This month I’m recommending a Fantasy Heist novel inspired by Welsh mythology and folklore – The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd-Jones. I’m guessing from her name that this American author is of Welsh descent. The book was published in 2022 and is now available in all the usual formats. I have to admit that the American cover is more striking and appropriate than the over pretty British cover. This isn’t a pretty story.
Set in a version of Wales still divided into independent cantrefs, The Drowned Woods tells the story of Mer, a young woman on the run from her past. When we first meet her, Mer is working as a barmaid and concealing the fact that she is a powerful Water Diviner. Her magic can be used for innocent purposes, such as charming the damp out of her socks, but it can also be lethal. Even more importantly Mer has to hide the brand on her left cheek which marks her as a fugitive wanted by the Prince of Gwaelod. One evening Mer is horrified to glimpse a face from her past – Renfrew, the spymaster and assassin of Prince Garanhir of Gwaelod. He bought Mer from her family when she was eight years old and took her to the Prince’s castle in Caer Wyddno. There she was trained by Renfrew to use her water magic in the ambitious Prince’s service until terrible events caused her to run away.
Renfrew swears to Mer that he no longer serves the Prince because of Garanhir’s obsession with conquering his neighbours. Renfrew’s plan is to weaken Garanhir’s power by stealing the magical treasures the Prince keeps hidden in a well on an island near Caer Wyddno. He needs a Water Diviner to help him reach the treasure and Mer is the last one left because Garanhir seems to have murdered the others. Renfrew offers Mer a share of the treasure so that she can start a new life somewhere far away. Mer doesn’t trust Renfrew and refuses to join his treasure hunt but after he rescues her from some soldiers who have spotted her brand, she changes her mind.
Renfrew has his Water Diviner but he also needs to recruit a mighty warrior because the magical well is reputed to have a monstrous guardian. After seeing a young man called Fane fight and kill a much bigger and stronger mercenary, Renfrew offers him the job. Fane, who now has a band of angry mercenaries after him, accepts as long as he is allowed his pick of the treasures. He also insists on bringing along his corgie, Trefor, a type of dog associated with the otherfolk – the beings known as the tylwyth teg. Fane admits that he has spent seven years in the otherfolk kingdom of Annwvyn serving as an ironfetch. In return he has been given the gift of being able to kill seven opponents, whatever the odds against him.
Renfrew instructs Mer and Fane to sneak into the city of Caer Wyddno while he goes off to collect another member of the team he is assembling. Mer and Fane get to know each other on the journey and a make it to a safe-house in Caer Wyddno. There Renfrew introduces them to two more team members: a tetchy scholar called Emrick, who is their expert on magic and the tylwyth teg, and Gryf, a man from the neighbouring cantef of Gwynedd. Gryf looks like a soldier but his role is unclear. At the briefing, Renfrew reveals two of the problems they face. The first is that the well is guarded by a giant magical boar who has eaten every knight sent to defeat him. The second is that to reach the island unseen they need to unlock a gate in the sewers beneath Caer Wyddno which leads to undersea caves.
A first attempt to obtain the key through bribery turns into a near disaster. Stealing it seems the only option but for that they will need the best thief in the city, who happens to be Mer’s ex-friend and lover, Ifanna. When Mer first fled from the Prince, she spent two happy years in the Thieves Guild which is led by Ifanna’s mothers. Then Ifanna caused Mer to be recaptured. Mer has always hoped that there might be some good explanation for this betrayal, but it is still hard for her to bargain for the services of a woman she has no cause to trust.
Things continue to go wrong for Renfrew’s team and they barely escape when the safe-house is attacked. Is there a traitor amongst them? By the time they get through the perilous undersea caves, one of the team is dead and Mer begins to suspect that other members have undeclared reasons for taking part in the heist. On the island nothing is quite as expected. Is this really just a treasure hunt or something much more sinister?
The Heist story may seem like a modern genre, most often associated with movies, but it has very ancient roots. One of the oldest examples is the Greek myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece (see Fantasy Reads August 2013 for the version by Apollonius of Rhodes). Jason assembles the Argonauts, a crew of heroes many of whom have special powers, in order to steal the dragon-guarded Golden Fleece. After gaining the help of the sorceress Medea, Jason wins the golden prize but the story develops into one of treachery, murder and vengeance. Those last three also feature in The Drowned Woods, which has a plot with many dark twists and turns, a heroine struggling with guilt and a hero fighting against his own desire for bloody revenge. You expect surprises in a heist story but some of the things that happen in this novel literally made me gasp. There is no-one so ruthless as a leader convinced of the rightness of their cause.
Of course The Drowned Woods has its roots in Welsh rather than Greek mythology. Indeed in 2023 it won a Tir na n-Og Award for best English-language novel with a Welsh background. Many motifs from Welsh myth, such as water monsters, magical cauldrons and drowned cities, are woven into the plot. Further elements are specifically taken from that wonderful collection of early Welsh tales, The Mabinogion (see my Fantasy Reads post of November 2012). The splendidly bizarre quartet of stories known as the Four Branches of the Mabinogion have inspired many Fantasy writers, including Alan Garner (Fantasy Reads November 2012), Lloyd Alexander (Fantasy Reads August 2015) and Evangeline Walton (Fantasy Reads April 2016). The Drowned Woods is more unusual in also drawing on a lesser known story, the rumbustious saga of Kilwch and Olwen in which a group of heroes with what would now be called super-powers are assembled by King Arthur to steal a beautiful maiden from a brutal giant.
At this point I must come clean and admit that the Tir na n-Og awards are given to books published for children and young people. The Drowned Woods is technically a Young Adult novel but I implore adult readers not to reject it because of that. Leading characters Mer and Fane are in their late teens but in the context of their society they are adults, with years of bitter experience behind them. I promise that there are no giggly teenagers or overblown crushes in The Drowned Woods. There is a developing love story between two badly damaged people but it is very understated and all the more moving for that. This is a book which deals with serious issues such as the responsibilities of leadership and the perennial ethical problem of whether the ends can justify the means. Since it was published for Young Adults you can expect plain and lucid prose and an epic plot packed into a mere 353 pages.
One area in which there is no compromise for younger readers is the characterization. Lloyd-Jones portrays brutal and sadistic men in positions of power and keeps us guessing with other characters such as the flamboyant Ifanna, who follows her own distinctive moral code, and arch-manipulator Renfrew who remains an enigma for most of the novel. The author takes a risk by giving considerable page-space to the back stories of Mer and Fane. This might have slowed down the narrative too much but the tension is kept up because these gradually revealed back stories are both gripping in themselves and crucial to how Mer and Fane will behave during a tremendous crisis near the end of the plot.
Mer’s Water Magic, which has always been more of a curse than a blessing to her, is well worked out and described. She has used it to save others but also to kill and that has made her want to run away from herself as well as Prince Garanhir. In the course of the story, Mer learns the truth about old betrayals and suffers horrific new ones. In response, she chooses to stop running and take full responsibility for her own past actions. Mer is well matched with Fane, who sacrificed everything to gain revenge for his murdered family only to realize that vengeance would cause suffering for the innocent as well as the guilty. He has turned himself into a weapon which he is determined not to use. Lloyd-Jones made me care about the ultimate fate of these two tormented characters. And then there’s the dog. I’m a cat person and I’ve always disliked corgies since one bit me as a child but even I was charmed by Fairy Dog Trefor. He brings a welcome touch of warmth to a sombre novel. Until next month….
Geraldine