Book review: Witchmark, by C.L. Polk

Witchmark (The Kingston Cycle, #1)Witchmark by C.L. Polk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read this one relatively slowly because I wanted to savor it. This is going to be discussed as “gaslight fantasy” because it’s secondary-world with a vague post WWI-ish(?) setting, including bicycles as a main means of transportation and a bicycle chase sequence that is far more gripping than one would expect it to be.

It’s got a murder-mysteryesque plot tied to some deeply reflexive contemplation on power (both magical and political), privilege, who wields it, how they do so, whom is victimized in that process, and how these things intersect in unexpected ways, particularly in relation to war and its aftermath. There’s a deeply satisfying sweet gay romance that bubbles alongside the murder mystery plot.

This was a warm hug of a book for me. Strongly recommended.

View all my reviews

Advertisement

About Lynne M. Thomas

Lynne M. Thomas is a nine time Hugo Award winning editor and podcaster. In her day job, she is Head of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
This entry was posted in reading and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to Book review: Witchmark, by C.L. Polk

  1. Clive Ramsden says:

    Not only does that sound like a book I want to read, but it has a beautiful cover. That’s what caught my eye as I scrolled down the page.

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s