Lamp Black, Wolf Grey

June 29, 2015
Brackston (The Midnight Witch) shifts across time to tell the stories of two women separated by centuries but linked to the same man. When Londoners Laura and Dan Matthews relocate to a quaint mountain village in Wales, they hope to restore intimacy to their failing marriage. Instead, Laura’s attention is drawn to the local legends surrounding onetime resident Merlin—and to the man she keeps seeing walking through the woods, for whom she feels an overwhelming connection. Eight hundred years earlier, Megan, nursemaid to the village’s malevolent lord, meets Merlin himself in those same woods and the two fall passionately in love. But when the wizard refuses to be complicit in the lord’s warmongering plans, he places Megan in mortal danger, and the reverberations of that decision reach through the ages to touch Laura’s life. Braxton’s characters possess intriguing and ambiguous true natures, and her lush prose imbues the Welsh landscape with an enchantment all its own.

June 1, 2015
A disappointed artist moves to a Welsh cottage where she gets entangled in an ancient love story involving Merlin, the magician of Arthurian legend. Brackston (The Silver Witch, 2015, etc.) weaves together the past and present in her latest historical paranormal romance. In hopes that a more relaxed lifestyle will help her conceive, Laura Matthews purchases a cottage in Wales. While her husband spends the week working in London, Laura expects to spend her days painting. Instead, she gets distracted by handsome neighbor Rhys and legends saying Merlin once roamed the hills and fell in love with a local woman. In a parallel plotline, Brackston flashes back in time to tell the tale of Merlin and his ladylove, Megan, a maid for Lord Geraint. Merlin and Lord Geraint become enemies, yet it's Megan who is caught between them. Past and present converge when Laura runs into a mysterious stranger who looks very much like the Merlin of legend. At times, Brackston's writing sings: "the distant hills stood softly, their edges blurred." Mostly it screeches: Laura "downed a thirsty swig." While the plot trots along at a brisk pace, the characters are pallid and their emotions ring hollow. Characters fall in love and into bed without much rhyme or reason. Laura's grief over her infertility comes across as trite rather than real. Readers will enjoy the glorious Welsh scenery Brackston brings to life, but the rest of the story does little to arouse compassion or even curiosity. Brackston has all the ingredients for a perfect tale-romance, magic, and mystery-but the final result does not satisfy.

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March 1, 2015

Brackston, so great at witchy historicals (e.g., The Silver Witch, out in April 2015), here shifts her focus to a wizard, namely, Merlin, who as a young man just starting to practice magic wanders the Welsh hills with his beloved gray wolf. Contemporary artist Laura Matthews, fresh to those same hills so that she can paint more deeply and maybe have a baby, senses the ages-old Merlin, whose resistance to the overbearing Lord Geraint brings down the lord's wrath on Megan, the woman Merlin loves. Note the trade paperback original format.

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