There is a power grab in process, and Lychford is where it will all go down. But clearly something is very wrong in the magical realms. Neither she nor Autumn has any idea how to put him back together again. Thanks to the thing with the rain in the previous book, most of them are now well aware that magic exists, which is just as well because someone is coming to town, and he’s not Santa Claus.Īt the end of the previous book, Finn, the Prince of Faerie, exploded all over Lizzie’s kitchen. Very soon, however, earning a living will be the very last thing on the minds of the people of Lychford. If only it were possible to earn a decent living. But she’s hard working and determined to do the best she can for her young daughter. She’s someone who will not find life easy in a small English town. Entirely in keeping with the spirit of the rest of the series, Zoya Boyko is a single mother and a recent immigrant from the Ukraine. However, Cornell does introduce a new character. If you have been following the series, you will know that Lizzie and Autumn will be pretty much on their own here. No self-respecting servant of Lucifer would ever be seen looking so slovenly. And he’s much better dressed that the other Cummings fellow. It follows on from the traumatic events of The Lights Go Out in Lychford, and sees the return of a villain from the first book in the series, the smarmy demon who calls himself D. Last Stand in Lychford is the final volume in the series. Of course with one instalment coming out each year, just before Christmas, seeing the series as a whole is somewhat challenging, but it very much deserves to be seen as a single work (and I’m wondering if there is enough of it to qualify for the Best Series Hugo).

Mike Harrison’s The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again is one such attempt, but another that has received rather less critical attention is Paul Cornell’s Witches of Lychford novellas. One of the few silver linings to the whole dreadful drift of the UK into a far-right dystopia has been the attempts by creative people to try to understand how it happened.

Witches of lychford series