The Hexologists - Tak's Reading Room

368 pages

English language

Published Aug. 10, 2023 by Orbit.

ISBN:: 978-0-316-44330-2

(1 review)

The first book in a wildly entertaining new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where a married couple team up to solve magical, and often quite odd, mysteries.

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 …

The first book in a wildly entertaining new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where a married couple team up to solve magical, and often quite odd, mysteries.

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 antiroyalist 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 whatever springs from the alleys, graves, and shadows next.

2 editions

Soh Kam Yung reviewed The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft

On using Hexes to investigate the case of a King who wants to be cooked.

4 stars

A fascinating book (apparently the first in a series) set in a Victorian-era world involving two investigators that use Hexes to solve crimes. Well, only Iz Ann Always Wilby (hah!) uses Hexes, while her husband has his own resources. And their current investigation is a doozy, involving a King who wants to be cooked, a possible bastard son, and various spirits and denizens of other worlds. Like most investigative stories, the clues are there, but it would be a challenge for the reader to solve it before Iz does, even with the various Hexes and other magical incantations and objects shown and explained.

The story starts with the King's cooking situation explained by his secretary and a letter from the apparent bastard son, before action explodes on to the scene (literally). Iz and her husband are then off to investigate the origins of the possible son. But it becomes clear …

A fascinating book (apparently the first in a series) set in a Victorian-era world involving two investigators that use Hexes to solve crimes. Well, only Iz Ann Always Wilby (hah!) uses Hexes, while her husband has his own resources. And their current investigation is a doozy, involving a King who wants to be cooked, a possible bastard son, and various spirits and denizens of other worlds. Like most investigative stories, the clues are there, but it would be a challenge for the reader to solve it before Iz does, even with the various Hexes and other magical incantations and objects shown and explained.

The story starts with the King's cooking situation explained by his secretary and a letter from the apparent bastard son, before action explodes on to the scene (literally). Iz and her husband are then off to investigate the origins of the possible son. But it becomes clear that some forces would be happier if they drop the investigation. The investigation would lead them into the realm of the dead, interactions with a shadow world, and encounters with monstrous creatures from another plane of existence. But even with the case closed, things are not settled, for the Wilbys are now aware of an even more powerful magical force at work in their world, and it would not do to antagonize it unduly, for the force is aware of them and is willing to leave them alone: for now.

In the Wilby's world, the system of magic is divided into four branches: the Wizards, Necromancers, Alchemists, and Hexology. The Wizards and Necromancers are now banned and strictly controlled, while some Alchemists are busy creating new sources of power and raw materials, sometimes from other worlds. Iz uses Hexes (drawings of arcane symbols) during her investigation to help her, and also magical items that have come into her possession from her long-lost (and dead) father, who was an explorer and collector of magical items.

The story is written in a light-hearted way, but with moments of high emotion during important revelations in the investigation. The book would conclude with Iz making a controversial deal with a magical being that would reveal a truly power magical being at work in her world that she would rather avoid if possible. Presumably, a confrontation between them in the future is inevitable, but that would be for a future book in this interesting series to reveal.