AND THEN THERE WERE SIX
In the hollow of a remote Turkish mountain, nine entities (the Umbra) from an alternative dimension are plotting revenge. Trainee wizard Martin Kingswraith has annihilated one of their own and payback is overdue. Defeating this “family of living shadows” will be less than straightforward as it’s not just Kingswraith’s survival that’s on the line but those of everyone he loves. Can his magic keep them safe and destroy three of the Umbra who’ve come to earth with their nattily dressed assassin the Vadhaka, an Apex killer who wraps himself “in an illusion of normalcy” until the moment when he can put his “sinister art” into action?
Fans of the first Kingswraith novel will enjoy this lively cocktail of magic, the supernatural, and splashes of paganism played out against a Victorian backdrop oozing with menace beneath a veneer of ordinariness.
Kingswraith is no stranger to the mix. Still living in the eccentric Chelsea house of his mentor, the newly married Professor, he knows all too well that the dangers swirling through London’s grimy, fogbound streets will inevitably make their way to his own doorstep. A gruesome murder, a few miles upstream from the River Thames, is a portent of the approaching threat. It’s Kingswraith’s friends, Penelope Epimeliad and her tree sprite army, who organise the pushback against an enemy more dangerous than any they have previously encountered. For Kingswraith, defeating the Vadhaka will mean raising his game to a higher level of magic. A beautifully crafted wooden stave, with a strip of purest silver at its core, is the chosen instrument to perform the deed but will it be enough?
It’s one of many lingering questions, satisfyingly answered, in a story whose tight plot and pacey narrative is punctuated with tension and gripping bursts of action. In the middle of these supernatural goings on, Kingswraith the protagonist, matures before our very eyes as he prepares to take on the Vadhaka’s deadly challenge without fear or hesitation. In the first book, he was like a sorcerer’s apprentice learning his skills on the job, beset with occasional moments of doubt. This time he is confident and more trusting of his abilities. He has come of age, both as a magician and as a young man, blindingly unaware of his attractiveness to the opposite sex (although he does behave like a gangling puppy around Shelagh, the Professor’s pretty housemaid who he rescues from an Umbra while she’s having a bath), or the sexual jealousy he unwittingly arouses in his mentor’s home. Can these tensions be extinguished? That might take another sequel, although if the first two books are anything to go by finding a resolution will throw up its own complexities.
Kingswraith and the Vadhka is an easy, enjoyable read thanks to its plot, characters, and solid writing. The prose is neither fussy or overdone, but instead is atmospheric, descriptive, and linguistically rich in places. Pearson does a grand job capturing the dialects and speech patterns of his characters, whose nuances and malapropisms bring additional texture to the story.
Martin Kingswraith may be no Harry Potter but as a literary character he is definitely “up there” with the boy wizard and his posse. He has come into his own as a magician, while the enemies who foolishly underestimated him have been forced onto the backfoot as they must recalibrate how to deal with him. At the end of the novel, six of the nine are still alive but Kingswraith knows they won’t rest until the score is settled once and for all. Destroying them might cost him his life, but will it really come to that?
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
Why not buy a copy of Kingswraith Taste no Pity, the first book in the Kingswraith stories, to add to your Derek E. Pearson collection? Click the book covers to find out more about other novels by the author. Click the link if you’d like to hear Derek E Pearson read an excerpt from his novel Slave Skin or watch a video of the author in conversation with Read2Write’s Juliette Foster. (
