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The Old Ways
Apr. 20th, 2021 10:38 pmDec 2020
Silver in the Wood / The Drowned Country - Emily Tesh – Tor.com, 2019 / 2020
* * * *
This is an enjoyable pair of novellas comprising a romance based in British folklore. I don't know if the title of the first is intended to be a direct reference to Silver on the Tree, the final volume of Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series that I adored as a teenager, but if not it is something of a coincidence given the similarity of the subject matter. Tobias Finch, a grumpy, laconic bear of a man who lives alone in a hut in Greenhallow Forest, encounters the new owner of the local manor, Henry Silver, an amateur folklorist, and an attraction develops between them. This is complicated by Henry's keen interest in the story of the Wild Man of Greenhallow Wood and Tobias' reluctance for him to discover that particular history, for reasons that become dramatically apposite later on.
The second book does some interesting things with the relationship and expands the mythology hinted at in the first book. Both suffer from a common problem of romances where both the main characters are men, which is how to introduce female characters without making them a sex-reversed version of the fun but basically agentless romcom gay best friend stereotype. I don't think Tesh entirely succeeds in this area, though the dryad Bramble, Silver's formidable mother Adela, and Maud, a young woman that Finch and Silver encounter in book two, are all fine and quirky characters in their own right. These are novellas, so there is not a lot of room for character expansion outside the main plot beats, but Tesh writes good atmospheric prose and it will be interesting to see what she can do at longer length.
Silver in the Wood / The Drowned Country - Emily Tesh – Tor.com, 2019 / 2020
* * * *
This is an enjoyable pair of novellas comprising a romance based in British folklore. I don't know if the title of the first is intended to be a direct reference to Silver on the Tree, the final volume of Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series that I adored as a teenager, but if not it is something of a coincidence given the similarity of the subject matter. Tobias Finch, a grumpy, laconic bear of a man who lives alone in a hut in Greenhallow Forest, encounters the new owner of the local manor, Henry Silver, an amateur folklorist, and an attraction develops between them. This is complicated by Henry's keen interest in the story of the Wild Man of Greenhallow Wood and Tobias' reluctance for him to discover that particular history, for reasons that become dramatically apposite later on.
The second book does some interesting things with the relationship and expands the mythology hinted at in the first book. Both suffer from a common problem of romances where both the main characters are men, which is how to introduce female characters without making them a sex-reversed version of the fun but basically agentless romcom gay best friend stereotype. I don't think Tesh entirely succeeds in this area, though the dryad Bramble, Silver's formidable mother Adela, and Maud, a young woman that Finch and Silver encounter in book two, are all fine and quirky characters in their own right. These are novellas, so there is not a lot of room for character expansion outside the main plot beats, but Tesh writes good atmospheric prose and it will be interesting to see what she can do at longer length.