I would like to thank Julia from Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – 7th January

Price - £8.99 paperback £5.65 Kindle eBook

While Sherlock is officially dead, John and Mary Watson, Nan Killian, and Sarah Lyon-White are taking up some of his case-load – and some work for Lord Alderscroft, the Wizard of London.

Lord Alderscroft asks them to go to Dartmoor to track down a rumour of evil magic. Not more than four hours later, a poor Dartmoor cottager arrives seeking their help. His wife, in a fit of rage over the children spilling and spoiling their only food for dinner that night, sent them out on the moors to forage for something to eat. The children are moor-wise and unlikely to get into difficulties, but this time they did not come back, and their tracks abruptly stopped. The man begs them to come help.

They would say no, but there’s the assignment for Alderscroft. Why not kill two birds with one stone? But the deadly bogs are not the only mires on Dartmoor. And these are not the only missing children.

One thing I’m increasingly aware this last year is just how many variations of Sherlock Holmes are out there. I’ve talked before how he seems to be perfect for quasi-magical stories where an apparent supernatural element is at play to then use hid logic to show the crime is a trick of the light. I was therefore intrigued to see a series about the detective where the world has actual magic in them. Holmes in this instalment however is not the main character at all in The Case of the Spellbound Child by Mercedes Lackey but we so have his Victorian world mixed with magic, fae and a new team of magical investigators giving me a cosy mystery that on the one hand is charming and the other just occasionally a touch more wicked that I would have initially expected.

Let’s get the two big points out of the way first this is the fourteenth novel in a series known as The Elemental Masters. I have not read or heard of this series before and while the novel alludes to previous adventures it never felt while reading to be causing me an issue not to have read the previous stories. Secondly while this is a world with Holmes in it, he’d barely a main character (and currently labelled as dead but really in hiding). More interestingly we have a John and Mary Watson with magical abilities – here people have magical powers to conjure spirits or can enter the spirit world with psychic abilities. Again, there has clearly been many novels exploring this subject in other adventures, but it never comes across as impenetrable and allows readers to catch up.

Lackey does this by making the first fifth of the book effectively two standalone adventures. Right at the start we have an unpleasant murder and the victim realises he has now become a ghost. Realising his limitations; and as he was always an unpleasant soul, he then spends weeks haunting all his neighbours at which point a team of these magical investigators get involved. This was a very good opening sequence as it shows the world and its variations from our own – perfect for a newcomer. The concept of the spirit world gets explored and by focusing on the ghost we get drawn in before the investigators appeared. A good start.

The next tale gets us more used to the core team of the Watsons, Nan and Sarah two well educated ladies with additional psychic powers and their newest member the very young Sukhi who can travel also to the spirit world. This time their mission explores a young lady mysteriously laid up in an asylum; is she bewitched, insane or playing a game? Here we get to see the team explore. Characters can read minds, explore secret areas by leaving their bodies and apply logical deduction to their findings. What I liked about this part of the tale is we get to explore the ‘rules’ of magic discovering what is and is not possible in a very quick and understandable way. It also allowed us to see that Lackey is not afraid to put a nastier spin on events than we expect as explore motivations for the lady’s incarceration.

All of this leads nicely to the main event in Dartmoor where rumours of evil reside but the narrative also shifts to two young Dartmoor children Ellie and Sam. Typical kids who in a moment of bad behaviour accidentally destroyed the family’s only meal for the night leading their mum to order them out on the moor. Deciding the woods may offer some tips for food they follow a trail and discover a cottage that has a delicious set of strawberries calling to them….and then they wake up shackled to a bed with other young children. They have been captured by the mysterious Dark One who uses their energy for purposes unknown. The children soon find they are now magically bound to the cottage and their fellow captives say the Dark One uses the children until they have no more energy to provide…

There was a lot to enjoy about this bigger mystery. The Dark One scenes are often genuinely chilling as young children are menaced and its clearly being alluded to killed by this shape of darkness who doesn’t have a face. We see things from Ellie’s perspective and there is an intriguing and tense battle of wits as she tries to protect her brother and plan an escape. The more we discover about the Dark One we find they are a truly vile villain and again we discover crimes you would not have found in a Conan Doyle tale.

In parallel we watch as our investigators get hired and begin to find out what is happening in Dartmoor. The first half of these section was again really involving. I love seeing a world where magic is standard and even characters like Robin Goodfellow appear as magical guides. They’re lively and fun often having characters poke fingers in the direction of the time’s sexism and attitude to the working class. Pleasingly all the female leads have agency and its fun trying to work out who the Dark One really is.

But the story I felt suffered from two issues. One very much is down to my personal reading tastes. Lackey has used Dartmoor dialect for the local characters. Dialect speech such as ‘Dark One picks ‘em oop, takes ‘em oot, us’n niver see ‘em no more’ and that really drags me out of the story as I try and decode what they’re saying. This could all be based on actual accents, but I note when character’s thoughts are used its in modern text. Depending on your reading approach this can be a cosy charm or a pain! The other issue was the last fifty pages seemed to be spiralling around until suddenly Holmes gives some clues and it’s a big set-piece to save the day. It felt very very sudden and lost the energy the stories prior had had.

Overall this was a very charming and often cosy fantasy tale that I think readers who want to try Lackey would be rewarded in doing so. Despite that cosy feeling though Lackey gets to throw in quite serious themes and some truly unsettling moments of dread and fear as we fear for the lost children. My first ever Lackey was a rewarding experience and I will be keeping an eye out for her other work in the future.