RogerBW's Blog

The Fossil Door, Celia Lake 06 November 2024

2021 romantic fantasy. In 1922, Rathna is sent to look into a transportation portal that's shut down; she's very specialised in her understanding of portals, so an expert in other magics is sent to help her out.

It's the Lake recipe as before: some mild peril, but much more on an emotional than on a physical level. Our heroes gradually work out what's going on, and move from spiky distrust into love. When it comes time to catch the malefactor(s), that job is given to the Guard, and resolved off-page.

It's the characters who are the prizes for me. Rathna is the daughter of an ayah who was brought back from Bengal by a British family, then turned out when her services were no longer needed. Although this is a less racist (and sexist) world than our own, society still makes things harder for her than necessary. Meanwhile Gabe Edgarton is the heir of an important family, who has a real talent for magical investigation, but has to spend much of his time resisting people who want him to give up that nonsense and get on with being a normal aristocrat.

It's pleasing to see more consideration of the portals (and indeed one recurring theme is why anyone would put one in Glencoe in the first place), and I enjoyed my return to Lake's Albion.

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Previous in series: Carry On | Series: Mysterious Powers

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