The Hexologists

, #1

368 pages

English language

Published Aug. 10, 2023 by Orbit.

ISBN:
978-0-316-44330-2
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(1 review)

The first book in a wildly entertaining new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where a married couple team up to solve magical, and often quite odd, mysteries.

The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case.

But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake--going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven--the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a …

3 editions

reviewed The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft (The Hexologists, #1)

The Hexologists

One sentence: loving couple does mystery investigation during a magic-driven industrial age

Things I enjoyed about the book:

  • established caring relationship between two very different people, who understand each other's quirks and needs (reminds me some of MRK's Glamourist Histories)
  • investigators who aren't cops (and are also anti-royalist)
  • setup for future books, but not in a way that detracted from this one
  • interesting magic system that also has social implications
  • an industrial age powered by fuel from portals to a hell dimension (and requiring people to fight back monsters trying to come back through said portals)

I know "romp" is overused as a fiction description, but this is a romp if ever I've seen one. It's grippy action scenes and compelling characters, but more than that a romp for me is fiction that calvinballs its way to undiscussed locations or adding new worldbuilding details with very little foreshadowing. I …