The Green Men take their magical ability from the land, but with so few of them left alive and so few of those up to the tasks required of them, Randolph is run ragged, doing the best he can to at the least keep London from falling prey to an attack from beyond the veil. One of the small number of guardians is Randolph Glyde, the last remaining member of an ancient family tasked by successive monarchs over many generations with protecting England from mystical forces.

With both sides fairly evenly matched, the veil between the supernatural and the human worlds was irrevocably damaged and with so many of the combatants dead, it now falls to just a handful of men and women to track down and repel the various creatures and malignant entities that are passing through the veil with increasing frequency. The War Beneath, as that war is known amongst those who took part in it, was every bit as savage as the one going on in the trenches of Northern France, possibly moreso, as the opposing governments recruited as many occultists and arcanists as they could and set them to unleashing their very specialised form of warfare on the enemy. Charles’ makes wonderful use of folklore, ancient myth and magical rites as she sets about pulling readers and listeners into the world she has created, one in which a war as terrible as the one being fought between 19 by men and machines was fought concurrently by forces of the occult. The story is a captivating romantic adventure yarn set in England in 1923, wherein a small group of arcanists and ghost-hunters are England’s last line of defence against supernatural threat. Spectred Isle was one of my favourite books of 2017 and I’ve been eagerly looking forward to experiencing it again in audio format.

Spectred Isle by K.J. Charles