The Greenhallow Duology by Emily Tesh is a pair of novellas inspired by mythology and folklore, especially faerie lore. I couldn’t tell if they were set in a fantasy version of our world, or a world that just felt very much like a gaslamp era England.
Book 1: Silver in the Wood
Silver in the Wood is the first book in the duology, and it is a quick and compulsive read. I read it in a single sitting one evening, and had to resist the urge to immediately download book 2 (I had to sleep instead).
In this book, we meet the woodsman Tobias, who lives in a modest cottage with his cat and protects the woods from monsters. We also meet his new landlord, Henry Silver, who has purchased the nearby manor house. Tobias lets Silver stay the night after he gets caught in a terrible storm, and Silver soon has the opportunity to return the kindness when Tobias is seriously wounded.
This is a book where no one is quite what they seem. Tobias, Henry, and even Henry’s frequently mentioned nagging mother, all prove to have their secrets and surprises. More than any human character, the Greenhallow itself is full of mysteries strange and wonderful.
As someone who really enjoys faerie lore and folk tales, I found this book hit the perfect note, combining the ordinary and the sublime, the wonderful and the horrible. Tesh captured the mood of these myths, while still using more modern storytelling techniques so that it reads like a novella, not a folk tale.
Book 2: Drowned Country
Drowned Country took me a little longer to read than Silver in the Wood, partially because it’s a little longer, partially because I found it slightly less engaging, but mostly because I was too tired for an all-night reading binge.
I’m going to avoid talking in too much detail about Drowned Country, as discussing the plot would involve major spoilers for book 1. The short spoiler-free version is that two years after the events of the first book, Tobias and Henry have had a falling out and must overcome their differences in order to rescue a young woman from a vampire.
As with Silver in the Wood, there are secrets and surprises.
This one felt a little less like a folk tale and more like a pulpy Gothic novel, given that the locations include a shadowy city and an old ruined abbey, and there’s a vampire. There are still elements of faerie lore, however.
The Duology as a Whole
Let’s talk about why these books worked for me.
Many times, I find that novellas feel too short. I complained about this in my recent review of Come Tumbling Down. Sometimes, by the time you build the world and establish the characters, there’s no time for plot. But because the world of the Greenhallow is either our world or one very similar, we only need a bit of time spent setting the scene: a cottage in the woods, a manor house, the tumbledown ruins of the abbey. The characters reveal themselves over the course of the plot. I also feel like the shorter length of these stories works, since they are something of an homage to folk tales, which are not generally long-form stories.
The Greenhallow books are also what I like to call “quietly queer.” Tobias and Silver are both gay, and Silver strikes up a flirtation almost immediately, but their romance plays out quietly alongside the rest of the story. Neither appears to have any angst about their sexuality, and Silver’s mother seems perfectly accepting of it as well, which would seem to point to this being some alternate world, or a homophobia-free alternate history. Either way, I appreciate the sweet romance and that any angst was from character flaws, not sexuality-related obstacles.
(The romance in these stories is limited to kissing and the intimation of sex; they are not at all steamy and are appropriate for younger readers who are not ready for explicit content).
I also appreciated that both Tobias and Henry got to display nurturing behavior while also being rather masculine characters. Tobias is a rugged and practical woodsman. Tobias is a man of intellect. Both respect the other and their knowledge and skillsets. Both take care of each other as needed, as well as providing care for secondary characters.
Oh also, there’s a badass dryad named Bramble. I love dryads! Bramble is sufficiently alien to suggest a non-human intelligence, and has her own agenda.
If I had one complaint about the duology, it would be that the ending didn’t quite feel like it knew what it was doing, as the characters changed their minds in rapid succession, before the whole thing was very neatly settled. I would have liked either a little more poignancy, or a little clearer feeling that everyone had made the best decision, rather than having the decision made for them. I wasn’t a bad ending, it just wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been.
All in all, if you like faerie lore and folk tales, M/M romance, scholars who can’t stop enthusiastically sharing their research, and surprisingly tender gruff loners, these are the books for you.
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