My Five Word TL:DR Review: Historical fantasy, Mythology and Legend

The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood is my fourth book by Parry, it’s beautifully written and combines an unexpected love story and a story of hope during a time of bleak despair

The year is 1941, the world is at war and desperately dark times seem to loom on the horizon. As the hour grows darker people all over the world begin to dream about the return of King Arthur. Desperate times call for desperate measures, could Arthur be the light in the dark that everyone desperately prays for?

There have been many retellings of Arthur and his deeds and whilst this story is another reimagining here it focuses on Merlin and Nimue. Told in dual timelines it brings to us a character called Elaine Ambrose who works as a librarian at the British Museum. Elaine is desperate to help the war effort, she sees her contribution as the protection of the precious books in the museum that could so easily be lost to the ravages of war. Instead she is sent to a remote mansion in North Wales, known as Camlan House. Here she is to catalogue the library where it is believed that many rare specimens may be found. The owner is absent, location unknown and the house is run by an aloof and little present housekeeper. Here she meets Tom, retired from the war due to injury and now serving as a groundsman at Camlan. The two become friends, bonded over the most fantastical occurence that sets them on a voyage of discovery.

This book is written with dual timelines. We spend time with Nimue as she slowly but surely inveigles herself into life at Camelot and then we flip over to Elaine as she tries to come to terms with the fact that whilst many people are dreaming of Arthur, she dreams nightly of Nimue and her dreams are definitely trying to tell her something.

I don’t really want to go any further into the plot but focus instead on what I enjoyed.

Well, I’m loving Parry’s work and I really have promised myself to go back and read all her books. Her writing is quite simply gorgeous. And, she clearly has a love of all things fae related, not to mention a fantastic imagination and clearly plenty of ideas.

I’m also an absolute sucker for dual timelines and I liked both point of views here. They both had plenty of moments of tension and rather than finding myself eager to just return to one I actually enjoyed both. This is difficult to pull off and more often than not just doesn’t work but I liked both characters, I liked the historic feel to both and more than that Parry has a way of simply placing you in these specific periods and with the minimum of fuss making them feel solid Strictly speaking, Nimue’s pov chapters are Elaine’s dreams but they’re not told with that weird dream sequence style that rarely works for me, instead they feel like Nimue is simply telling her story to the sleeping Elaine.

Nimue was sent to Camelot to be Merlin’s downfall, Lancelot to be Guinevere’s and Camelots and Mordred to be Arthur’s. But, Nimue begins to enjoy life at Camelot. Merlin is a good teacher and generous with his knowledge and Nimue, in spite of her upbringing feels herself liking him and becoming deeply conflicted. I really enjoyed spending time in Camelot. Ultimately, and this isn’t a spoiler, events will play out as expected, whether or not Nimue tries to interfere to prevent the downfall of Camelot it is foretold.

I similarly liked to spend time with Elaine. The dusty and more or less abandoned mansion is full of interesting little tidbits and Elaine herself is this wonderfully bookish character. She strikes up a friendship with Tom and the two of them are determined to make a difference. In this respect you could say that they’re the hopeful heartbeat of the book. Looking for answers where few are to be found in a time of desperate need. They come up with plenty of fantastical obstacles along the way not least of which is a crazy chase by fantasy beasts whilst airborne in an old fighter plane.

The magic, myth and legend all work well together. We spend time with the Lady of the Lake, with a few characters that I never expected to meet and as the veil grows thin some strange beasts find themselves transported to the welsh countryside in the war torn timeline.

I absolutely loved reading this and I was totally transported, however, I do have one slight issue which, didn’t spoil the read for me but I still find myself thinking about – which I suppose isn’t really a bad thing. I felt like the ending was a bit rushed. This is a feeling I’ve experienced a couple of times recently and so I’m almost starting to think it’s maybe ‘me’ more than anything else. But, this is not a book that rushes. It takes its time to beautifully set everything out, to provide you with the backstories and let events unfold, so, personally, I would have liked the ending to feel similarly well explored. That being said, it is a satisfying ending, and emotional. I guess I just wanted it to develop at the same pace as the rest of the story, but again, most stories usually pick up the pace in the last third don’t they? So, I should probably just give my head a wobble.

Overall, this is a rather delicious book. It’s beautiful, complex, intriguing, emotional and if you like to read retellings around Arthur/Merlin and the other characters then you really should pick this up.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

My rating 4.5 of 5 stars