Josiah Bancroft

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.

The Hexologists

Josiah Bancroft is one of my favorite authors by this point, and this second series has really cemented that for me. While The Books of Babel riveted and enchanted, there was a dim possibility that the particular flavor of that series was a product of its smaller parts - but with this series, Bancroft proves without doubt that regardless of the recipe he prepares, the array of condiments and spices remain the same, leveraged skilfully.

Bancroft has a rippling imagination, a penchant for a certain classical aesthetic, and a cohesive and thematic vocabulary. Combined, they give his prose an enduring and enigmatic flavor, the same kind you find in a fairy tale, or an old classic, or a bedtime story. His twists of phrase and word choices accentuate an orthodox mythic quality, a myth of their times, and transports charmingly into a new layer of immersion. The only comparable fantasy author that comes to mind with this much command over hehe ability to impress with phrase and word would probably be Mark Lawrence.

While that prosaic quality is present in all of his books, here he renders for us a brilliant, fun, and thematically interesting world - one of magics and civil unrest and classism and hexes. I loved the time I spent here, the magics and the way they were layed out as slowly aging vestiges of a past that may be resurfacing. Bancroft has a soft spot for constructing worlds that mirror our own in the injustice between rich and poor, royal and commoner, and the same way we had that all over the tower we also have it here. Alongside his prose, it contributes to his identity as an author, building for him a certain persona that few authors are able to distill. By this point in his career, he has identifiable stylistic and thematic hallmarks, and when you pick up one of his books you know what you’re in for.

Another hallmark that sits brightly with those two is his doting on the marital relationship. Never have I read an author who I can sense without question how much he loves his wife, draws inspiration from her, and admires her. It’s such a cliche detail in every sense, but goodness is it beyond warm to feel out. Isolde and Warren are a great pair, each characters with so much depth and quirk that they can very easily walk off the page and into the breathing world. He gives us a very clear idea of each of their strengths, weaknesses, where they rely on each other and where they differ, and where they disagree, give each other space, have difficulties, and prove to be discernibly lifelike. I loved Isolde’s complex, tricky and clever nature, but also her tendency to risk, her understanding of that as a fault, her dogged pursuit of casework even when it cannot be wise nor fair. I loved Warren even more. His doting over his wife, his charming and ineffable nature, and his love for cooking bely a man with a far less inviting nature, and we slowly see that his obsession and care for his wife is not out of servitude but out of a recognition of need for her presence, and a bottomless well of love that despite her faults she reciprocated vividly, with communication, honesty, kindness and the occasional (but quite deliberately written) immodest endeavour.

At the end of these layers that define Bancroft, we have his handling of the plot, which I would probably admit is the weakest stone on which this book is built. The detective mystery is not easy to write, and Bancroft juggles many sharp objects as he writes the book. To his credit, he creates something that bodes quite well for the majority of the book, moderately suspenseful, slow to relinquish answers, occasionally serving up a red herring. But once all comes to pass, the mystery in the rear-view mirror is less complex than one would hope. One element in particular in the way it was solved probably will present narrative difficulty for Bancroft in the future. The plot falls into a common and seemingly inescapable pitfall - the need to use all the presented cast as elements of the mystery, which in turn causes the reader to almost sense it, and thus predict it. It’s a tough issue to work around, and requires a surgeons precisions. Thus, this presents as probably the weakest entry plot wise across all his books, and will probably be the weakest entry in this new series if I had to hazard a guess.

I’m also interested to see what direction he takes for this series. Will it abandon its case by case nature to develop into a larger conflict oriented mystery-less conclusion? Or will it slowly develop our background tensions over the work of many different cases? I guess we’ll have to see.

I’ll miss Iz and War, bless them and their recurrent sexual escapades.

Omar 

Josiah Bancroft is one of my favorite authors by this point, and this second series has really cemented that for me. While The Books of Babel riveted and enchanted, there was a dim possibility that the particular flavor of that series was a product of its smaller parts - but with this series, Bancroft proves without doubt that regardless of the recipe he prepares, the array of condiments and spices remain the same, leveraged skilfully.

Bancroft has a rippling imagination, a penchant for a certain classical aesthetic, and a cohesive and thematic vocabulary. Combined, they give his prose an enduring and enigmatic flavor, the same kind you find in a fairy tale, or an old classic, or a bedtime story. His twists of phrase and word choices accentuate an orthodox mythic quality, a myth of their times, and transports charmingly into a new layer of immersion. The only comparable fantasy author that comes to mind with this much command over hehe ability to impress with phrase and word would probably be Mark Lawrence.

While that prosaic quality is present in all of his books, here he renders for us a brilliant, fun, and thematically interesting world - one of magics and civil unrest and classism and hexes. I loved the time I spent here, the magics and the way they were layed out as slowly aging vestiges of a past that may be resurfacing. Bancroft has a soft spot for constructing worlds that mirror our own in the injustice between rich and poor, royal and commoner, and the same way we had that all over the tower we also have it here. Alongside his prose, it contributes to his identity as an author, building for him a certain persona that few authors are able to distill. By this point in his career, he has identifiable stylistic and thematic hallmarks, and when you pick up one of his books you know what you’re in for.

Another hallmark that sits brightly with those two is his doting on the marital relationship. Never have I read an author who I can sense without question how much he loves his wife, draws inspiration from her, and admires her. It’s such a cliche detail in every sense, but goodness is it beyond warm to feel out. Isolde and Warren are a great pair, each characters with so much depth and quirk that they can very easily walk off the page and into the breathing world. He gives us a very clear idea of each of their strengths, weaknesses, where they rely on each other and where they differ, and where they disagree, give each other space, have difficulties, and prove to be discernibly lifelike. I loved Isolde’s complex, tricky and clever nature, but also her tendency to risk, her understanding of that as a fault, her dogged pursuit of casework even when it cannot be wise nor fair. I loved Warren even more. His doting over his wife, his charming and ineffable nature, and his love for cooking bely a man with a far less inviting nature, and we slowly see that his obsession and care for his wife is not out of servitude but out of a recognition of need for her presence, and a bottomless well of love that despite her faults she reciprocated vividly, with communication, honesty, kindness and the occasional (but quite deliberately written) immodest endeavour.

At the end of these layers that define Bancroft, we have his handling of the plot, which I would probably admit is the weakest stone on which this book is built. The detective mystery is not easy to write, and Bancroft juggles many sharp objects as he writes the book. To his credit, he creates something that bodes quite well for the majority of the book, moderately suspenseful, slow to relinquish answers, occasionally serving up a red herring. But once all comes to pass, the mystery in the rear-view mirror is less complex than one would hope. One element in particular in the way it was solved probably will present narrative difficulty for Bancroft in the future. The plot falls into a common and seemingly inescapable pitfall - the need to use all the presented cast as elements of the mystery, which in turn causes the reader to almost sense it, and thus predict it. It’s a tough issue to work around, and requires a surgeons precisions. Thus, this presents as probably the weakest entry plot wise across all his books, and will probably be the weakest entry in this new series if I had to hazard a guess.

I’m also interested to see what direction he takes for this series. Will it abandon its case by case nature to develop into a larger conflict oriented mystery-less conclusion? Or will it slowly develop our background tensions over the work of many different cases? I guess we’ll have to see.

I’ll miss Iz and War, bless them and their recurrent sexual escapades.

I liked it, but it was no Babel. Despite efforts to add darkness, it was light as a meringue and clipped along at a fair old pace for me, so no real complaints. Tooth achingly twee in places, but so was Babel, so..

Bancroft is pretty good at making the character come alive. I'm terrible at imagining characters in my head, but the author describes them so well they were clearly pictured inside my mind the whole time I was reading. Constant little things, like Iz shoving her hands in her pockets and swirling her coat as she talked, made the characters feel more real to me. 

I liked Warren. I mean he bakes, cries, and then flips and headbutts people.

Did I say I liked Warren? I mean I'm scared of Warren. Keep an eye on him. 

I might read the sequel.

The Hexologists

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