A review by octavia_cade
Candlenight by Phil Rickman

4.0

Three and a half stars, rounding up to four. I came across this book on a list of haunted house stories I'm reading my way through, and that was a grossly inaccurate listing I can tell you. This isn't a haunted house story at all, but it is a horror, and a very entertaining one at that. Sort of rural Gothic, but Welsh rural Gothic of all things, with myth and history and murder all tied up in a remote village that's positively seething with nationalism. That was the really interesting thing about this book, for me - the underlying hostility the Welsh have for the English. Living on the other side of the world as I do, the Welsh-English relationship is not something that often crosses my radar, though I'm aware of course, at least vaguely, of the fraught relationship between them, the history of conflict and violence. It doesn't surprise me that resentment remains (although I'm hoping not to the level depicted here!). It does make it a particularly interesting angle for a horror story to take, however... and it also makes me want to find some good basic books on Welsh history to fill in the gaps. Oh well, even more to add to my tottering to-read pile...