I last read Carey with Infinity Gate, part one of a duology. In my review I mentioned being eager for part two, but I have not yet read it. I have no excuse – it’s just that it’s sci-fi and every time I think about it, it feels unimaginably dense. My reading energy remains low and anything complex just seems too hard these days. Anyway, a friend told me about this book, and the medieval setting intrigued me.
Willem begins narrating this tale with a battle between a baron holding an English keep and the forest raider who organizes his forces to take it. The first 10% of the book felt like it was introducing me to characters who would be important later (which, in retrospect – only kind of?), but their relation to the narrator was at first unclear and I was having a hard time connecting.
The focus then turns to a village, Cosham, that is part of the baron’s holding, and Willem’s parents, Jon and Margaret. Willem is their only child, much beloved. When he dies unexpectedly (though, how unexpected was a child dying in medieval England of fever, really?), they are understandably distraught. When sometime later a mysterious wizard takes up residence in the area and begins to perform minor spells for the village inhabitants, Jon and Margaret are drawn to him, with predictably grave (ha!: pun) results.
Just a note: this isn’t the first fantasy/supernatural element introduced in the book – in the aforementioned battle, the invaders have a fighter who appears to be part bear – when he turns up later we find he’s a shapeshifter. The fantasy element grows stronger as the book progresses, and I think that worked for me – rather than being thrust into all these otherworldly concepts, I was grounded in reality first (I sometimes have a shaky relationship with fantasy, though I find it easier to handle than sci-fi).
So, Willem’s parents visit the cabin of the wizard Cain Caradoc in the woods. Their first clues that things aren’t normal come quickly: the cabin appears much closer to the village than they expect and turns out to be much bigger on the inside that it appears on the outside. Furniture, food and drink and other items appear without warning. Jon and Margaret apply to Caradoc for help resurrecting Willem, and offer a pittance – all they have in the world – as payment. The wizard has no use for their money, but instead proposes a trade of sorts: a piece of Willem’s recovered soul in exchange for the raising.
Jon and Margaret are wisely put off by this notion, but Caradoc insists that he *needs* the bit of soul in order to perform the spell. This isn’t true; Caradoc is in the habit of stealing a bit of life from who and where he can. He aspires to immortality, but in the meantime he’s just working on keeping himself alive and young in appearance, when he’s in fact two hundred years old.
I should mention that Willem has been dead for a year when the ritual is performed. This doesn’t help what follows; between Caradoc’s lack of interest in doing a top-notch resurrection job (or so it seemed to me) and the fact that what’s in Willem’s grave is not so much an intact body but something Willem himself calls bones in a “broth” (a repeated reference I could really have done without), the result is a creature whose appearance is somewhat off-putting. When Willem makes his way to his parents’ door, they are horrified and stick him in the barn while trying to figure out what to do. What that ends up being is skipping town (well, village) and suggesting that Willem do the same.
What follows is pretty sad, in an obvious”Frankenstein’s monster” sort of way. Willem feels attached to Cosham but when the villagers encounter him they do the sort of things you’d expect – scream, throw things, run away, yadda yadda. Willem eventually retreats to a nearby cave and for a time lives an almost animalistic existence, hunting with his bare hands and walking on all fours. He returns a bit toward humanity when he meets a few other, well, I’ll just call them people. A river sprite named Peter, and a pair of shapeshifter siblings Anna and Kel (the latter of whom is the bear we encountered earlier in the story) all become friends of Once-Was-Willem (the name by which Willem thinks of himself, since he no longer feels he is quite the Willem who was alive).
Meanwhile, things are happening both in the village and at the Castle Pennick. At the castle, Cain Caradoc has installed himself as adviser to Maglan Horvath, the brigand who defeated the baron and took his place. Caradoc has plans, big plans, and Horvath is just a means to an end. The wizard has been drawn to the area and identified the castle as the source of a great magical power – but how to harness it? His answer to that question is very unpleasant indeed, and eventually his scheming leads to a revolt in the village.
Thus a battle of good vs. evil is joined. Except, there’s a big old asterisk on the “good” part of that – the villagers, after all, behave like you might expect medieval villagers to (or just humanity in general, if you’re of a cynical bent). There’s their treatment of Willem, of course, and also the matter of a little witch-burning. In general they aren’t great people – fearful and ignorant and small-minded. But they love their children, and when those children are threatened, they do come together.
(The village does contain at least one truly good adult, the priest. Parson Lebone is learned and though he has lost what faith he once had, he tries to minister to the people as best he can.)
There’s a LOT going on in Once Was Willem. At least thematically – there are a lot of folklore and literary references. The entire backstory about the power that resides in Castle Pennick is biblical in nature (I had to look up Nephilim). For a novel that has some undoubtedly upsetting and unsettling elements, it feels odd to call it “heartwarming” but the family that Willem finds when he loses his own is every bit as loving as a “real” one, for all that they aren’t entirely human. This raises the stakes for the end battle, which made for compelling reading. My grade for this is a B+.
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Jennie
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Jennie
has been an avid if often frustrated romance reader for the past 15 years. In that time she’s read a lot of good romances, a few great ones, and, unfortunately, a whole lot of dreck. Many of her favorite authors (Ivory, Kinsale, Gaffney, Williamson, Ibbotson) have moved onto other genres or produce new books only rarely, so she’s had to expand her horizons a bit. Newer authors she enjoys include Julie Ann Long, Megan Hart and J.R. Ward, and she eagerly anticipates each new Sookie Stackhouse novel. Strong prose and characterization go a long way with her, though if they are combined with an unusual plot or setting, all the better. When she’s not reading romance she can usually be found reading historical non-fiction.
