of sticky notes exploding from my book, like a colorful papier-mâché hedgehog). The grand prize of becoming Emperor is a relatively simple goal, which at least made sorting through motivations a bit easier.

There is a serious learning curve through the first 100 pages (you really should see how many sticky notes I used), but the Zhaon empire and the kingdom of Khir are well worth exploring, despite the time investment required. The world is constructed well: Color is added to the world for context, never dumped on readers like an unfriendly reminder of history class from high school. Inserting colloquial names for plants, creatures and roles is a favorite trope of mine, and Emmett employs it liberally, if a mite too much (for example, a “dragonwing” is just a big dragonfly). The world feels real and expansive, complete with implied trade relations, a rich diversity of culture and five languages.

The Throne of the Five Winds will appeal to patient readers; the quick-witted banter of modern superhero movies is nowhere to be found within its pages. Instead of fencing with quick verbal stabs and sardonic ripostes, Yala and crew are brutally sharp social gunfighters, holding their draws, each of their statements spoken with lethal concision. Those without such patience are almost always vulnerable and open to attack from more skilled fighters. Moving through Emmett’s socio-political fantasy drama is quite an undertaking, but definitely one worth attempting.

Ylfing has buried his name and become a Chant. Or at least, he’s gone through the motions. But although he’s mastered the art of telling stories, he hates it, and has spent the years since his master-Chant left him trying to become something else. When he accidentally becomes embroiled in a questionable business venture involving pungent glow-in-the-dark flowers, he starts telling stories again. Just not the good kind. Not the ones he cares about, pours his heart into and tells to the wind. But all the same, these stories carry enough power to make a fortune or—as the story grows too fast to control and mania surrounding the flowers builds—break a city. As this new enterprise unfolds, Chant-who-was-Ylfing meets another master-Chant whose views on the profession are quite different from those he was taught, and starts to realize that he does not need to be his master to be a Chant. And maybe, just maybe, he can save the city he has unwittingly set on the path to destruction.

The most striking feature of Alexandra Rowland’s latest novel, A Choir of Lies, are its snarky footnotes. The entire book is written as a manuscript with extensive editorial commentary, ranging from excising entire chapters and railing at the ethical implications of the project in general to questioning specific vocabulary choices. There is even an extensive commentary on the choice of a language with inadequate pronouns for the gender-fluid society depicted in the book. These footnotes are also the clearest implementation of Rowland’s notable skill at tailoring their prose to character. Unlike the first book in this series, A Conspiracy of Truths, Choir of Lies is narrated by just one protagonist, resulting in a more consistent style across most of the chapters. However, the portions written by the editor (who shall remain nameless here) are markedly different, and even change tone over the course of the novel, showing the arc of a character as they progress through the book with the reader. It’s a fascinating meta-literary experience, made all the more compelling by the moments when the nameless editor appears in the narrative itself.

Setting aside Rowland’s technical skill, their plot and characters are compelling as ever. They continue to offer tantalizing slices of a comprehensive, well-designed world. Whereas A Conspiracy of Truths was set in a Kafkaesque morass of graft and bureaucracy, A Choir of Lies takes place in a fantastical Amsterdam analog, complete with massive dikes, mercantile rivalries and a coterie of visiting Italians—pardon, Pezians—who may or may not have latent magical powers. The crisis facing this fictional trading city is, of course, financial, and it is instigated by a trading war for the least significant of crops: a flower that stinks to high heaven and is only pretty at night. And through it all, Chant-who-was-Ylfing remains equally endearing and infuriating, a skaldic puppy in provocative pants whose crisis of faith nearly destroys a nation.

A Choir of Lies should be on the reading list of any fan of darkly comic fantasy. Preferably just below its predecessor. Stories should be told in order, after all.