Clare Hooley reviewed The Green Man's Quarry by Juliet E. McKenna (Green Man, #6)
Another absorbing visit to a folklore-inspired Britain
5 stars
It went on sale, I bought it, and then I stayed up late reading it, once again caught up in the author’s excellent storycraft. Some of what appeals to a British reader is the evocations of the UK countryside and travel that ring true - even to the point of visits to service stations - but what takes these books to excellent is the complexity of the main character, Dan. Once again, here we have him called in by the Green Man to solve a problem that requires his ‘foot in both worlds’ abilities as a human son of a dryad, abilities that mean he can see and interact with the naiads, slyphs, selkies, hobs etc. that appear throughout. Sometimes we get a great helping of his naivety (of course the big cat isn’t really literally a big cat), other times we him have try to hold his own against …
It went on sale, I bought it, and then I stayed up late reading it, once again caught up in the author’s excellent storycraft. Some of what appeals to a British reader is the evocations of the UK countryside and travel that ring true - even to the point of visits to service stations - but what takes these books to excellent is the complexity of the main character, Dan. Once again, here we have him called in by the Green Man to solve a problem that requires his ‘foot in both worlds’ abilities as a human son of a dryad, abilities that mean he can see and interact with the naiads, slyphs, selkies, hobs etc. that appear throughout. Sometimes we get a great helping of his naivety (of course the big cat isn’t really literally a big cat), other times we him have try to hold his own against a pub full of adversaries with careful words, and then again he also plays a hard man that it’s clear he’s not - yet it works. There is a more obviously vicious human-led threat running through the book than we have seen before, when we mostly had evil folklore creatures, and the moralities involved are also more complex. This perhaps makes for grittier reading but these are absolutely not dark or heavy books; it’s not a spoiler to say all gets resolved in the end. The book is self contained but with a few threads left dangling, perhaps to get picked up in a future episode. I’ll definitely be buying it.
