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

Publisher - Ad Astra - Head of Zeus

Published - 12/5

Price - £18.99 hardback £5.79 Kindle eBook

Everyone is not as they seem in this fantasy novel, replete with war, witchcraft and secrets. 

Christophor Morden lives by night. His day-brother, Alexsander, knows only the sun. They are two souls in a single body, in a world where identities change with the rising and setting of the sun. Night-brother or day-sister, one never sees the light, the other knows nothing of the night.

Early one evening, Christophor is roused by a call to the city prison. A prisoner has torn his eyes out and cannot say why. Yet worse: in the sockets that once held his eyes, teeth are growing. The police suspect the supernatural, so Christophor, a member of the king's special inspectorate, is charged with finding the witch responsible.

Night-by-night, Christophor's investigation leads him ever further from home, toward a backwards village on the far edge of the kingdom. But the closer he gets to the truth, the more his day-brother's actions frustrate him. Who is Alexsander protecting? What does he not want Christophor to discover?

And all the while, an ancient and apocalyptic ritual creeps closer to completion...

One of the reasons I love science fiction and fantasy is that genre isn’t a narrow field it’s not just epic quests and travels to alien planets. The genres contain many flavours of comedy, tragedy and every other type of tale. Fantasy mixed with mystery we tend to think of belonging to contemporary fiction with various wizards and witches solving modern crimes with the odd quip but mysteries can appear in other forms. Pratchett’s Guards or RJ Barker’s Assassins move the case to more recognisably fantasy secondary worlds. In David Towsey’s novel Equinox we get a mystery to solve that brings danger, witchcraft and some truly innovative ideas to make a highly memorable tale.

It is 1721 in the town of Esteberg and a time of witches, magic, and imminent war with the realm’s neighbours. Christophor is a very experienced and sombre Special Inspector trained to identify the signs of the practitioners and ensure they receive swift justice. He is ordered by the King to inspect a young thief in prison who is discovered to have removed their own eyes due to the presence of teeth in the sockets. A new witch is at work. Christophor is then ordered to the thief’s hometown of Drakenford on the borders where war is looking to find this new witch amongst the towsfolk and prevent them getting more powerful. Christophor starts to fear an ancient ritual is being performed but he is also frustrated as he knows once the night ends that his day-brother Alexsander takes over his body living his life as musician and without the focus to solve the crime as various strange events start to take place.

I found Equinox a brilliant, strange, and often disturbing bit of dark fantasy. What for me makes this work is very little is explained in this world and instead the reader has to piece together clues. The great concept though is that everyone has a night and day side to themselves. A totally different person who often has different wants, needs and behaviours to their counterpart. Towsey gives us a world where prisons have to let the non-guilty party walk out during the time of their sentence, they’re not responsible for. People can have different relationships with different people and each can leave messages and instructions for their ‘sibling’ who also shares a dim remembrance of the previous day or night’s encounter.

Ultimately Towsey has created a late 20th century almost eastern European world where there are two different worlds occupying the same place but separated by the rise and fall of the sun. Some people do share the same roles but often people do not. For a mystery this works as our suspects may not be even aware of their other side’s guilt and tracking them down is harder. But on top of that this is a strange world where magic is real and to be feared from the moment, we see a prisoner whose eye sockets have teeth you know this is not going to be a gentle adventure. It is instead a world with secrets, where visions and ancient knowledge do exist to be used for good and ill and Towsey is not afraid to cerate strange and starting imagery often with forms of body horror or scenes where reality alters and feels oppressive and dangerous. . It is one of the creepiest fantasy reads I’ve read for a while.

I think adding to that feeling is our two main characters Christophor and Alexsander neither of whom are wise cracking heroes that we feel entirely safe with. The tale starts with Christophor’s narration and while we can see he is very knowledgeable on dark magic that he is also a man conscious he is getting perhaps too old for his work but at the same time his work is all he seems to be. No sense of humour, very much a loner and hates to share his feeling. In contrast with Alexsander we have a man who wants to play music and have fun; perhaps also getting conscious that his time to drink and seek romance is running out too but he also very little interest in the occult and his brother’s strange role – he feels the more human of the two but also probably the weaker in character. All of which makes him a wonderful fish out of water when they arrive in Drakenfield.

Drakenfield is just full of secrets and suspects. It’s a small town on the regions with its own cultures and no warm love for the remote King who may be making this a future battlefield. Without getting stereotypical we have people in power who appear shifty, children who appear strange and an overall sense of the brothers being in a little too deep. Christophor is himself the introvert who knows too much of dark magic being suspected while Aleksander just meets fellow drinkers and looks for a little romance to his brother’s despair. But you do slowly get a sense that this town is being played with by a very powerful foe and when we see the strange and horrible acts that the witch is capable of then we definitely don’t expect a fully happy ending. It’s a tale that is murky, nightmarish and the mystery is a good one full of twists, clues and revelations that keep us going until the final tense chapters.Even the two main characters get suspicious of the other’s motivations all leading to uncertainty over how this can end well. Towsey even adds strange visions with apocalyptic imagery to raise the stakes and get the sense of the world ending soon as war and disease all start to commence around this strange little town.

Equinox is a fine dark fantasy tale (and looks to be a standalone tale to boot); filled with mystery, unusual characters and a fascinating concept that never feels the need to explain itself too much. I was hugely impressed and gobbled this tale up. Hugely impressed and a name I’ll be looking out for in the future and strongly recommend you to pick this up if an unsettling fantasy mystery appeals