Best Fantasy Nominee - Comet Weather by Liz Williams

Publisher – Newcon Press

Published - Out Now

Price – £12.99 hardback £4.99 Kindle eBook

A contemporary tale of four fey sisters.

Bee: the practical one, the lynchpin; still living in the family home of Mooncote in Somerset, where she has met an unconventional boyfriend that not even her sisters are aware of.

Stella: a DJ among other things. Currently hanging around the Med after completing a series of gigs in Ibiza, she has vowed never to return to Mooncote following a row with Bee, but that was then...

Serena: a single mother and fashion designer living in Notting Hill, increasingly uncertain of her relationship with long-term boyfriend Ben, a Camden-based rock singer and the son of a family friend.

Luna: the youngest, head-strong and free-spirited, a wanderer living out of a horse-drawn van while she follows the Gypsy Switch: the route of horse fairs that spans the length of the country.

The Fallow sisters, scattered like the four winds but now drawn back together, with the comet due, united in their desire to find their mother, Alys – a former Vogue cover model who disappeared a year ago without warning or explanation. They have help, of course, from the star spirits and the no-longer-living, but such advice tends to be cryptic and is hardly the most dependable of guides. How is the comet connected to all this, and what of the huge cloaked intruder, stinking of blood and earth, who surprises Stella one night while she’s home alone? The sisters soon come to realise that their mother’s disappearance may be part of something far bigger and much darker than they had ever suspected…

I love tales where magic is less a system and more its own strange force full of secrets and unpredictability. There is along tradition of tales where the land of Greta Britain plays a key part – our folktales of Wild Hunts, monsters and ghosts all fill the landscape with depth and now Liz Williams does the same with a twenty first century flourish in Comet Weather where four sisters try to find their mother as well as dealing with their homes own unusual spirits and enemies.

The four Fallow Sisters find themselves suddenly with a desire to return home to Mooncote in Somerset. Serena the fashion designer finds her relationship with a rock star being ended with a suspicious goth girl to blame; Stella a DJ finds herself at the end of a tour desiring a trip home; Juna has been up north and falling in love with a Traveller named Sam and living life on the road and awaiting them is Bee Mooncote’s current custodian; their family historian and lover to a ghost named Dark. The sisters’ mother had been now missing a year with no sign even after the papers ran the story. To move on the family, prepare for a charity event Apple Day where all their skills can help the day work. But a comet their dead grandfather predicted is coming back after thousands of years in space and his spirit is excited and the family find the strange Stare siblings are infiltrating all their loves clearly after something in the house where the star spirits are looking apprehensive.

This is a tale of less than three hundred pages and manages to tell a simple tale of sisters finding their mother and yet makes it an epic tale of magical forces at play with one family at the centre making this a supremely enjoyable reading experience. What I feel makes it work is the depth Williams adds to the story. The tale weaves ancient barrows, burial paths, maritime legends, ghosts, and that feeling that the country is alive into a sense that the Sisters cross over all the times and places of the UK. Typically, we get a newcomer into he story so we experience the wonder for the first time but I really liked how this time it’s clear from the outset for the Fallows a lot of this is normal – this is the land they grew up in. The reader gets a sense of confusion ad we have to stitch the pieces of the world together. Rather than being told here is a magical world and here are the rules we are here being told yes magic exists now accept it. The reader steps off the path into the dark forest, the haunted house or the strange church and just experience the strangeness and it works beautifully with the way Williams colours that world in through use of language and the depiction of nature being timeless around the house.

The sisters are a refreshing set of characters too – no one here needs rescuing they are each having a personal challenge and their relationships with each other are the key to the solutions. Each has their own personal struggle to face as young women in their twenties and thirties. In particular Serena gets a lot of attention as her tale most runs against the strange Spare children ad in particular Dana who seems to have broken up her relationship but carries a sense that she is after more from the Fallows. Each gets their own voice and personality very quickly and we sense how they will react to the strangeness that takes hold. All alongside this is their mother Alys who appears to be trapped in time elsewhere a woman who lived her own life and mixed being a Vogue model with a love of magic but now cannot be found. As part of a series, you sense more revelations about these dynamics will be explored and it’s a fascinating set up for the first volume although this story stands on its own two feet very sucessfully.

I get a sense of movement from the lot that is very fluid. The tale moves with the seasons as winter approaches. Key parts of the calendar create small set pieces and the comet’s arrival creates more upheaval than anyone was expecting. We go into ancient stones, absolute darkness, changing shape or travelling on a ghost ship and while this isn’t a tale of huge battles and spells it’s the experiences and small revelations that push the story along at a great pace.

This is very much the kind of fantasy tale I love to read. A bit strange, beautifully written, and hard to predict what is going on. I felt after reading it that I was on a huge epic journey into the past and magic of the land. You can sense that up the road from Fallows you may visit Mythago Wood, The Dark Is Rising or many other folk tales of the UK all happening in the same landscape and the same feel to them but Williams with her ghosts and star people have given their own flavour to the stories. Well worth your time and one of my favourite fantasy tales this year!