The Queen of Sinister: The Dark Age, Book 2

British Fantasy Award–winner Chadbourn continues (from 2010’s The Devil in Green) his jumbled tale of magic returning to postapocalyptic modern England. A terrible plague forces Caitlin Shepherd, a suburban doctor reeling from having to bury her husband and son, to seek a cure in the Celtic Otherworld. Chased through a changed English countryside by a sentient wave of despair, she accumulates companions among whom she must sort out friend from foe. Chadbourn fills the twisty narrative with history, myth, fairies, ghosts, unusual undead, and links to his earlier Age of Misrule works. Notes of optimism and enthusiasm around recreating human civilization are tempered by the realization of how much suffering this new world order would entail, and further revelations about the Fall portend more misery to come in the concluding volume. (June)