What I Found at Hoole

Barlough’s seventh Western Lights novel (after A Tangle in Slops), set in a world where the ice age never ended and a mysterious calamity known as the Sundering left only a small quasi-Victorian society clinging to America’s west coast, spins a pleasing tale with lyrical prose. Naïve young Ingram Somervell inherits a small property from his uncle, Sir Henry Clement; the larger part of Sir Henry’s estate in Hoole has gone to the mysterious and shrouded Petra Solsgrace. Plagued by visions whose significance is lost on him, Somervell is led to consider a hypothesis almost beyond belief: that lumerii, survivors of a lost civilization of uncharted advancement, still lurk unnoticed amid the humans, and that recent events in Hoole are evidence of their machinations. Barlough’s haunted narrator feels his way through ancient conspiracies, forgotten histories, and other, more mundane complications. Longtime fans of the series will find it a suitable installment, while those unfamiliar with it could consider this as an introduction. (Nov.)