Jesse’s Reviews > The Hexologists > Status Update

Well it was fairly easy to guess that Henry was still alive and involved in the plot, but the how and why, I could not have guessed unless I went by the rule of the economy of characters

Okay, the showdown in the courtyard was a pretty cool scene. My heart goes out to Victor’s cadre of orphans, here in the middle of Emma’s account of his narcissistic abuse.

There are too many variables to think on who did what but I assume that Victor adopted the orphans to teach them combined magics rather than risk whittling his own life force away. Whether it’s Henry’s own campaign or one of his fellow orphans it’s obviously being waged by someone using tools that Victor taught them.

Also lots of purposefully brushing over important weird facts, like what was the nurse doing with a sword??? I can’t take for granted that Atterton actually died in the alley. I mean, maybe he did, but necromancy is right there in the universe’s setting, folks.

Well it’s good to know that Jess Blessed wasn’t the victim of SA. This chapter leaps around A LOT. It also delivers on the out-of-place graveyard chat about alchemists and flails by way of a pretty big smash cut / flash forward-and-then-back.

The bit with Obelos sheds a bit more light on the world, but this has been a stretch more about diplomacy and the horrid royals. I really don’t care about the dragon anymore, as fun as the image of Warren stuffing a smorgasbord of street vendor food into a seemingly bottom handbag might seem on paper.

Okay, I’m here for the weirder parts of this universe. bancroft’s afterlife is fairly structured and makes for a harrowing minor adventure. I like the callback to the maudlin funeral gramophone. Also, wheels within wheels, with the detailing of Ms. Blessed’s Victorian-esque adoption and upbringing, recalling in my mind something like Jane Austen’s novels minus any of the drama… the front part, anyway.

I’m kind of over how twee Bancroft’s universe is, but this is still fun as a sort of picaresque tour of the various workings of the place. Even if the didactic exchange over alchemists / flails felt like blunt expository. It’s more of a travelogue, maybe, thinly held together by the opening mystery?

now we have a conversationalist dragon. if I make any comparisons between the tone of this world and Fallen London, then it’s because I am generally ignorant of the more contemporary fantasy that could have informed its twee-at-times universe. I’m not sure what sort of English period this is meant to mimic but if I had to guess then it would be something like the post-WWI, Agatha Christie’s England.

A fun dynamic where the wife is the brains and the experienced magician while her partner is the brawn and the… tea-making house husband who supports her. Even if he DID dispatch the first big nasty monster. The humor is very detached and droll.