The first time I picked up Senlin Ascends, I didn’t put it down. It was an odd book that I couldn’t stop reading and thinking about. It had an interesting setting and interesting characters. Overall, I really enjoyed it. (One day I’ll finish the whole series.) Unfortunately, I picked it up right as the final book was set to be published. It hasn’t been part of my reviews because I was so late to the party. I enjoyed the book so much though that I was on the lookout for whatever he did next. Thanks to the generous people at Orbit Books, I got to find out. The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft is the first novel in a new series. It features a married couple investigating royal secrets. All the things I loved about Senlin Ascends were here, and the book had much more to love.
Disclaimer: The publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Any and all opinions that follow are mine alone.
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TL;DR
The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft is a wonderful opening to a new fantasy series. These magical detectives will take you to imaginative places. Highly recommended.
From the Publisher
The first book in a wildly inventive and mesmerizing new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where magical mysteries abound and only one team can solve them: The Hexologists. “Bancroft is a magician.” — Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Circe
“Fantastic! The Hexologists fizzes eloquently with wit and elegance, but also has marvelous worldbuilding and an excellent plot – and a central pair of characters who I quite simply love. A cocktail of a book made with the very best champagne.” — Genevieve Cogman, author of The Invisible Library
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 royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent anti-royalist gang, avaricious ghouls, alchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimension, and a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people.
Armed with a love toughened by adversity and a stick of chalk that can conjure light from the darkness, hope from the hopeless, Iz and Warren Wilby are ready for a case that will test every spell, skill, and odd magical artifact in their considerable bag of tricks.
Review: The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft
Despite their anti-royalist sentiments, the Wilbies undertake an investigation for the king. Isolde Wilby is the brains of the duo. She’s thin and bad at reading people. She also employs a type of magic known as hexology. Warren Wilby (née Offalman) is a large man. He’s the muscle, and he’s also the charmer. Warren is a man filled with charisma and empathy. Together, they make a wonderful set of detectives. They’ve solved tough cases despite what people read in the Berbiton media. Most importantly, they’re a very happily married couple with an active sex life. (Is that relevant to the book? No. Is it relevant to this review? Yes.) Someone is claiming to be an unrecognized heir of the king. At the current moment in Berbiton society, the royal succession is tenuous but holding the status quo. A long-lost heir would throw the court into chaos. So, the royal secretary employs the Wilbies to find out who is blackmailing the king and is their claim legitimate. The Wilbies investigation will take them into secrets and plots that will threaten the stability of their society. With the help of Grandad, their magical bag of holding, the Wilbies set out to uncover the truth and encounter powerful enemies.
The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft is a third person novel featuring Isolde and Warren as point of view characters. The book is set in an alternate world that resembles the London of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. The book has a faster pace than other of Bancroft’s work. All of the wonderful things about Bancroft’s writing are here, and the characters have a much more active role in this first book than Thomas Senlin had in Senlin Ascends. This was a fun read filled with magic, monsters, and intrigue.
Fantasy Sherlock Holmes and John Watson
Isolde and Warren Wilby are a version of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson with magic that is just wonderful. To be clear, they’re not exact copies, but they each fit the archetypes. Isolde is a woman of the mind, and Warren is a man of the body. Together they work well with Isolde as the detective supplying Warren with the answers. They exist in Berbiton which is a clear analogue for London. Their time is one of industrial change. They are private investigators with a larger than life reputation that the broadsheets glorify and vilify at the same time.
However, the relationship – both personal and working – between the Wilbies far surpasses that of Holmes and Watson. They are more integrated as a team than Holmes and Watson. It takes both of them to solve the mystery, and each plays a role in the solution. Their working as a team creates an interesting dynamic for certain action sequences in the book. I would really love to see this adapted to the screen. (HBO get on this.)
Marriage and Fantasy
Marriage is an easy source of drama for fiction. Troubled marriages are ripe for tension between characters. Bancroft has gone the other way. He’s given the Wilbies a happy marriage, and it comes through on the page. It’s refreshing to see a happy marriage, a working marriage, dare I even say it, a healthy marriage. Isolde and Warren work as a team, and the foundation of that team is their marriage. Warren is infatuated with Isolde, and she loves him with all her being. The tension in their marriage isn’t problems between them; no, the tension is because they’re putting themselves constantly at risk. Isolde’s need to know, need to solve the puzzle, involves some reckless decisions; yet Warren doesn’t get mad at her for them. He supports her through them. It’s lovely to see this on the page.
The Wilbies have a healthy sex life. It’s mentioned a lot. It’s not gratuitous, and it definitely happens off stage. It’s simply a part of their marriage, and it’s another reminder of their love for each other. Depictions of sex in the fantasy genre varies depending on what you’re reading, naturally. But I can’t think of a novel that I’ve read recently that features a married couple with an active, healthy sex life. I’m glad that Bancroft added this aspect to their marriage. It made them an even cuter couple.
Bancroft's Magic System
There are four major systems of magic in The Hexologists: necromancy, wizardry, alchemy, and hexology. Of the four, necromancy and wizardry are outlawed. Alchemy and hexegy are part and parcel of Berbiton society. Each has a different way of conducting the magic. Hexegy is done through art. Isolde carries chalk around with her to work her art. Bancroft’s systems are interesting, and I hope we learn more in future installments of the series.
Alchemy has been employed in the industrialization of Berbiton society. It creates the fuel that Berbiton’s cars run on. It also creates the constant pollution that falls all around them.
Conclusion
Josiah Bancroft’s The Hexologists is a wonderful first novel in a new series. It has all the hallmarks of a Bancroft novel – wonderful names, imaginative settings, and a lot of movement – that will appeal to fans of the Books of Babel series. The Wilbies were a surprisingly lovely addition to the lineup of fantasy detectives, and they joined the ranks of Harry Dresden and Sam Vimes in their awesomeness. This is a book for fans of mystery stories that enjoy fantasy settings. I loved this book and am eagerly awaiting the next in the series. Highly recommended.
The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft is available from Orbit Books on September 26th, 2023.
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