Hello and welcome to my first Short and Sweet reviews roundup of 2023, where today I’m taking a quick look at a trio of books I read in January. It’s quite a fun mixture this month, combining gothic horror, contemporary fantasy(ish) and Warhammer fiction (specifically Horus Heresy/Siege of Terra), so hopefully there’s something of interest to you in here! As always with these review roundups, the idea is to take a fairly brief look at a few SFF books that for one reason or another I’m not going to cover in full reviews, but which I’m still keen to talk about. I’ve included buy-now links for each book – I’ll receive a small affilliate fee for anything ordered via these links.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Sharp but somewhat spoiled debutante Noemí is dispatched from Mexico City to check in on her ailing cousin at a strange old house out in the wilds of Mexico, in this slow-burn gothic horror novel from an author I have a lot of time for. Having previously read and loved Gods of Jade and Shadow, Certain Dark Things and The Beautiful Ones, I’d been looking forward to reading this, probably the most talked-about of Moreno-Garcia’s books, for ages. I like a good creepy house story, and High Place certainly proves decidedly sinister (as do its inhabitants) as Noemí gradually learns its secrets, in both her waking and sleeping hours. There’s definitely something amiss with her cousin, whose husband and in-laws behave very strangely, but understanding exactly what the problem is proves deceptively tricky.
There’s lots of interesting ideas here (although fungus-based horror has perhaps been spoiled for me by Andy Clark’s Gloomspite) and the writing is lovely as always, but to my surprise this ended up as my least favourite Moreno-Garcia book so far. I did enjoy it overall, and I thought the ending was pretty satisfying, but I was surprised at just how slow it was, and all told I found it all a touch underwhelming. I also had a hard time reading about some of the antagonists, who were pretty objectionable – deliberately for sure, but somehow a bit much for my taste. It’s hard to put my finger on what I’d have liked to have been different, so I think this will go down as one I’m glad I’ve read, for the sake of completion if nothing else, but I’m unlikely to revisit.
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
I love books that blur the line between reality and fantasy, something that this does brilliantly with its tale of dangerous maps and buried family history, as Nell Young is pulled into a strange world of intrigue and mystery in the wake of her estranged father’s death. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, to avoid giving too many spoilers, but I absolutely adore the way this takes a simple concept based around the interaction between maps and reality and slowly pulls it apart, while at the same time telling a very personal story about human connections, friendship, love and loyalty.
There’s something I find really warm and comforting about the way this explores the (not literally…mostly) magical worlds of cartography, academia and history – it’s not quite in the same genre as Genevieve Cogman’s The Invisible Library or Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St Mary’s books, but it has a similar sort of feel. I blitzed through it in no time at all, and simply couldn’t put it down. Even though I figured out bits of the mystery in advance, there was always plenty more to keep me guessing, and I was more than happy to just kick back and relax into the story, all the way to the expected – and deeply satisfying – conclusion. I’ll definitely be checking out more of Shepherd’s books having read this.
Garro: Knight of Grey by James Swallow
The third novella released as part of Black Library’s Siege of Terra series, the plot here is pretty straightforward, and quite accurately portrayed by the cover art. In defending Euphrati Keeler, Garro finally faces off against his traitorous father Mortarion, in an unhappy reunion which quickly sees the estranged duo come to blows. I won’t say any more about the story itself, but suffice to say this is the conclusion of a character arc that began way back when with Flight of the Eisenstein and has continued through several audio dramas, a bind-up novel and a brief appearance in the epic Siege of Terra.
It’s a slightly odd proposition in that narratively speaking this fits books 5 and 6 of the SoT, but it’s only just been released in a gap between book 7 and the upcoming book 8.1. Not only that, but it’s a conclusion to one particular character’s arc that was written (pretty much) in its entirety by a single author, and in a 70+ book series like the Horus Heresy for every Garro story (bar his appearance in Dan Abnett’s Saturnine) to have been written by James Swallow feels like a bit of an anomaly. To be honest I was a little dubious when it was announced, but having read it I have to say I rather enjoyed it. A pretty straightforward story, in some respects it provides a fairly inevitable ending to Garro’s involvement in the Heresy, but as long as you lean into it the big climactic battle is both entertaining and satisfying.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is exactly essential reading unless you really love this character arc, and it doesn’t offer up any big surprises or fundamentally change anything in the broader narrative of the Siege; if you haven’t particularly enjoyed this arc before then I don’t think it will change your opinion. Despite the short page count though, there’s plenty of little details and character moments here for Garro fans to enjoy, and to me it just feels right that he finally gets to say what he needs to say to Mortarion. All told, it pretty much does what it says on the tin, and for me personally it feels like an appropriate way to sign off on this arc for a character I’ve grown rather fond of.
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That’s everything for this first Short and Sweet roundup of the year. All being well I’ll be back with another roundup in February, with a few more books to chat about! If you have any comments about these roundups, or if there’s anything else you’d like to see me cover, do let me know! You can drop me a line in the comments below, or find me over on Twitter.
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